LogoArchive

By the 1970s, James Modarelli’s 1959 NASA ‘meatball’ was seen as a relic of the past, a cumbersome design that didn’t fit the sleek and modern image NASA wanted to project. It was complicated, hard to reproduce and, in the words of Danne, ‘born out of the classic “airman syndrome” where hype and fantasy dominated over logic and reality’. In 1974, through the Federal Design Improvement Program, Danne & Blackburn, a small New York design studio of five at the time, got the job of bringing NASA’s image right up to date. Their answer was radical for its time: a sleek, red typographic treatment of the word ‘NASA’. Its consistent line weight and curvilinear forms earned it the nickname ‘the worm’, and the absence of crossbars on the A’s alluded to the nose cones of two rockets pointing upward. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/nasa-log…

Like the rail networks of the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, post-war Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) faced the pressures of private car ownership and the commercialisation of air travel. Its own research found the network was seen by some as ‘stagnant’, ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘slightly old fashioned’. In 1967 the young design company Tel Design was selected to modernise its image. When numerous designs built on the initials NS failed to capture ‘progressiveness’ and ‘powerfulness’, Gert Dumbar (who would later found Studio Dumbar) pursued an abstract approach, no longer constrained by the initials. Through extensive trial and refinement, the logo underwent many small adjustments to the arrow angle, line thickness and the volume of the negative space, with Univers 65 adopted as its single typeface. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/gert-dum…

In the 1960s, the jet age was leaving airlines’ literal emblems behind. American Airlines had invested heavily in new aircraft and introduced the first electronic booking system, and that commitment to modernisation extended to its corporate identity. Massimo Vignelli of Unimark International and Heinz Waibl stripped everything back to a single typeface, Haas Helvetica, and two colours, the national red and blue: a wordmark with no space between ‘American’ and ‘Airlines’, and two initials, AA, distinguished from one another only by colour. It was reduction gone too far for management and staff. A ‘revolt’ led by flight attendants demanded the return of the eagle American had used since 1934, so Henry Dreyfuss Associates drew a stylised eagle swooping down between the letters. Vignelli would concede that it “was not so bad”, and the identity lasted over 45 years. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/american…

Bilbao’s metro was first proposed in the 1920s, but a plan was only approved in 1987. The underground stations were awarded to Sir Norman Foster and partners after an open competition, and the architects then worked with Otl Aicher to develop a wayfinding system, visual language and logo. Rather than focus on an ‘M’, Otl Aicher favoured an abstract form based on the notion of tunnels and wheels in motion: three overlapping rings of gradually increasing weight from left to right, giving an impression of forward momentum and complementing Foster’s ring-like station entrances. “Otl’s skill was somehow encapsulating the spirit of the idea or a place with a combination of line, colour, graphics,” said Norman Foster. Alongside Munich Airport, Metro Bilbao was Aicher’s last major commission before his death in 1991, and it remains largely unchanged. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/metro-bi…

When Siemens AG was formed in 1966, it inherited what its own historians describe as “branding chaos”. Rather than commission something new, it promoted the Siemens & Halske mark – Hans Domizlaff’s S&H monogram above the SIEMENS word mark – to umbrella mark for the whole group, and reinterpreted the monogram as the “House of Siemens”. By 1970 the mark looked dated and was hard to read at small sizes. Rather than settle the question on taste, Siemens asked the psychologist Reinhold Bergler to test eight new logotype variants. Test subjects still read the monogram as Siemens & Halske, and found the advertising managers’ favourite, a dotted “i”, poorly legible, faddish and facetious. On 1 October 1973 Siemens dropped the monogram entirely and made the SIEMENS name, in the same lettering as before, the company mark. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/siemens-…

Hands from the archive. Discover thousands more historical logos at logo-archive.org?utm_source=… By Eduardo A. Canovas (Foto Import, Argentina, 1985), Gill Plasse (Service de Réadaptation Social Inc., Canada, 1969), David Hillman (Royal College of Nursing, UK, 1984) and Enric Satué (Editorial Estela, Spain, 1971). #logos #branding #symbols #hands #logodesign

By the mid-century, Canadian National Railways had replaced steam with diesel, upgraded its fleet and restructured. Yet a study of 4,000 Canadians found the improvements were going unnoticed: the public still saw the railway as old-fashioned. Jim Valkus was brought in to close the gap, and handed the logo to Canadian designer Allan Fleming. On a flight to New York, Fleming sketched ideas on a cocktail napkin, joining the C and N into one continuous line. “It’s a route line that incidentally spells CN,” he explained. “It represents the movement of people, materials, and messages from one point to another.” The flowing ‘signature logo’, later known as the CN ‘Worm’, was a risk and a departure from the railway heralds of the past. In the words of Lorne Perry, who rolled out the programme, it became “a powerful moving billboard for CN’s powerful trains”. Read the full story behind the logo → logohistories.com/p/canadian…