There is nothing about the IBM symbol, for example, that suggests computers, except what the viewer reads into it. Stripes are now associated with computers because the initials of a great computer company happen to be striped.
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 striped IBM logo (1967) predated VDT scan lines. IBM introduced the 2260 Display Terminal which used a CRT in 1965, but while it was a poplar product it isn't consistent with this theory of the logo as the scanlines were actually vertical.
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.
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.
I agree that the striped IBM logo can be read in that way, but it’s worth noting that it too was designed by Paul Rand—so evidently those readings weren’t entirely intentional. The IBM website reports that Rands’s aim was “to suggest ‘speed and dynamism.’”
“I got the idea for the [stripes] by projecting the notion of a document that you signed that uses a series of thin parallel lines to protect the signature against counterfeiting. And I thought, ‘Well, if that’s the symbol of that kind of authority, then why don’t I make the letters into stripes or into a series of lines.’” Paul Rand, Creator of the IBM logo, 1988
The Apple “rainbow” logo is timeless. SGI cube logo was fantastic. NeXT logo? I never understood all the buzz around it, to me it is no better than original colorful Windows logo.
I don't think highly of the NeXT logo either, but this comment on the article makes a good argument:
"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 have the same reaction. I think that as consumers of media, we hear about Next through the history of Steve Jobs' career and the history of Apple, and media about those subjects is all over the place. I've never seen it out in the world, or encountered some salient cultural reference it was attached to, or saw it in anything outside of its status as a chapter in the history of Apple.
NeXT was also the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee wrote the first web browser, and on which Carmack wrote Doom. Not bad for a platform far smaller than SGI or Sun I'd say.
I completely agree, and I don't understand what, aside from its historical significance, people can point to that suggest it was a good logo. I think it's a little visually complicated, I don't think the colors harmonize, it's not transcendentally simple like the Apple logo or the Nike swish, the choice of font and arrangement of letters isn't doing anything for me. and I'd like to think that I'm the type of person that would be receptive to rationales for why logos are the way they are. Not that I'm an expert, but I followed conversations on flag design, I've read about the Twitter and Pepsi logo redesigns, the Obama icon, etc.
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.
Rand would argue it looks dated because NeXT is dated. It’s a relic. The logo reflects the association to the reality, that is, NeXT is an old idea from yesteryear.
Next’s logo was sort of like if Apple’s logo had changed to a black phone rectangle and colorful app icons when the iPhone was announced. Next’s identity was intended to match its strong vision of the future of computing as well as the creative expression it would enable within both the company and its future customers. And the logo has been validated as a powerful symbol over time, though granted it can be hard to isolate praise for it from praise for Jobs.
There were many iterations of the Windows logo. I am not a design buff at all but the ones from the 90s look pretty bad now IMHO. The tail of icons and all that...
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 Windows 1.0 logo [0] from 1985 looks shockingly modern to me: flat, negative space, recognizable in small and low fidelity reproductions. It was seemingly used until v3.1, when MS ruined the metaphor with the weird waving flag.
The Sun Microsystems logo [1] is much-loved, but can never get too much credit imho.
That's funny, that windows 1.0 logo does look pretty modern, but it also has a distinctly 80s feel. I feel every year though, 80s fashion and aesthetics are coming back in more and more parts of life.
Well, imagine if NeXT became Apple. I would guarantee people would be obsessed with the backstory and some even thinking that a good logo is the magic bullet needed to win
I thought the same thing until I saw it on a Next computer. The colorful little square brings a glint of playful personality to an otherwise-serious-looking black cube.
I really liked NeXTSTEP machines we had back in the uni - everything about them was thoroughly exciting except for the logo. It just stuck out like a sore thumb. Like someone forgot to replace a placeholder before signing off the design into production.
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.
> “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.’”
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 don't find it surprising for Jobs, especially at that younger point in his life. He always wanted control; early Apple, NeXT, late Apple, that remained true across his entire professional life. Wanting Rand to present options is another way of trying to have control over the process, to try to get more influence over what the final product is. It's why Paul Rand wouldn't provide options, he wasn't willing to cede that control; it was Rand's way or the highway.
The black cube (as a Platonic ideal) was a Steve Jobs design statement (as the form factor for the first NeXT computer) and informs the logo design. The logo has richer significance within that context. To me, it is Steve Jobs saying that a computer doesn't have to be prosaic and as technologists we can aspire to more profound ideals.
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.
I always liked Sun Microsystems logo just cause it's like a puzzle where the pieces fit nicely. That U shape makes up the word "SUN" and it's shaped into a box.
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).
The key insight about the NeXT logo is that it had to be iconic and memorable and invoke culture -- which it is. It's mission was not to satisfy some tech nerd's OCD about what looks techy.
That's really cool. It makes me nostalgic for the innocence of the 90s in business and doing anything really... now everything is just copies of copies of low quality trash, where competition is super high and everything has been done 92042 different ways.
I remember hearing back at the time there was a snarky reply to the NEXT logo circulated within apple. The same logo, but replacing the last two letters to read NEVR -- to suggest the project was not going to ever amount to anything. Can't find any trace of it now with a quick google search though.
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.
I would encourage you to find an old NeXT computer and see the logo in flesh. It adds a ton of personality to an otherwise unremarkable black box.
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
You can't understand the logos out of context. Rand's IBM logo (and probably many of his others), was designed along with everything from the architecture of the buildings, through the computer cabinets, to the letterhead stationery. It all had a consistent look that was instantly recognizable as IBM. That was the logo's purpose, not to be splashy and memorable by itself.
There is a whole book about this: The Interface: IBM and the Transformation of Corporate Design, 1945 -- 1976 by John Harwood. It's online:
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).
What designs? If you're referring to the images in the article, most of those appear to be part of a presentation that discusses the merits and properties of different fonts and stylizations, presumably to illustrate a set of ideas that culminates in the reveal of Next logo.
Well, what makes you so sure you have good taste? You have a taste, and many designs probably appealed to that taste.
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.
Amateurish is harsh. I would agree that it looks slightly dated, though not in the wrong way. If you go through the brochure, you get a sense that a lot of thought went into the design itself.
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.