8 ms·

NeXT logo by Paul Rand (2010)

133 points by Bud 9y ago

rubyfan 9y ago
Love this > When Jobs was asked what it was like to work with Rand, he said, “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.’”
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  There's always a bigger fish.
- theoh 9y ago
  Same story here with Richard Serra: "Serra was invited to outline a proposal, for a fee, but said no. According to Cross, Serra told Ross, “You know what I do—you know that it’s going to be structural steel, you know it’s going to be monumental. What do I need to show you?” He added, “Hire me and I’ll go to work.” (Serra, through a representative, confirmed that he declined to participate but denied that he used these words.) Ross, recalling the encounter, described Serra’s work as poorly suited for the site, because it was “very subtle” and “not iconic."" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/thomas-heatherwick-architectures-showman https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/thomas-heather... You get to a certain level, you can charge for your process, as it should be.
- bluedino 9y ago
  Web design, every day. Customer has a shit site, they know it’s shit, they want to pay someone $$$ to do a new site, and they want to change 75% of the new design because they think they know better than the designer...
  - inthewoods 9y ago
    Because the designer isn’t Paul Rand. You earn the privilege through having tremendous success. Most designers simply can’t do that.
    - thesagan 9y ago
      More likely because they can't sell like Paul Rand did. It usually comes down to the pitch.
  - 21 9y ago
    Brilliantly captured here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
    - combatentropy 9y ago
      "You are no longer a web designer. You are now a mouse cursor inside a graphics program which the client can control by speaking, emailing, and instant messaging." That's a hilarious comic. It reinforces why I took two steps down a career in graphic design and then ran away. I would love to read a treatment of why the client-designer relationship is often so dysfunctional. I know we all can trot out ideas, but I want an in-depth, serious, unsarcastic treatment, all the better if it points to a cure.
  - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
    I noticed the guy who designs icons for me always leaves what appears to be a deliberate mistake, I then point it out and it gets fixed. I know what he is doing and I'm pretty sure he knows I know what he is doing.
    - lmkg 9y ago
      It's called The Duck Technique, after an apocryphal story of an animator for Battle Chess. http://pud.com/post/59851751577/the-duck-technique http://pud.com/post/59851751577/the-duck-technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess#Development
      - DonHopkins 9y ago
        I've been tempted to make a Removable Duck for Unity3D and sell it on the Unity asset store for hourly freelance developers to use. It will quickly pay for itself: The developer can drag a duck into the scene and configure it to define how many hours it will take to remove, and what kind of removal interface and effect to use. Then when they show the demo to the client, and the client demands "Remove the duck!", then can say "Ok. That will take X hours." Then they simply type some secret hot keys or click on some invisible hot spots for a while, and the duck will pop up a count-down timer and slowly start shrinking or dissolving or whatever, until it finally disappears after X hours with a puff of smoke, and then the developer can bill the client for that many hours.
      - jhbadger 9y ago
        Which in turn is a version of the old tradition of movie directors to include a scene that was so over-the-top that when asked by studio executives/MPAA to cut the movie a bit, this scene can be sacrificed.
  - mattkevan 9y ago
    After working in a web agency for years I learned to be very wary if the client’s current website is terrible. My first reaction was to think ‘what a terrible job the previous lot did, I’m sure we can do better than that’. But it’s always the clients fault. Either they slowly unpick all the design decisions so the new site is no better than the old one, or they balk at the cost, get it developed on the cheap overseas, then pay us more than the original quote to fix all the resulting problems. Good clients already have good websites.
- newnewpdro 9y ago
  Reminds me of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead
- bunderbunder 9y ago
  That's how my tailor operates, too, and I wouldn't have it any other way. If sartorial skills were my forte, I'd be his competitor, not his customer.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Mononokay 9y ago
He designed the IBM logo too? Literally my two favorite logos of all time! He's a genius.
- RickS 9y ago
  It's shockingly hard to find a single list, but yeah, he was prolific and extremely effective. He also did the UPS, PBS, ABC, Enron, westinghouse, and surely many other big ones that slip my mind. PBS and westinghouse are especially favorites of mine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand
  - Mononokay 9y ago
    I found a single list! http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/identity/ http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/identity/
    - no_u 9y ago
      The Gentry Living Color makes me think of Google, the color palette, the g letter..
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      I always liked the OS/2 logo, didn’t know why until now.
    - shanghaiaway 9y ago
      Takeaways: 1. The IBM logo was iterated on. IBM clearly didn't love the first one and it was ugly. 2. The OS2 and NEXT logos are very similar. The clients wouldn't be happy if they saw them side by side like they're displayed on that page.
      - karmakaze 9y ago
        I remember seeing that OS/2 circle on books and boxes and it never even occurred to me that it was 'the' logo. It appeared as if a single (OS/2) circle was a unit applied indiscriminately.
cschmidt 9y ago
If you’re new to Paul Rand, there is a very good book on his work: Paul Rand https://www.amazon.com/dp/0714839949/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_4GO2AbGQ211B1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0714839949/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_4GO2...
rawells14 9y ago
This guy has a pretty diverse skill-set! He's great at graphic design, debating, and politics.
AceJohnny2 9y ago
(2010) > The NeXT logo mightn’t be a classic [...] Excuse me!?
bhouston 9y ago
Near the Ottawa tech distinct in Kanata we have the NeXT Restaurant which has a very similar logo: http://www.nextfood.ca/ http://www.nextfood.ca/ I guess now that NeXT has been defunct for decades, being inspired by its logo isn't a big deal.
- SllX 9y ago
  Apple actually still maintains the NeXT trademarks[0]. [0] https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/nexttmlist.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...
  - sp332 9y ago
    A trademark in the technology class would not apply to a restaurant anyway. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_(Nice)_Classification_of_Goods_and_Services https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_(Nice)_Classif...
glibgil 9y ago
Meh, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RqdZCo6vkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RqdZCo6vkI
Bye_Felicia 9y ago
I hate making these types of trashy low class reddit-esque quips, but did everyone see the guest appearance by Napoleon Dynamite towards the end of the clip?
Waterluvian 9y ago
Personally I hate the NeXT logo. I've always thought about just how awful I think it looks every time I see it. This is the first time I've got the sense that people genuinely love the logo. Very interesting!
- IncRnd 9y ago
  The logo looks great on an actual NeXTstation, cube, or MegaPixel, since those are entirely black. The logo pops right out. It really does look good IMHO.
  - Waterluvian 9y ago
    That's fair. I only see it on websites and books.
  - derefr 9y ago
    It’d be interesting to imaging the modern evolution of it equivalent to what has been done to the Apple logo over the years, appearing in the same places the Apple logo does today.
    - IncRnd 9y ago
      Yes! I'd like to see that, too.
- thesagan 9y ago
  You know... I'm a "Rand" fan, but I never cared for the NeXT logo either. It's just so cheap-looking (at least to me) and jarring compared to his other work. But then again it never had a presence in my day-to-life either, unlike IBM.
  - fit2rule 9y ago
    I'm also in the 'not a fan of the Next logo' camp as well - to me it just seems too noisy, pretentious and out of whack. It reminds me of American cars of the period, which were gauche and terrible. It has an unsettling geometry, which almost seems unfinished. Plus the typeface is just .. wonky. I guess all these things add up to 'cool logo by a millionaire for a billionaire' in some peoples minds, but to me it just seems like cat barf. Literally, as in .. something that was just spit up, with chunks of undigested stuff in it.
stochastic_monk 9y ago
It isn’t of practical value, but it makes me happy to discover another distinguished member of the Secret Council of /(\b[plurandy]+\b ?){2}/i.
52-6F-62 9y ago
I never knew who Paul Rand was. This is great. Especially whoever linked the list of his work. I wanted to draw the mild comparison to a Canadian with a similar cultural impact here: Allen Fleming. Unfortunately Fleming died young otherwise his work might Have pervaded. He designed the CN (Canadian National Railways) logo that’s still used, Ontario Hydro, was art director at Maclean’s magazine, Ontario Sciene Centre logo, and was responsible for many designs at Cooper & Beatty Type— including the type-o-file. He also literally wrote the book on designing Canadian stamps as I just found out. http://www.marthafleming.net/allan-fleming-project/ http://www.marthafleming.net/allan-fleming-project/ https://www.google.ca/amp/s/designkultur.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/logos-graphic-artists-allan-fleming-tracing-the-evolution-of-the-cn-logo-50th-anniversary-1960-2010/amp/ https://www.google.ca/amp/s/designkultur.wordpress.com/2010/... http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/allan-fleming-the-man-who-branded-a-nation http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/allan-fleming-the... https://gdc.design/fellows/allan-fleming-fgdc https://gdc.design/fellows/allan-fleming-fgdc
DonHopkins 9y ago
I can't remember where I heard this story, and don't know if it's true, but the story was: Steve Jobs commissioned some famous European designer to come up with a revolutionary design for his awesomely great NeXT computer. When they flew out to see the design, it turned out to be shaped like a human head, so a pissed off Steve Jobs and his team got back on their plane and flew back to the US. There's some mention of it here: http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/10/steve-jobs-most-important-power-moves-while-at-next/the-nextcube-design http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/10/steve-jobs-most-i... Known for his fanatical approach towards hardware design, Stevie was poised to make the company’s first-ever computer a machine that embodied power and strength. Repulsed with the results of the several design houses he hired to create protoypes, including one that resembled a human head, he brought in the designer of the Snow White design language, Hartmut Esslinger, to create the final product. Jobs immediately labeled it the NeXTcube when shown the end result. Even though the machine stoodout as a complete failure, it was the NeXTcube's groundbreaking form factor that established the radical design identity of Apple’s future desktop machines.
rajacombinator 9y ago
How To Burn $100,000 In 100 Pages, the book. Logos are pretty easy to make, rarely important, and spending excessive money on them is always a vanity (or incompetence) expense by founders / C suite. Companies/products make the logos, not the other way.
- philwelch 9y ago
  Well, sometimes. It’s no coincidence that the Nike swoosh fits perfectly along the side of a shoe. If you’re a design company and you can integrate your logo as a design element and it adds something instead of standing out as a gratuitous advertising badge, you have an advantage. See also: the three Adidas stripes.

133 points by Bud 9y ago

Love this > When Jobs was asked what it was like to work with Rand, he said, “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.’”

Apocryphon 9y ago
There's always a bigger fish.
theoh 9y ago
Same story here with Richard Serra: "Serra was invited to outline a proposal, for a fee, but said no. According to Cross, Serra told Ross, “You know what I do—you know that it’s going to be structural steel, you know it’s going to be monumental. What do I need to show you?” He added, “Hire me and I’ll go to work.” (Serra, through a representative, confirmed that he declined to participate but denied that he used these words.) Ross, recalling the encounter, described Serra’s work as poorly suited for the site, because it was “very subtle” and “not iconic."" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/thomas-heatherwick-architectures-showman https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/thomas-heather... You get to a certain level, you can charge for your process, as it should be.
bluedino 9y ago
Web design, every day. Customer has a shit site, they know it’s shit, they want to pay someone $$$ to do a new site, and they want to change 75% of the new design because they think they know better than the designer...
- inthewoods 9y ago
  Because the designer isn’t Paul Rand. You earn the privilege through having tremendous success. Most designers simply can’t do that.
  - thesagan 9y ago
    More likely because they can't sell like Paul Rand did. It usually comes down to the pitch.
- 21 9y ago
  Brilliantly captured here: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
  - combatentropy 9y ago
    "You are no longer a web designer. You are now a mouse cursor inside a graphics program which the client can control by speaking, emailing, and instant messaging." That's a hilarious comic. It reinforces why I took two steps down a career in graphic design and then ran away. I would love to read a treatment of why the client-designer relationship is often so dysfunctional. I know we all can trot out ideas, but I want an in-depth, serious, unsarcastic treatment, all the better if it points to a cure.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I noticed the guy who designs icons for me always leaves what appears to be a deliberate mistake, I then point it out and it gets fixed. I know what he is doing and I'm pretty sure he knows I know what he is doing.
  - lmkg 9y ago
    It's called The Duck Technique, after an apocryphal story of an animator for Battle Chess. http://pud.com/post/59851751577/the-duck-technique http://pud.com/post/59851751577/the-duck-technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess#Development
    - DonHopkins 9y ago
      I've been tempted to make a Removable Duck for Unity3D and sell it on the Unity asset store for hourly freelance developers to use. It will quickly pay for itself: The developer can drag a duck into the scene and configure it to define how many hours it will take to remove, and what kind of removal interface and effect to use. Then when they show the demo to the client, and the client demands "Remove the duck!", then can say "Ok. That will take X hours." Then they simply type some secret hot keys or click on some invisible hot spots for a while, and the duck will pop up a count-down timer and slowly start shrinking or dissolving or whatever, until it finally disappears after X hours with a puff of smoke, and then the developer can bill the client for that many hours.
    - jhbadger 9y ago
      Which in turn is a version of the old tradition of movie directors to include a scene that was so over-the-top that when asked by studio executives/MPAA to cut the movie a bit, this scene can be sacrificed.
- mattkevan 9y ago
  After working in a web agency for years I learned to be very wary if the client’s current website is terrible. My first reaction was to think ‘what a terrible job the previous lot did, I’m sure we can do better than that’. But it’s always the clients fault. Either they slowly unpick all the design decisions so the new site is no better than the old one, or they balk at the cost, get it developed on the cheap overseas, then pay us more than the original quote to fix all the resulting problems. Good clients already have good websites.
newnewpdro 9y ago
Reminds me of Ayn Rand's Fountainhead
bunderbunder 9y ago
That's how my tailor operates, too, and I wouldn't have it any other way. If sartorial skills were my forte, I'd be his competitor, not his customer.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Mononokay 9y ago

He designed the IBM logo too? Literally my two favorite logos of all time! He's a genius.

RickS 9y ago
It's shockingly hard to find a single list, but yeah, he was prolific and extremely effective. He also did the UPS, PBS, ABC, Enron, westinghouse, and surely many other big ones that slip my mind. PBS and westinghouse are especially favorites of mine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand
- Mononokay 9y ago
  I found a single list! http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/identity/ http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/identity/
  - no_u 9y ago
    The Gentry Living Color makes me think of Google, the color palette, the g letter..
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    I always liked the OS/2 logo, didn’t know why until now.
  - shanghaiaway 9y ago
    Takeaways: 1. The IBM logo was iterated on. IBM clearly didn't love the first one and it was ugly. 2. The OS2 and NEXT logos are very similar. The clients wouldn't be happy if they saw them side by side like they're displayed on that page.
    - karmakaze 9y ago
      I remember seeing that OS/2 circle on books and boxes and it never even occurred to me that it was 'the' logo. It appeared as if a single (OS/2) circle was a unit applied indiscriminately.

cschmidt 9y ago

If you’re new to Paul Rand, there is a very good book on his work: Paul Rand https://www.amazon.com/dp/0714839949/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_4GO2AbGQ211B1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0714839949/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_4GO2...

rawells14 9y ago

This guy has a pretty diverse skill-set! He's great at graphic design, debating, and politics.

AceJohnny2 9y ago

(2010) > The NeXT logo mightn’t be a classic [...] Excuse me!?

bhouston 9y ago

Near the Ottawa tech distinct in Kanata we have the NeXT Restaurant which has a very similar logo: http://www.nextfood.ca/ http://www.nextfood.ca/ I guess now that NeXT has been defunct for decades, being inspired by its logo isn't a big deal.

SllX 9y ago
Apple actually still maintains the NeXT trademarks[0]. [0] https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/nexttmlist.html https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/...
- sp332 9y ago
  A trademark in the technology class would not apply to a restaurant anyway. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_(Nice)_Classification_of_Goods_and_Services https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_(Nice)_Classif...

glibgil 9y ago

Meh, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RqdZCo6vkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RqdZCo6vkI

Bye_Felicia 9y ago

I hate making these types of trashy low class reddit-esque quips, but did everyone see the guest appearance by Napoleon Dynamite towards the end of the clip?

Waterluvian 9y ago

Personally I hate the NeXT logo. I've always thought about just how awful I think it looks every time I see it. This is the first time I've got the sense that people genuinely love the logo. Very interesting!

IncRnd 9y ago
The logo looks great on an actual NeXTstation, cube, or MegaPixel, since those are entirely black. The logo pops right out. It really does look good IMHO.
- Waterluvian 9y ago
  That's fair. I only see it on websites and books.
- derefr 9y ago
  It’d be interesting to imaging the modern evolution of it equivalent to what has been done to the Apple logo over the years, appearing in the same places the Apple logo does today.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    Yes! I'd like to see that, too.
thesagan 9y ago
You know... I'm a "Rand" fan, but I never cared for the NeXT logo either. It's just so cheap-looking (at least to me) and jarring compared to his other work. But then again it never had a presence in my day-to-life either, unlike IBM.
- fit2rule 9y ago
  I'm also in the 'not a fan of the Next logo' camp as well - to me it just seems too noisy, pretentious and out of whack. It reminds me of American cars of the period, which were gauche and terrible. It has an unsettling geometry, which almost seems unfinished. Plus the typeface is just .. wonky. I guess all these things add up to 'cool logo by a millionaire for a billionaire' in some peoples minds, but to me it just seems like cat barf. Literally, as in .. something that was just spit up, with chunks of undigested stuff in it.

stochastic_monk 9y ago

It isn’t of practical value, but it makes me happy to discover another distinguished member of the Secret Council of /(\b[plurandy]+\b ?){2}/i.

52-6F-62 9y ago

I never knew who Paul Rand was. This is great. Especially whoever linked the list of his work. I wanted to draw the mild comparison to a Canadian with a similar cultural impact here: Allen Fleming. Unfortunately Fleming died young otherwise his work might Have pervaded. He designed the CN (Canadian National Railways) logo that’s still used, Ontario Hydro, was art director at Maclean’s magazine, Ontario Sciene Centre logo, and was responsible for many designs at Cooper & Beatty Type— including the type-o-file. He also literally wrote the book on designing Canadian stamps as I just found out. http://www.marthafleming.net/allan-fleming-project/ http://www.marthafleming.net/allan-fleming-project/ https://www.google.ca/amp/s/designkultur.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/logos-graphic-artists-allan-fleming-tracing-the-evolution-of-the-cn-logo-50th-anniversary-1960-2010/amp/ https://www.google.ca/amp/s/designkultur.wordpress.com/2010/... http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/allan-fleming-the-man-who-branded-a-nation http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/allan-fleming-the... https://gdc.design/fellows/allan-fleming-fgdc https://gdc.design/fellows/allan-fleming-fgdc

DonHopkins 9y ago

I can't remember where I heard this story, and don't know if it's true, but the story was: Steve Jobs commissioned some famous European designer to come up with a revolutionary design for his awesomely great NeXT computer. When they flew out to see the design, it turned out to be shaped like a human head, so a pissed off Steve Jobs and his team got back on their plane and flew back to the US. There's some mention of it here: http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/10/steve-jobs-most-important-power-moves-while-at-next/the-nextcube-design http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/10/steve-jobs-most-i... Known for his fanatical approach towards hardware design, Stevie was poised to make the company’s first-ever computer a machine that embodied power and strength. Repulsed with the results of the several design houses he hired to create protoypes, including one that resembled a human head, he brought in the designer of the Snow White design language, Hartmut Esslinger, to create the final product. Jobs immediately labeled it the NeXTcube when shown the end result. Even though the machine stoodout as a complete failure, it was the NeXTcube's groundbreaking form factor that established the radical design identity of Apple’s future desktop machines.

rajacombinator 9y ago

How To Burn $100,000 In 100 Pages, the book. Logos are pretty easy to make, rarely important, and spending excessive money on them is always a vanity (or incompetence) expense by founders / C suite. Companies/products make the logos, not the other way.

philwelch 9y ago
Well, sometimes. It’s no coincidence that the Nike swoosh fits perfectly along the side of a shoe. If you’re a design company and you can integrate your logo as a design element and it adds something instead of standing out as a gratuitous advertising badge, you have an advantage. See also: the three Adidas stripes.