NeXT
Paul RandIt is difficult enough to invent a meaningful
corporate logo, sign, or mark to express
conventional business issues without having
to depict the future as well. However, that is
what was demanded of Paul Rand ( 1914 –
1996 ) when in 1988 he was commissioned to
design a logo for NeXT, an educational
computer company headed by Steven Jobs,
the founder of Apple Computer Company.
Although NeXT’s new product was cast in
secrecy, the corporate name alluded to its
futuristic positioning—not simply a new
computer, but the next wave of information
processing for the educational market. With
only a few clues, Rand was given a month to
devise a logo that would embody as much
symbolic power as the memory of a silicon chip.
Rand had made identity systems out of whole cloth many times
before. He created time-honored marks for IBM, UPS, and ABC. In each
he found the most identifiable graphic forms: stripes for IBM, a gift box
atop a shield for UPS, the repetition of circles for the lowercase letters abc.
Designing such charged—and lasting—logos is not magic, but it does take
an acute understanding of the nature of perception and the ability to
translate that into a visual form. “Logos are aides de mémoirethat give you
something to hook on to when you see it, and especially when you don’t see
it,” explained Rand. And the problem with the word NeXT was that it was
not depictable. “What are you going to show? A barber shop with somebody
pointing, ‘You’re next’? It’s simply not describable in typographic terms.”
Graphic devices that represent the future, such as the arrow, were
made meaningless by overuse, but the NeXT computer was contained in a
black cube, which gave Rand the idea he needed. He decided to frame the
word in a cube to evoke the product itself. However, at the time the logo
was introduced to the public, the computer’s shape and form were
completely secret. “It was understandable only as a cube, nothing else,” he
explained. “But without that reference point, I would have had to devise
something out of the blue.” In fact, for Rand it was not so much a question288