Paul Rand's NeXT Logo (2010)
logodesignlove.com
logodesignlove.com
I hate to disagree with legends of their fields, but the IBM logo did make people think computers because the stripes looked like things that were familiar from computers of the era.
For example, it was common for computer displays at the time to have space between the character lines. If you tried to create the letters IBM in a very large size on an early computer terminal, you would get lines between them because room was left for character descenders.
I had relatives who worked for IBM in upstate New York in the 60's through the 80's, and they identified the stripes as being reminiscent of the green bar printer/ teletype/ terminal paper that was commonly used.
The successor product, the 3270 terminal, was only introduced in 1971, and so postdates the striped logo.
You're on firmer ground with the connection to striped continuous teletype paper (such as that used with the IBM 1403 printer), but the ubiquity of those stripes really only begins with the introduction of dot matrix printers in 1970.
Notably, when Paul Rand initially introduced his striped logo redesign, an executive commented "It reminds me of the Georgia chain gang."
In the 60s and 70s, many more people had seen line printer output - more common than teletype output - than had personally used a computer. So the stripes were definitely a cultural signifier long before computers became everyday items.
And raster lines were very common by 1970. See e.g. DEC's VT05 "affordable" terminal from 1970.
http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/terminal/vt05/vt05-3.jpg
The 2260 scanlines may have been vertical, but the impression was definitely of characters made of horizontal lines. It's an interesting history - not least the fact that the electronics for the terminal lived in a huge wardrobe sized-box.
http://www.righto.com/2019/11/ibm-sonic-delay-lines-and-hist...
You can see clearly how the look of the character set prefigured the new IBM logo.
No, that's whe the 8-bar logo design was introduced, but a 13-bar version dates from 1966 or 1967, depending on the source:
https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/makingibm...
Don't forget the striped printer paper that was ubiquitous these days. That's at least what the stripes remind me of.
The Sydney Australia office had this on a large steel cube out the front.
"Considering how well recognized the NeXT logo is in the industry even though it was a minor company with barely any market, the logo is as remarkable as their products were"
I think a lot of people who are interested in computing history know about them.
https://i1.wp.com/www.geekometry.com/wp-content/uploads/2015...
The best rationale that I can think of is that it looks like an artifact of outdated 90s design, but was produced in the 80s, and so was in a sense ahead of its time, which counts for something, at least.
Sourceish: https://youtu.be/Ta4ef1xBeMA
I am not a huge fan of some of the UI from Win8 and Win10 but the logo looks a bit nicer than it used to.
The Sun Microsystems logo [1] is much-loved, but can never get too much credit imho.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Microsystems
So as much as I like Rand's work (and as cool as his business card was in its audacious minimalism), the Next logo is just too full of itself. As it is actually detached from the very product it was designed for.
2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16889051
2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9440589
2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1247653
2009 (1 comment) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=969189
(Everybody seizes on the same bit...)
Surprises me Jobs would ask this, a demand for options, especially three options is usually a sign of a weak creative director lacking confidence.
I still have a few stickers left on a sheet that came with my first NeXT cube. When I get a new laptop I cover the Apple logo with a NeXT logo. But it's less and less often that anyone recognizes the homage.
It's like someone said, "Hmm, NeXT Computer isn't using that logo any more... let's just tweak it a little so it's not identical."
Not sure it has anything to do with computers, but neither does an apple with a bite taken out of it (unless you factor in the Alan Turing lore).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta4ef1xBeMA
Paraphrased, ‘If I designed the IBM logo with Old English instead of stripes, people might have thought it was a good logo too’.
Rand talking about various famous logos he designed:
On the ABC logo (second half of video):
Does anyone know what that program was?
Had me thinking we'd found some previously unreleased work of his or something.
Sure, but could you convince someone to pay you $100k for it?
I see very little effort to create a memorable logo. All these logos look very much alike and neither of them feel like they have any soul to convey.
There is a hint at minimalist design, however I’d argue that minimal is easy to learn, hard to master.
What do you feel when you look at it? I feel nothing. They are just printing out their name in different variations.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not somebody who thinks good design is easy. Never said that. I do however believe that a brand needs some kind of character and uniqueness to their brand and these illustrations feel extremely generic.
Keep in mind that this logo was done for a very physical medium. And you're viewing it through an entirely digital medium - something neither Jobs nor Rand could have envisioned back then.
I would like to think that if Rand was designing a logo for the digital age, his approach would be entirely different
There is a whole book about this: The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945 -- 1976 by John Harwood. It's online:
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/24792
On the importance of IBM's design, Paul Rand wrote, "IBM's products are too complex to be understood by the average buyer. [They] must rely on IBM's reputable name." (quoted in Ch 1, p. 27 in Harwood).
Not so much for the rest which I am seeing presented here though.
Now, that's quite a statement. Those Fiverr designers must have left a lot of money on the table. Could you please show these better logos?
I’ve seen first hand bosses of companies favor designs (half way decent stuff) that appealed to their tastes, but there were elements of the company that knew his/her taste was a little bland.