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Paul Rand and Steve Jobs (2011)
- chiph 12y agoThe genius in this is how Paul led the reader from one variation to the next (no pun intended), until ultimately arriving at his final proposal.
- spacecadet 12y agoIf you drop money on a brand from a real design firm, you get this same booklet. It's common practice. I've had to both design brands and the booklet's we gave to clients, as recently as a year ago. Of course a year of R&D, Market/Competitor Research and Design Studies cost our client $150,000. Usually budget logo design; from freelancers etc, result in you getting an email with x number of Options and little to no reasoning.
- joezydeco 12y agoIt's common practice It's salesmanship! When you spend six figures on a logo, you are certainly going to enter the final presentation with a lot of skepticism. Presenting the final work this way alleviates that anxiety. You have to wonder if some of that salesmanship rubbed off on Jobs and if he carried that into his later years at Apple.
- shitehawk 12y agoYou don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.
- johnloeber 12y agoReading that design booklet was marvellous. I loved tracking the evolution of the idea. However, I feel as if there's some risk taken in delivering an entire booklet that slowly tracks the germination of an idea. This risk seems to consist of two aspects: 1) the assumption is made that the entire booklet will actually be read, and that the reader doesn't become sidetracked by e.g. disagreeing with some statements early on 2) the idea proposed in the end has to be very good, a final proposition to merit the entire booklet. Booklet-style design probably doesn't lend itself to rapid, iterative generation of ideas.
- psweber 12y agoLess of a risk when you are as established as he was by 1986. I think it was safe to assume that Steve Jobs would appreciate and digest the format. A standard 3 concepts on poster board presentation would have been much more risky, given the audience.
- josephpmay 12y agoCompare to this (Pepsi logo redesign booklet): [PDF] http://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell-021109.pdf http://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell-...
- abc_lisper 12y agoYeah. I remember reading that one. I can see it is bad, but honestly I don't follow what Rand is saying. I always thought the Next logo kinda looked bad! But that may be because I don't have the aesthetic sense.
- abc_lisper 12y agoYeah. I remember reading that one. I can see it is bad, but honestly I don't follow what Rand is saying. I always thought the Next logo kinda looked bad! But that may be because I don't have the aesthetic sense.
- nemo1618 12y agowhat...the hell am I reading. The last two pages especially -- "Dimensionalize exponentially?" Not to mention all the golden ratio BS. I'm struggling and failing to imagine a scenario in which this document could be presented with a straight face.
- trhway 12y agoso they did redesign the logo recently. I didn't even notice. Though i'm not a significant drinker of *cola. Anyway, just went to the fridge - yep, Pepsi cans of the new design there - the saturated solid blue color of the Pepsi cans (with lesser saturated colors of the logo itself) looks less sophisticated, more proletarian vs. Coca cans on the same shelf. Well, may be i'm already on the other side of the generation gap, and ultimately it depends on what new generation would choose.
- rmsaksida 12y ago> gravitational pull of Pepsi Is this an actual design document or just satire?
- Loughla 12y ago
- cschmidt 12y agoPaul Rand was different than many logo designers, in that he just presented a single solution, rather than letting the client pick from several. He worked out what he thought was right, and that's what you were going to get. This is a pretty good book about Paul Rand, for the curious: http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-Steven-Heller/dp/0714839949/ http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-Steven-Heller/dp/0714839949/
- ics 12y agoAnd for a book by Paul Rand, I would recommend A Designer's Art if you can find it. http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-A-Designer%60s-Art/dp/0300082827 http://www.amazon.com/Paul-Rand-A-Designer%60s-Art/dp/030008...
- FreshPuzzles 12y agoYou can see Rand deliver the goods in this video http://youtu.be/BNeXlJW70KQ?t=51s http://youtu.be/BNeXlJW70KQ?t=51s
- glhaynes 12y agoI love Paul Rand but I've never loved this logo and I don't think any amount of explanation of it could ever cause me to. And I like even less the way it caused them to write the company name ("NeXT"). Complicated, ugly, a distraction. Un-Jobsian. Hell, even the name "Next" has always struck me as indulgent and the opposite of product-focused: it was more evocative of the question everyone was asking ("What's Steve Jobs going to do next?") than of great products.
- aleem 12y agoWhile I am no fan of this particular logo as a matter of personal preference, the "NeXT" character-casing is better than just "Next" or "next" since it creates identity. Identity creates recognition and unlike "Pepsi" which is a unique word, "Next" is a fairly common word and without some sort of identity it would go easily unnoticed in regular writing. On a related note, I always found that iPhone, iPad, iPod, i* is one of the best product naming schemes I have come across, not just because of the strong identity but also because of it's extensibility to new product lines.
- ams6110 12y agoInterestingly, the operating system name was written NEXTSTEP without the lower case "e"
- glhaynes 12y agoApparently it was at one time. According to this, "NextStep" and "OpenStep" were written a number of different ways. Strange times. http://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Publications/TheMerger/OpenstepConfusion.html http://www.objectfarm.org/Activities/Publications/TheMerger/...
- mentos 12y agoCrazy to think Steve Jobs spent 12 years of his life at NeXT.
- psweber 12y agoIt is very important to make people fall in love with the idea before the reveal. Great example of that.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- RexRollman 12y agoHonestly one of my favorite computer logos ever.