NeXT Logo Presentation by Paul Rand to Steve Jobs [pdf]

Subjectively- color pallets is awful. Font choice is poor.

In my view Paul Rand was never a "great" designer, just a prolific one.

I could point out that 'It stands out, and is instantly identifiable' is the weakest of arguments in defence of a design. I could photocopy my arse and stick the words 'Burger King' next to it, set in comic sans. That would tick all the boxes that sentence mandates. But that's as cheap a retort as it was an argument. It's not enough to be distinct. A designer has to be distinct within the constraints of a brief. Which leads me to your second point.

Does a company every get the opportunity to sit each and every potential customer down in front of a power point presentation to explain the subtlety, nuance and reasoning behind a design? No. So who is this rationalisation for? If it's really necessary to explain a logo this way, then the logo is flawed. But in reality though, these sorts of documents aren't needed. They're just marketing nonsense to help the agency close a deal, mixed with ego and vanity. I despise them and the people who make them*.

As I mentioned in my first comment, good design is self evident. Looking at it is all you should ever need to do to validate it. That said, a a designer, you do need to think beyond that first impression. You need to build in the "quality" that's never going to be immediately apparent, but sorely missed later down the line if you've left it out. Quality in design is a real tangible thing but what it is varies between the types of thing you're designing. Let's use this travesty of a logo as our case study.

Does it work well in black and white - yes.

Does it scale up and down well.... hmmmm, not really. In print you'd have problems at smaller sizes but on screen, well see the next point...

Does it look good on a computer display? This logo highlights every limitation of computer displays at the time, and hit's none of the advantages. It's almost as if they designed a logo specifically not to work on a computer display from 1986.

And this is the real kicker. Call me old fashioned, but a logo has to work on thing it is a logo for. Right now I can't think of an exception to this rule, but even if there is one, a logo for a computer hardware and software manufacturer has to look good on screen. That's non negotiable.

The first two "quality controls" are typical for all logo breifs - this control was unique to this brief at the time

And now we get into your comments on the design industry which I think are perfectly valid. Yes, designers can be snobs. Yes, there's a wealth of so called "good" design out there that is actually "really really bad" design. I think that's the culmination of a few thing. Primarily, designer is now seen as a "cool" career which has attracted too many people who can only react to trends, not create them. There are also companies like Google who look like they "get" design, but clearly not only do they not get it, they don't value it and they can't even copy it. So you end up with what you describe - bad design being paraded and hailed as good design. A vocal set of design tourists, hapless wannabes regurgitating nonsense and it's all drowning out the good work. Paul Rand may well have been the first of these hapless wannabes, here's how Steve Jobs described workign with him.

> I asked him if he would come up with a few options, and he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you and you will pay me. You don’t have to use the solution. If you want options go talk to other people.

What a prick. If you want to be an artist, go slum it in the gutter with the rest of the artists. If you want to be a designer, treat the customer with a bit of respect and give them some damn options.

But there is still good design out there. Good designers aren't snobs. Their work is not trend based. They're not artists and don't think of themselves as artists, they skilled labourers.

The ones that are driven by trends, who do think of themselves as artists, often have very unrewarding and usually short design careers.

Design is like the world. It'd be great if it weren't for all the people.

Right?

So I think that Paul Rand misses the point when he says that the IBM stripes are meaningless, even when it was Paul Rand himself who designed the IBM logo[1].

[1] https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/logo/logo_8.html