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| Apple Logo |
Hey guys it’s Sourojit with Apple Explained, and today we’re going to explore how the Apple logo went from this complicated illustrations 1976 to the iconic symbol we know and love today. This topic won last week’s voting poll and if you didn’t get to vote, make sure you’re subscribed, that way the voting polls will show up right in your activity feed and you can let me know which video you'd like to see next. Now, Apple is arguably the most iconic brand in history and its logo is universally recognizable.
It’s simplicity and straightforward aesthetic makes this a timeless symbol to represent the most valuable company in the world. But the Apple logo hasn’t always looked this way. In fact, you may not recognize their logo from 1976. To be honest, it looked more like an illustration. Now you may be wondering what the heck Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were thinking when creating this logo. But you'd be asking the wrong people since it was Ron Wayne, Apple’s third co-founder, who made this drawing. It was created with India ink and featured Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree reading a book. A fabric banner surrounded the image that said “AppleComputer Co.” but there was more text featured on the picture’s frame. If you look closely, you just might be able to make it out: “Newton... ‘A Mind Forever Voyaging Through StrangeSeas of Thought... Alone.’” The quote is from the romantic English poet William Wordsworth, who in “The Prelude, Book Third: Residence of Cambridge” wrote: And from my pillow, looking forth by light of the moon or favoring stars, I could behold The antechapel where the statue stood Newton with his prism and silent face, The marble index of a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone. Now, this logo clearly had some artistic value, but as you can imagine, Steve Jobs wasn’t a fan.
He argued that Apple should have a more stylish logo and thought this logo could be part of the reason for the Apple 1’sslow sales. And he may have been right. The illustrated logo was a too intellectual fora technology company and it was simply too complicated to reproduce on computers or in small sizes. Jobs then asked Rob Janoff to design a new logo. Janoff was the art director of Regis McKenna Advertising who had helped Compaq, America Online, and Intel develop brand identities in their early years. Steve knew the Apple II was going to be launched on April 17th, 1977 at West Coast Computer Fair, and he wanted Apple to have a fresh, modern look. Rob Janoff started with a silhouette of black apple on a white background but felt that something was missing. A play on words that Apple had previously used in advertising for the Apple I may have helped Janoff get the idea that a bite should be taken out of the apple. But Janoff said he included the bite “for scale, so people understood that it was an apple and not a cherry. But BillKelley, who also worked for Regis McKenna Advertising, remembered the story a bit differently. He said that the bite was symbolic of acquiring knowledge, a biblical reference to Eve eating from the tree of knowledge. Janoff then added colored stripes to the apple logo because of the Apple II’s impressive color capabilities, and Steve Jobs himself specified many of the hues that were included. And this Apple logo was in fact used at the Apple II’s launch in April 1997. But there was a big problem with this colorful version of the Apple logo… It was very complicated to print. You see, printing colored strips side by side has to be done in separate steps. And if just one strip is misplaced, it will overlap with the other colors and has to be redone. This meant printing the Apple logo was an expensive process. Janoff suggested that the colored stripes be separated by thin black lines, which would make printing much cheaper. But Steve Jobs spared no expense and demanded that the logo should remain as it was.
The Director of European Operations at AppleComputer had this to say about the legendary Apple logo: “One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo, the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn’t dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy.” Now although the Apple logo had been developed, the Apple type still underwent some changes back in those days. At first, the Apple logo was accompanied by the text “apple computer inc.” in the Motter Tektura typeface which was designed by Othmar Motter in 1975 and was quite new when Apple started using it. Over the years, Apple made some changes to the logotype to make it a little more stylish advertising. In the early 80’s they shortened “Apple Computer Inc.” to “Apple”, as you can see in this advertisement for Lisa. In 1984, just in time for the original Macintoshintroduction, Apple dropped the Motter Tektura typeface and replaced it with the more sophisticatedGaramond. But Apple actually had their own custom version of the typeface called AppleGaramond. This was also when Apple began featuring its logo by itself, although they usually included their slogan “think different” in advertising and printed materials. Apple’s rainbow logo remained unchanged during Steve Jobs’ absence from the company, but the typography was updated from AppleGaramond to Gill Sans. And Jobs made another mark on the Apple logo when he returned in1997. Because for the first time, Apple featured a solid white logo on the Powerbook G3 lid, and its box featured solid black and white Apple logos. Now, the operating system, macOS 8, still used the rainbow logo but this changed in 2001 with the introduction of macOS X. Now, as this monochrome logo began being used on the lid of Apple’s PowerBooks and iBooks, a design issue arose. Which way should the apple logo face? The answer may seem obvious today, but it wasn’t so clear in the late90’s. There was a time when Apple logos were actually upside down on the lid of their notebooks, Joe Moreno, a former Apple employee, explained it this way: “About a dozen years ago we had some discussions Apple about the placement of the logo on the back of Apple’s laptops. Apple has an internal system called Can We Talk? where any employee can raise questions on most any subject. So we asked, ‘Why is the Apple logo upside down on laptops when the lid is open?’” And the answer? Because Steve Jobs wanted it that way. He wanted to make sure that when a user sat down in front of their closed notebook, the Apple logo was facing towards them; he didn’t care how it appeared to an onlooker. Jobs believed this was an important detail because his design group noticed that users constantly tried to open the laptop from the wrong end. And Jobs always focused on providing the best possible user experience and believed that it was more important to satisfy the user's needs rather than the onlookers. But just a few years later, Steve reversed his decision and turned the Apple logo around. Moreno concluded that “opening a laptop from the wrong end is a self-correcting problem that only lasts for a few seconds. However, viewing the upside logo is a problem that lasts indefinitely.” Ken Segall, who worked closely with Jobs on advertising, summed up the issue quite well. He said,“Which was more important — to make the logo look right to the owner before the PowerBookwas opened, or to have it look right to the rest of the world when the machine was in use? Look around today and the answer is pretty obvious. Every laptop on earth has a logo that’s right-side-up when the machine is opened. Back then, it wasn’t so obvious, probably because laptops were not yet ubiquitous. Looking back, it borders on the unbelievable that something so wrong could ever have seemed right.
That Steve Jobs ever wrestled with this decision only proves one thing: being right in retrospect is much easier than being right in real-time.” Now, shortly after the switch to their monochromeApple logo, things started to get a bit colorful with the Bondi Blue iMac in 1998. The logo appeared embossed in a translucent blue veneer that resembled its appearance on the iMac.And this design was carried through to the fruit-colored iMacs the following year. Now this time period was a bit awkward for the Apple logo. It appeared monochrome on Apple’sPowerBook but was stylized with color and translucence on the iMac and iBook. And the operating system was still using the rainbow Apple logo which was beginning to look outdated. But these inconsistencies were straightened out in 2001 with the release of Mac OS X. Its aqua interface meant Apple had to design a new logo to match, and that started the aqua Apple logo era.
The typography was also revised two years later from Gill Sans to Myriad. But I should mention that Apple didna uses its aqua logo in every case. For example, products like the iPod and Mac mini used Apple’s monochrome logo in addition to printed materials like brochures and even software packaging. Apple’s website didn’t even feature their aqua-style logo. So there was often a tug-of-war between the flashy aqua logo and the flat monochrome logo until Apple made an effort to streamline these two styles. They accomplished this by creating the new chrome logo in 2007 which they used on their website, in advertisements, during iOS startup and shut down, in Mac OS X’s About This Mac window, and in printed material. Although this wasn’t the only style of logo Apple used during this time, it was a step forward in making its logo appear more uniform across different platforms and materials. Now in 2013 Apple's design language began to shift from three dimensional to two dimensional, and this meant a much flatter logo.
Apple essentially went back to using their monochrome logo from the late 90s. And this meant no matter where you saw an Apple logo, it would look exactly the same. No stylization, no embellishments, just a flat logo that looked the same, from the MacBook Pro’s lid to the iPhone’s manual to the Apple Store. This change marked a true unification of the apple logo’s design. I should also add that Apple’s signature typography was updated in 2015 with the release of the Apple Watch. It used Apple’s new San Francisco typeface which eventually replaced Myriad on all Apple’s operating systems and printed materials. Now I think the most recent Apple logo design is the absolute best. After all, it looks as good today as it did in the 90s and I don’tthink Apple will be changing it anytime soon. But what do you think? Should Apple change its logo? Maybe they could go back to one of their previous designs.
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