Hasta La Ideas

Could it be? An Apple logo that predates the iconic rainbow-striped fruit so memorably stamped (along with Steve Wozniak‘s signature) on our treasured Apple IIGS? Indeed, says Rob Janoff, who in 1977 designed the famed logo that former Apple exec Jean Louis Gassée once described as “the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order.” But before the lust and knowledge there was a pen and ink drawing of Sir Isaac Newton, an apple of enlightenment poised to fall on his be-wigged head. Janoff explained in a recent interview with Ivan Raszl of creativebits:

There was a previous logo to my logo. It was a logo done by Ron Wayne, who was a very brief partner of the two Steves early on. He later took a buy-out, because he was a little concerned about the financial obligations he might have. He had a young family and the other guys didn’t. Ron did a pen and ink drawing of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an Apple tree with a poem all around the border. And, I think when Steve Jobs started to get serious about the Apple II and getting a prototype for the design of the shell he realized that logo would not do. So he needed a new logo.

Jobs offered one directive to Janoff, then an art director at Regis McKenna, on the task of designing a new Apple logo: “Don’t make it cute.” For more on the logo, including the subtle changes it has gone through over the years, check out the full interview on creativebits.

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