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What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

paulrand.design

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Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#31

Post by projektfu »

linguae wrote: post #18
criddell wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever used GNUstep?

I’m not the parent, but I’ve been following GNUstep’s development on-and-off for 20 years (I was in high school then and thus am too young to experience NeXTstep in its heyday). I truly wish the Linux community had embraced GNUstep instead of the Qt vs GTK path we ended up on. Even if the Apple/NeXT merger never happened, we could’ve ended up being a refuge for abandoned NeXT users and have adopted NeXT’s solid appli…

Yeah, Étoilé didn't get enough traction and they moved on. It was looking very attractive for a while. David is now working on CHERI.

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#32

Post by fsckboy »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #3

> Set in all capitals, the word NEXT is sometimes confused with EXIT possibly because the EXT grouping is so dominant. A combination of capitals and lower case letters alleviates this problem. Huh. Never knew why the 'e' was lowercased until now. I thought it was just "style".

looks like they lowercased the e to do a better job of evoking bobby indiana's

   LO
   VE
sculpture, with tilting for good measure

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#34

Post by nxobject »

It's fun in the gallery to see how his process was a lot, lot, of curious exploration of visual ideas. At one point he was thinking of an IBM-like "wordmark angled in a ellipse" logo; at another point he was looking at a futuristic hyperitalicize wordmark with MASSIVE X. They would have felt like so many different things!

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#35

Post by dmd »

joezydeco wrote: post #9

I always go back to the Saul Bass presentation to AT&T over their 1970 logo redesign. He takes 30 minutes to explain the thought process and sell this design hard . By the end you're convinced it's the natural thing to do. I'm sure every executive in the room felt the same way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKu2de0yCJI (Bass would return a mere 13 years later to do the AT&T "Death Star" logo after the breakup)

And then there's Pepsi. https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi-arnell...

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#36

Post by grahamj »

asveikau wrote: post #19
grahamj wrote: post #16

I find it interesting that the final logo choice is not like any of the sketches. You could imagine that someone came along and went "no, not like any of that" and came up with something different. It's also humorous to me that the designer was considering something that looks like an hour glass for the X. Imagine using a symbol for your powerful new computer that essentially means "wait".

> hour glass for the X. Imagine using a symbol for your powerful new computer that essentially means "wait". Are you sure you're not mixing timelines? Was the hourglass established for this metaphor in 1986? I first remember the hourglass cursor from Windows 95. At the time Macintosh used a wristwatch. This struck me as similar to Microsoft using "recycle bin" because they borrowed a metaphor and didn't want to say "…

I don't know if it was used in computer iconography at that time but I would have expected a designer to see it that way regardless. It means the same thing as the old Mac watch and is why MS used it in Windows.

PS I miss that watch! It was way better than the beachball.

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#37

Post by em-bee »

projektfu wrote: post #31
linguae wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not the parent, but I’ve been following GNUstep’s development on-and-off for 20 years (I was in high school then and thus am too young to experience NeXTstep in its heyday). I truly wish the Linux community had embraced GNUstep instead of the Qt vs GTK path we ended up on. Even if the Apple/NeXT merger never happened, we could’ve ended up being a refuge for abandoned NeXT users and have adopted NeXT’s solid appli…

Yeah, Étoilé didn't get enough traction and they moved on. It was looking very attractive for a while. David is now working on CHERI.

that is the problem, unfortunately it will take a few dedicated people who do not worry about traction get a project like this to a useful state. i had long hoped for GNUstep to become a great desktop environment but at this point i am more likely to go with haiku, once they have a decent multiuser experience (which they are already working on)

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#38

Post by em-bee »

the NeXT logo is up there with other significant logos at the time, especially the SUN and SGI logos. my personal favorite of those is the SUN logo though. at least in print. the NeXT logo wins as a tactile 3D logo on a computer case, followed by the SGI logo which also looks better in 3D than in 2D. but in 2D the SUN logo wins with its clever reuse of the letters U and N as ∪∩ looking like the rotated letter S, creating a circular structure that just appeals to the geek in me

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#39

Post by fredoralive »

xp84 wrote: post #28
WillAdams wrote: post #6

The sad thing is, the logo was a tiny part of the experience, which these days folks only see the successors of iOS (and derived) devices, and Mac OS X (or whatever they're calling it these days). At least we've moved on from the early releases where the Carbon Finder.app was a significant impact on memory, and the Java calculator app took multiple bounces to load Java and run. I just wish that Apple would do somethi…

Wait, the calculator was a Java app? What versions was that the case for? That’s really funny.

Apple got aboard the Java hype train with early versions of Mac OS X, they added a bridge so that you could write Cocoa apps with it, so the calculator is presumably a case of them dogfooding it. It didn't catch on. The bridge stuff was dropped after a while, and then built in Java was dropped just before the Mac App Store was launched.

Re: What should a logo for NeXT look like? (1986)

#40

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #33
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #10

I might be in the minority, but the NeXT logo never looked good to me - there's something off with projection of the cube.

Maybe because it is an orthographic projection and not a perspective one.

I like orthographic projections, but this isn't one. The square at the top has perfect 90* corners, despite the "depth" (and thus being viewed from the side). Orthographic projections of a square squish it into a rhombus.
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