GRAPHIC DESIGNER, AUTHOR OF THE FIRST LOGO FOR APPLE COMPUTERS
What in your opinion made the APPLE logo so easily identifiable ?
Well, actually with the APPLE logo, it is the mark itself, the multicolored apple shape with a bite taken out of it, as opposed to the words “APPLE COMPUTER”.
I first designed it with a specific letterform for the words “APPLE COMPUTER” which were coming out of the bite of the apple. As the company, the product and the logo became more popular, the words were dropped in favor of the mark.
It has also been adapted in computer software so that sometimes a cursor is done in stripes. It’s become recognized not only as the logo itself but just as a piece of computerese that people are familiar with.
Of course, at the time we had no idea that APPLE COMPUTER would take off as a company, or as a product either. It was lucky for me to be associated with Steve JOB and the few people he had at the beginning.
When did you design the logo ?
I designed it in 1976. I was working for a small agency in Palo Alto called REGIS Mc KENNA.
Did you create the type face for the logo ?
Well the typeface was actually a standard typeface. Originally it was a LETRASET typeface called MOTTER TEKTURA. What I was trying to do at the time, was to design a mark that was real playful and approachable with a typeface that would have a bit of a techno look to it. So I was kind of balancing the fun and the technology because it was a very technologically advanced product, but what Steve was trying to do was to democratize it, to get it in the hands of everybody and make it easy to have, instead of something only for computer wizards.
I’m glad that the type as been dropped from the mark itself because, in a way, it limits the application of a logo to always have to have type connected to the mark. If you want the mark real big you have to have the words real big and what is really memorable about this all thing is this apple shape. You see that mark and you don’t have to read the name. That’s why it has been working internationally so well..
Do you systematically recommend to your clients the use of a symbol, or do you think that it only applies to a certain type of company or a certain type of product ?
Well, being a designer and being a visually oriented person I’m always in favor of trying to simplify the communication, so if a mark stands for a product or a word or whatever, I think you’ve really come full circle. You don’t have to read GENERAL ELECTRIC to know what that GE mark is. That comes over time, but APPLE as a company has done such a wonderful job. Agencies have done such a good job at promoting them, that it has accelerated that process. People see the mark and they don’t need to see the words. I think that people responded to the colors and the joke of the shape. There’s a little bit of a pun in the way that the shape is designed. The bite that is taken out of it. It’s not only the silhouette of an apple, (you couldn’t take a bite like that out of any other piece of fruit shaped that way) but byte is also a computer term. So from the beginning really, I think that what computer people responded to, was the little double meaning there, in the shape.
It’s not always that you have the chance to have that kind of fun with the viewer on a logo. Logos are usually so serious !
The colors also are very cheerful. What made you decide to have so many colors ?
One of the reasons was that, at the time, it was the only home computer that was available to hook up to a color monitor and reproduce colors at an affordable price. That was one of the big features, and because of that it was thought that it would be especially valuable, primarily in the education market. When kids see colors there is a lot of interaction. So I found that using a lot of colors communicated not only the versatility of the product but would really add to the playfulness and the approachability of the mark. The biggest job I had to do was make the mark stand for something that would be comfortable for people to have in their homes. Before that time computers were big scary things, unlike a typewriter or a toaster. It was too technical, too temperamental, too hard to maintain, so we were trying to dispel that image.
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