Last week there was a bit of excitement when Apple renewed the patent and trademark for their famous rainbow coloured logo.
Could they be bringing it back? Would it adorn a Mac again? Alas, sadly not. It was just a simply case of them having to renew it as it reached its 10 year cycle.
It did, however, get us thinking about the famous Apple logo and how it has evolved over the years, and how it came to be an Apple in the first place. We were aware of some of the urban myths that it was a nod to Alan Turing, the man who broke the Engima code and laid the foundations for the modern day computer.
This seems to have been dispelled by Rob Janoff, who designed the logo. Instead it seems to be more to do with Sir Isaac Newton, and the knowledge that came with that falling Apple. This seems highly credible in that the first ever Apple Logo in 1976 was a very intricate affair drawn by Ron Wayne, which depicted Netwon under the Apple tree.
The Apple logo that Janoff designed came in in 1977, and it is thought that Steve Jobs insisted on the rainbow colours. The rainbow logo lasted for 21 years until 1998. Some say that the bite mark is a play on words on the Apple 1 advertising campaign, which spoke of “take a bite of the Apple.” However, it is more likely that the bite mark is simply to allow the logo to be scaled down and stop it looking like a cherry when reduced to smaller sizes.
The revolutionary iMac was the first Mac to drop the iconic rainbow logo. You could still find it in the OS on the top left of your screen, but on the iMac models and subsequent Mac models it was now one colour. At first it matched the colour of the machines, but as the years have moved on, the logo has moved from the slightly hippy rainbow to a more sleek and stylish representation.
Perhaps the greatest strength of the logo is its simplicity. With the removal of the rainbow colours to a single block colour, it has become even simpler and perhaps even more powerful. On our MacBook Pros it no longer lights up. It is just a black outline on our space grey machines, and yet it says everything.
What do you think of the current logo? Would you like to see the rainbow one return, or has the evolution of the logo moved in line with the business? It would be great to hear your thoughts.
