Why Apple’s Logo Has a Bite Taken Out of It?
Why Apple’s Logo Has a Bite Taken Out of It?
If you take a look at Apple’s famous logo design, you might notice a curved piece missing. It’s a bite mark in the fruit—but why is it there? We’ll explain the history and meaning behind the bite.
It Makes the Apple Shape Obvious
To develop the company’s early branding, Apple Computer, Inc. hired the Regis McKenna ad agency in 1977 (with a relationship that began in 1976). McKenna himself assigned the task of designing Apple’s logo to Rob Janoff, a graphic designer who worked for the firm.
According to a 2018 interview with Forbes, Janoff described the unique thematic opportunity provided by the contrast between a machine and a natural piece of fruit. “I just wanted to make the computer easy and fun to be around,” he said, and he thought including the approachable image of an apple fruit was a must.
While designing the Apple logo, Janoff created the iconic silhouette of an apple in a form very close to what we’re all familiar with today. In the process, he added a bite mark to make it obvious that the fruit depicted in the logo is an apple and not another fruit with a similar silhouette—like a cherry, for example.
Janoff says the bite mark has no deeper symbolic meaning, and that he was unaware of the computer term “byte” while designing the logo. (Also, it has nothing to do with Alan Turing.)
Further playing off the bite mark, Janoff nestled the curvature of the lowercase “A” in the original Apple logotype into the negative space of the apple shape itself. Today, the original lowercase “apple” logotype is long gone, but a similar curvature remains.
Comments
Post a Comment