It's a 2d projection of a rhombic hexecontahedron, first generated by Mathematica's namesake programming language back in the 1980s, when it was as damned close to magic as anything in computer science.
Spikey is one of my favorite logos. They went through many variations with many products, inspired by renaissance drawings and a vast selection of other influences, on their way to the one you see here, which was originally devised for Wolfram Alpha.
Founder Stephen Wolfram:
And that’s when I noticed an email from June 2009, from an artist in Brazil named Yolanda Cipriano. She said she’d seen an article about Wolfram|Alpha in a Brazilian news magazine—and had noticed the Spikey—and wanted to point me to her website. It was now more than nine years later, but I followed the link anyway, and was amazed to find this:
Yolanda Cipriano's website—with rhombic hexecontahedra, there called "giramundos"
I read more of her email: “Here in Brazil this object is called ‘Giramundo’ or ‘Flor Mandacarú’ (Mandacaru Flower) and it is an artistic ornament made with [tissue paper]”.
What?! There was a Spikey tradition in Brazil, and all these years we’d never heard about it? I soon found other pictures on the web. Only a few of the Spikeys were made with paper; most were fabric—but there were lots of them
The Story of Spikey [blog.stephenwolfram.com] Read the rest
Staples has unveiled a new logo, pictured above (with the old logo beneath it).
Notice what's wrong with it? The store is called Staples but the logo depicts only a single staple. The old "L" hinted at the physical object, to be sure, but so abstractly it wasn't a problem.
The fix:
Now we can sleep at night. You're welcome! Read the rest
Future Punk created retro logos and motion graphics for today's Internet companies if they existed decades ago. The artist was "inspired by great work of Sullivan & Marks, Robert Abel & Associates, Computer Image Corporation and various other early CG/Scanimate companies."
And if you're not hip to Scanimate:
Scanimate is the name for an analog computer animation (video synthesizer) system developed from the late 1960s to the 1980s by Computer Image Corporation of Denver, Colorado.
The 8 Scanimate systems were used to produce much of the video-based animation seen on television between most of the 1970s and early 1980s in commercials, promotions, and show openings. One of the major advantages the Scanimate system had over film-based animation and computer animation was the ability to create animations in real time. The speed with which animation could be produced on the system because of this, as well as its range of possible effects, helped it to supersede film-based animation techniques for television graphics. By the mid-1980s, it was superseded by digital computer animation, which produced sharper images and more sophisticated 3D imagery. (Wikipedia)
(Thanks, UPSO!)
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Available free on Archive.org, the 1985 Electronic Engineers Master Vol 2 contains page after page of excellent technology company logos, many of which have been lost to the obsolescence of hardware and business plans.
Marcin Wichary the designer/typographer/writer behind the Segmented Type Playground and the Pac-Man Google Doodle, turned the logos into a beautifully haunting slideshow.
(via Kottke)
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This marvel of design was posted to Twitter by VGDensetsu; it's said to be official, and apparently romanizes as "Seja" as Arabic lacks a hard "G".
The Japanese company uses the classic Latin-alphabet logo in Japan, but here is a fanmade Japanese version:
And here is a Hebrew logo, devised by Baraksha, creator of an unlicensed translation of Sonic the Hedgehog into that language:
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Design firm Dorothy created an alphabet made up entirely of letters from classic rock band logos. I did OK on this one, but the alternative rock one kicked my butt: Read the rest
This behind-the-scenes look at the giant practical set built for HBO's 1983 station identification sequence is impressive. It inspired Christopher Johnson at Colossal to dig into the archives for more great examples, including a vintage logo created 63 years ago for Eurovision: Read the rest
Mozilla announced its new ＢＲＡＮＤ ＩＤＥＮＴＩＴＹ today. There it is above. Reception has not been kind. But is it ever? Its nerdliness (:// indeed!) is being held responsible for the inelegance of the logotype, but it's the best thing about it.
I know it's easy to toss off "how I woulda done it" logo designs, but I think a little subtlety could have worked wonders. Something like the following, perhaps? Making the :// live within the flow of the type...
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And you thought Stranger Things had a cool opening. (via /r/obscuremedia)
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Logos from Hell is death metal illustrator/designer Mark Riddick's massive compendium of heavy metal band logos that he's gathered from across the globe. These are the sigils printed on foreboding LP jackets, scratched into school desks, scribbled onto notebooks, and inked into hesher arms the world over. From Wired:
As metal evolved into myriad subgenres, each more extreme than the last, wordmarks and branding evolved in step. “Logos just tend to get more and more extreme and as you branch out,” says Riddick. It’s reached the point that you can almost determine the style of music from the typography. Indeed, there might be no better example of typography’s multi-sensorial nature than extreme metal logos. Thrash metal bands like Metallica, Slayer, and Overkill adopted logos with straight, sharp edges to reflect the tight and controlled nature of the music. Death metal bands—which tend to focus on subjects like violence, religion, horror, and, yes, death—tend to incorporate those themes into logos that feature things like dripping blood, organs, severed limbs and skulls. The logos associated with black metal, which has its roots in deeply anti-Christian views, the occult and paganism, often are ornate, symmetrical, and derived from art nouveau’s swirling, rounded forms.
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This person has three problems with the new Uber logo. The first problem ("It can be recreated in under one minute using three of the standard shape tools) does not bother me. I actually think that's cool. But the uncentered square and the overhanging line really do suck! Read the rest
Christian Kirchesch put together a cracking set of logos as used by musicians, pirates, demo writers and other e'erdowells of the Commodore Amiga's hardcore coding scene.
Originally this was supposed to be an article about the Top 20 Logos from Commodore Amiga. It ended up with 159. The more I digged into it, the more precious gems I fount. Graphics I hadn't seen for decades, straying around in .ADF- and .DMS-images somewhere on the Internet, forgotten by most people. Some of these Logos go even back to 1988 (Tristar, Unit A, World of Wonders).
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Bit conservation! The redesign makes more sense now. Read the rest
IMO Paul Rand's best work in 20 years. I would have gone for something traditional, myself, like Zapfino, but I guess they're going for that classy slick design look.
Previously. Read the rest
Over at Display, Graphic designer Richard Danne tells the story of the fantastic "worm" logo he and partner Bruce Blackburn created for NASA in 1974. It was used for almost twenty years until the NASA administrator Dan Goldin unfortunately reinstated the previous "meatball" logo, developed in 1959. Read the rest
UCLA psychology professor Alan Castel ran an experiment where more than 100 students drew the Apple logo from memory, and the results were surprisingly terrible. Why? Read the rest
gamelogos.tumblr.com offers a surprisingly focused collection, as useful to artists as it is nostalgic to browse through. It could use filtering tools: say, if one wanted to show just those from Pysgnosis or Nintendo. Read the rest
