Yeah. 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.
what...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.
Reading that document a few years ago lead to an epiphany for me in realizing that there may actually be value in some of the BSing you're forced to do in school. I think human nature leads people to seek deeper meaning and explanations, and the BS assignments force you to create convincing rationalizations that satiate that need. This is particularly true when you're trying to justify spending a lot of money on more abstract things like, say, a logo redesign. From what I remember, Pepsi paid the firm that put together that presentation about a million dollars for that logo. Granted, I think it's a good logo and certainly an improvement on the old, but I don't think that the artist(s) actually looked to Da Vinci's Mona Lisa or the expanding rate of the universe for influence. That's just the BS rationalization that was added later to help them close the deal.
>in realizing that there may actually be value in some of the BSing
I don't know if this is the conclusion to take away. The OP of this topic is an example of where meaning and relevance does exist for design decisions, and can lead to a very thoughtful conclusion.
The Pepsi one, in contrast, is just applying as many functions/transforms on a problem, and hoping some of the results look OK.
so 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.
Reading 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.
Less 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.
Paul 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.
If 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.
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.
I 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.
While 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.
