Logo Return

[krpalmer]

We have to find diversions where we can these days, but I suppose seeing a report in an unexpected place (but one that could be seen as aware of logotypes) that the “old new” NASA logo is painted on the side of the Falcon 9 rocket meant to launch people into space amounted to one for me. Introduced just in time to get on the flight suits for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the wiggly lettering was around when I was following the first space shuttle flights at a tender age, but was phased out by new management at the beginning of the 1990s, when it might have been associated not even so much with “disaster” as “one embarrassing, dispiriting mess-up after another.” I still happened to see a gadfly web site casting scorn on the changeover at the time (which did get mentioned in an official history of NASA logos); there are times I’ll reflect on how that logo is on the label of the Voyager records and will therefore be preserved for a very long time. Bringing it back now for this particular upcoming launch might amount to “novelty” or even trying to distinguish a public-private partnership with diffused responsibility from “the way things used to be done,” but it did get my attention.

Comments

[dewline]

Seeing as a friendly acquaintance has built an entire font family around that wordmark design, complete with Latin, Cyrillic and Greek charactery included, that news definitely got my attention, too.

[krpalmer]

I've taken note of a few "build a font from a few letters" efforts myself, but the example you linked to is a pretty impressive one.