Learning from that guy though was really eye opening. He had a fondness for the I guess 60's ish design. How do you make something that looks good on the side of a pen, and also looks good on the side of a plane? .5 cm to 5m maybe? familiar? recognizable?
This one is a cute puzzle. It doesn't do much for me, but I'd bet back in the day it was amazing to see a company as uptight and powerful as IBM doing something, I guess, whimsical. Yeah, that tape drive is full of dull grey boring tax records. But it's got a sense of humor about it.
Logo's are tricky.
A good design guideline book is a pretty amazing thing, and there's some of that in the do's and don'ts section. There's something comforting (to my disorganized programmer mind) about seeing the idea fully thought out, how it's supposed to be, and stuff to not do.