The NASA Design Program (2011)

It speaks to the challenge of good design and of changing organizations.

But I got a soft spot for the meatball. Today, the worm reads as cold and clinical, and potentially kind of out of touch with NASA culture. The meatball kind of exudes a certain optimism.

Astronauts fill their jump suits with patches, and all mission patches are fundamentally dorky, committee like things. And even while the new logo was in vigour, people still wore the old one! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Nelson_(astronaut)#/med... This one is from 1985, the year after they won their award: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/276615main_BarbMorgan_5.j...

I wonder whether the new logo wouldn't have had better adoption had they used the new logo type where appropriate but showed it off inserted in a cleaned up, subtler version of the meatball.

more: http://www.grapheine.com/typographie/logo-de-la-nasa