The current Apple logo was introduced in 1998 before being discontinued in 2000 and reestablished in 2014 – but many people are only just learning about its origin
The company was created in 1976 – but it wasn’t until 22 years later that Apple’s iconic logo was introduced to the world. Originally called Apple Computer Co, founders Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne worked together to market Wozniak’s Apple I desktop laptop before Jobs and Wozniak incorporated the company one year later.
For more than 30 years, the company sold personal computers – including the Apple II, Power Mac lines and Macintosh – but they needed to ‘reinvent’ themselves after watching sales slowly drop off. Jobs who was ousted from the company in 1985 made a return in 1997 after his company NeXT was bought by Apple.
He went on to develop a new corporate philosophy and introduced iMac, iPod, and iTunes Music Store to the world all within the next six years. Not only did Jobs’ tech ideas transform Apple into the $3 trillion company known today, he also was heavily involved with its logo.
A statement on The Designest reads: “In brief, the current Apple logo was affected by at least two important things associated with the company’s establishment comprising both scientific and romantic symbolism. The first one is the direct association with one of the brightest (and highly significant) periods in life of Steve Jobs when he dropped the college and went to Oregon to work at an apple orchard farm commune.
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“Besides, the apple fruit is the straight symbol of Isaac Newton’s brilliant discovery everyone has learned from school. Just like an apple fell on the scientist’s head, the law of gravity came home to him when Isaac was peacefully resting under the apple tree. The significance of this event put the beginning of scientific discoveries as we know them nowadays, it was as revolutionary as the creation of the first Apple computer.”
Jobs and Wozniak were driving back from an airport along Highway 85 when they started brainstorming company names. After much back and forth, and vetoing each other’s “boring and pompous” pitches, they ended up settling on Apple. Recalling the origin of Apple’s name, Wozniak wrote in his memoir: “I remember I was driving Steve Jobs back from the airport along Highway 85.
“Steve was coming back from a visit to Oregon to a place he called an apple orchard. It was actually some kind of commune. Steve suggested a name — Apple Computer. The first comment out of my mouth was, ‘What about Apple Records?’ This was (and still is) the Beatles-owned record label. We both tried to come up with technical-sounding names that were better, but couldn’t think of any good ones. Apple was so much better, better than any other name we could think of.”
However, the first Apple logo, designed by co-founder Ronald Wayne in 1977, is worlds away from what is recognised today, with it showing Issca Newton sitting under a tree with an apple looming above their head. The Designest statement adds: “The company’s first apple logo was not quite a reflection of the brand’s essence and far from versatile in terms of graphic design, composition, and style, to be fair.
“It literally depicted the moment when the law of gravity was invented. The first logo included Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. What cluttered the old Newton logo more was a frame with a quote by the romantic English poet William Wordsworth, saying, ‘Newton… a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought.’
“Thankfully, this illustration was not met well by Steve Jobs, so this Apple’s logo design existed for a short time and was later replaced by a new logo carried out by a professional graphic designer.” Unimpressed by the logo, Jobs contacted Rob Janoff to create a new logo with a ‘fresh yet straightforward’ design.
In an interview, Janoff claims to have come up with the bitten apple design in just one week after buying apples, putting them into a bowl, and drawing them over and over until he came up with the logotype. While the logo was well received, many Apple users couldn’t help but wonder why the apple has a bite taken out of it.
To clear this up, a Designest statement explains: “According to Janoff, the reason for choosing this bitten apple logo was to prevent people from confusing the overall shape of the apple with some other fruit or vegetable like cherry tomato, having a similar form. Besides, Rob Janoff has found out a bit later that his genius choice of a logo detail was the lucky coincidence with computer terminology he had produced. ‘Bite’ sounds the same as ‘byte’ — the smallest unit of digital information, the basis of computing.”
Commenting on this revelation, one Reddit user said: “Today I learned that the Apple logo contains an apple with a single bite because a small version of the logo would be indistinguishable from a cherry.” Another user added: “I was under the impression it was in reference to Alan Turing’s death, which is a way more clever reason. If I were them I’d stick with that.”
A third user said: “I always assumed it represented Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge.” One more user added: “I thought it was a ‘fruit of knowledge’ thing. Basically, we bit the fruit of knowledge to gain knowledge, Apple think they are knowledge…”
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