I’ve always been passionate about logo design and corporate identity. I think one of the strongest examples of great corporate identity is Apple Inc. From their logo standards to packaging, literature and advertising, both on-line and off-line, Apple has applied a consistent branding and visual strategy; they have demonstrated the discipline needed to build and maintain a world-class brand.

With the passing of Steve Jobs last week, I thought it might be interesting to take a brief look at the history of the Apple logo.

On its own, the Apple logo is really not that clever. The symbol is pretty obvious: an apple shape for a company named “Apple.” But the logo didn’t start with the Apple symbol we are familiar with today.

In 1976, the first Apple logo was an illustration showing Sir Isaac Newton sitting under a tree with an apple dangling above his head. Inside the border of the illustration was a caption reading, “Newton… A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.”  Ronald Wayne designed this logo and it was in use for only one year. Wayne was an engineer, not a logo designer. He met Steve Jobs when they were both working at Atari. He is sometimes referred to as one of the co-founders of Apple. For his services, Wayne got a 10% stake in the new Apple. Two weeks later, he cashed out of Apple for about $800. Had he held onto his stake, that 10% would be worth $22 billion today. But that’s another story. If you’d like to read more about Ronald Wayne, you can find more information here.

As Apple began building prototypes for the Apple II, Jobs realized the complex logo would not work on the product. So, a year after the original Newton logo was created, Steve Jobs hired the ad agency Regis McKenna to create a new logo. A young art director named Rob Janoff was assigned to the Apple account. There was no creative brief. The only direction Jobs gave the agency was, “Don’t make it cute.”

There are a lot of urban legends about the logo. What did the apple represent? Did the “bite” represent a “byte” of information? Why were color stripes included and did they represent anything?

I was an art director and grad student in 1977, during the time Rob was working on the new Apple logo. For a logo that has become one of the most recognized in the world, its creation and development was pretty unremarkable. Rob’s design rationale and conclusions were so typical of how we worked back in the late 70s. Here’s how Rob describes it:

• The company name is “Apple” so the symbol or logo should be an apple, “A no brainer.”
• He presented two versions: one with the bite and one without. His intention for including the bite was to give it “personality” and so it wasn’t mistaken for a cherry.
• Rob created a few variations of the apple shape: a striped version, solid color version and a metallic version.
• The Apple II was the first home or personal computer that could reproduce images on the monitor in color—so the color stripes represent the color bars on the screen.
• A senior account executive argued with Rob and wanted to eliminate the color version from the presentation. He thought a new start-up, “would go bankrupt,” If they had to reproduce all those colors on stationary.
• But Jobs liked the striped version. He felt it was different and the colors made it “friendly” and that was important for a computer intended for use in schools and in people’s homes.
• And, it was NOT designed on a computer. Rob says, “It was all pencil and paper, glue and cut paper, pens and all that stuff.” Only when the Apple Macintosh was introduced several years later could designers begin to use Apple computers to create logos and graphics.

The striped Apple logo was in use for 22 years. After a 12-year hiatus, Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. He reassumed leadership of a company that was struggling. Apple had lost its focus. Product development strategy was erratic. In addition to addressing these problems, Jobs knew he had to reenergize the brand. The Apple symbol was still universally recognized but placing the striped logo on new, sleek, cutting-edge products looked wrong. So, it was decided to convert the logo to a monochrome color. A one-color logo could be scaled to larger sizes and placed anywhere on the products themselves. Think of any Apple products you have used or own: iPhone, iMac, iPad, MacPro and MacBook. This trend began in 1998 and continues today.

For me, the creation and evolution of the Apple logo is refreshing, simple and practical. It stands in stark contrast to the rebranding efforts of Pepsi, The Gap, Starbucks and other recent examples. With the passing of Steve Jobs, it will be interesting to see if Apple continues to embrace the brand with the same passion, consistency and discipline as Steve did. I guess only time will tell.