Fed Ex or IBM
Out of context: Reply #33
- Started
- Last post
- 43 Responses
- jonnyquest0
"The sketches of the bars looking like a criminal were drawn by IBM execs, they actually didn't care for it across the company"
The story seems to vary from source to source but Steven Heller's excellent book Paul Rand has a Rand sketch of a prisoner saluting and standing next to a vertical arrangement of the IBM logo. In his sketch the stripes of the logo and the prisoner line up right up next to each other.
Whether this was actually sketched during the design process or after an IBM executive suggested the stripes looked like a prison suit is unclear but the book suggests Rand sketched it during the first showing of the two versions of his striped logo (eight lines and thirteen lines) to IBM managers...
I wish we had more threads like this because it's fun picking up some of these books I have lying around here and rereading them. I somehow got it my head that he disliked his IBM logo but apparently not...
He wasn't afraid to tweak it that's for sure. The Rebus (Eye BEE M) that he designed for IBM'S Golden Circle Award in 1981 drew the ire of IBM management who had it's distribution temporarily halted because they felt it would encourage staff designers to take liberties with the logo.
I guess Rand won that argument.