August 27, 1999: Apple swaps out the striped, multicolored brand the corporate used since 1977 for a brand new single-color model.
The substitute of the long-lasting Apple brand shocks many longtime followers. Nonetheless, it’s a part of a sustained, company-wide overhaul led by Steve Jobs. The makeover contains new merchandise, the “Assume Totally different” advert marketing campaign and, ultimately, the elimination of the phrase “Laptop” from the corporate’s identify.
The beginning of the ‘bitten apple’ brand
Apple’s very first company brand was really not the memorable “bitten apple” brand in any respect. A riff on a Victorian woodcut, the unique Apple brand portrayed Sir Isaac Newton sitting beneath a tree with a solitary apple dangling over his head.
A citation from William Wordsworth’s The Prelude ran across the picture’s border: “A thoughts ceaselessly wandering via unusual seas of thought, alone.” (Apple’s third co-founder, Ron Wayne — who bought his stake within the firm for simply $800 — designed the unique brand.)
After lower than a yr, Apple changed that brand with the define we all know in the present day. Designed by 29-year-old Rob Janoff, it coincided with the debut of the Apple II on the West Coast Laptop Faire, which marked Apple’s commencement from a small startup to a critical enterprise. Janoff was a junior artwork designer at Regis McKenna, a agency that dealt with plenty of Apple’s early advertising and marketing and publicity.
Steve Jobs and the Apple brand
Jobs gave Janoff — who doesn’t obtain any royalties for his design — two instructions for the Apple brand. One, don’t make it cute. And two, discover some approach to visually incorporate the Apple II’s revolutionary 16-color show.
Janoff added the chew within the apple to present it a way of scale when reproduced at completely different sizes. (It was additionally a play on the phrase “byte.”) The colourful stripes confirmed off the Apple II’s large characteristic, whereas embracing the countercultural tenor of the occasions.
“I had a giant hippie affect myself, having grown up in North California within the late ’60s,” Janoff advised me for my e-book The Apple Revolution. “I’d dabbled in all of the psychedelic stuff, in addition to the music and the visuals. To me, it was extra fascinating to attract it like that than, say, a purple apple. The thought was to make it interesting, and to distinguish it from every thing else that was on the market.”
For anybody paying consideration after Jobs’ return to Cupertino within the late Nineties, the brand new Apple brand got here as no shock. The sooner iMac G3 featured a single-color brand as a part of its case design, though the striped brand continued to point out up in Apple’s software program — for instance, within the “Apple menu.”
New Apple brand, new path for Apple
Photograph: Nick DiLallo/Apple
On August 27, 1999, Apple formally scrapped the rainbow brand, telling distributors to not use it anymore. Cupertino changed it with single-color variations of the emblem in numerous colours. Distributors may select between black and purple variations of the flat brand.
“Like our merchandise and our clients, the Apple model continues to evolve,” Apple wrote in its advertising and marketing tips, which spelled out the considering behind the emblem change:
“To replicate this, we’ve made some necessary modifications to the Apple brand and the way we use it, and the way we count on our channel to make use of it, too. Don’t fear: We haven’t changed the emblem, simply up to date it. We’ll proceed to replicate who we’re and what we stand for as an organization in the identical timeless image: an apple with a chew taken out of it. We’ve diminished among the litter within the unique design, nevertheless, and up to date the best way we use shade and light-weight. In different phrases, we’ve taken the identical requirements of fashion and innovation that make our merchandise and our design unmistakable and utilized them to the corporate brand. As an alternative of rainbow stripes, strong colours. As an alternative of only one strong shade, a palette of brand colours to swimsuit quite a lot of makes use of. Stable colours emphasize the timeless form of the Apple brand.”
Apple later upgraded the single-color brand. The brand new polished-metal look mirrored supplies used on the tim by Apple design chief Jony Ive.
Which model of the Apple brand do you favor? Go away your feedback under.