© 2008 Lawrence I. Charters
Washington Apple Pi Journal, Vol. 30, no. 1, January-February 2008, pp. 26-29.
When a computer club talks about a new logo, it could very well mean a new version of the Logo language, developed by Seymour Papert to teach mathematical concepts to children. Developed during the 1970s, Logo was extremely popular on the Apple II computer, and at one time Washington Apple Pi had a large contingent of rabid Logo fanatics. Logo is still popular today, and a number of versions are still available for the Apple IIGS as well as for Macs. For more information, see:
http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/logo/
No, not that Logo
Alas, we are not talking about “that Logo,” but the logo for Washington Apple Pi. The name “Washington Apple Pi” was derived by two of the Pi’s founders, Bernie and Gena Urban, as they sat around their kitchen table. Their kitchen table was, in fact, the first home of the user group in 1978, and after several months of this nameless group meeting to discuss the wonderful, state-of-the-art Apple II computer, Bernie suggested “Washington Apple π.” Since the group’s newsletter was typed on a typewriter, and the typewriter didn’t have a symbol for pi, the character was hand-drawn on the second page of the newsletter. This newsletter is reproduced on the Pi site,
http://www.wap.org/journal/journalhist/journal1.1.1.html
http://www.wap.org/journal/journalhist/journal1.1.2.html
Bernie and Gena were employed at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), working with some of the very first digital computers ever made. When they discovered that an Apple II could do everything a mainframe could do, and often more, they were delighted, and like millions of other programmers, promptly started writing programs to do various difficult tasks, such as computing the value of pi. From this, it was a short trip down a slippery slope to combine the area (Washington), the company (Apple), and mathematics into a nice pun, Washington Apple Pi. Gena Urban has written about her experiences with early computers and the Pi in two articles on the Pi site,
http://www.wap.org/events/25thmeeting/urban.html
http://www.wap.org/journal/best/
Over the years, the name of the group stayed the same, but the depiction changed. By September 1979 the newsletter had a diamond logo (representing DC) with an Apple Computer-style apple and a pi symbol, all hand drawn. By 1984, the diamond for DC had vanished, but the hand-drawn Apple Computer-style apple and pi symbol remained.
Step forward five years to 1989, and fear of lawyers from either Apple Computer or Apple Corps (of Beatles fame) resulted in a new logo, the name “Washington Apple Pi” done in Garamond Condensed (the same font used, until very recently, for the names on all Apple computers), with a stylized “A” containing a pi symbol.
This solved one set of problems, but another still remained: Washington, DC, is not the largest Washington in the US, nor is it the most populous. Office volunteers were forever answering phone calls, E-mail messages and letters asking if meetings were in Seattle, Spokane, Olympia, Yakima, or some other city in Washington State. I remember the office manager once asked me, “Is there really a place called Enumclaw? A guy on the phone wants to know how long it will take to drive to Saturday’s meeting.” My answer: “About six days.”
By 1993, a drawing of the U.S. Capitol had found its way onto the cover of the Journal. Not only was it a nice drawing, but it also left no doubt that Washington was the focus of “Washington Apple Pi.” All was well.
Political Action Committee?
OK, maybe things were not “all well.” The name “Washington Apple Pi” doesn’t really explain that we are a computer user group centered on computers made by Apple. Over the years, many people say they thought we were one of “those math-science groups” that sponsor science fairs and mathematics clubs. After the Capitol was added to the Journal masthead and the Web site, an even larger group thought we were a political action committee (PAC) or lobbying group.
“Do you support Democrats or Republicans?” became a familiar question. Frequent misspellings of the club’s name, invariably adding an extra “e” to the last word (even the Washington Post does this on a regular basis), left some to think the club was a lobbying group for feeding the homeless, or redistributing tax revenue, or lobbying for fresh fruits.
Since I first started editing the Journal in 1992, every single layout and production editor has complained that the logo is “too hard” to work with, and “says nothing about computers.” The name is long and narrow, limiting layout options, and when the Capitol was added, it made the logo even more inflexible.
While there were detractors, there were also supporters: “I don’t see anything wrong with it” was the most often expressed sentiment. “People see it and they know who we are” was another claim.
Another Millennium, Another View
With the dawn of the new millennium came a fresh wave of new Pi members. Few of them ever owned an Apple II, knew what a Newton was, or had ever used any Mac operating system other than Mac OS X. Many in this new wave were not very fond of the logo with the Capitol and didn’t much like Garamond Condensed, either. Horrors.
Bob Jarecke, the current Pi President, has the very irritating habit of listening to people. He seems utterly incapable of being disconnected and aloof, and among his other character flaws, he has a bizarre compunction to fix things. Buoyed by the success of the first Washington Apple Pi Photo Contest in early 2007, he talked the Board (or the Board talked him, or they talked each other) into holding a Washington Apple Pi Logo Competition.
Note: a “competition,” not a “contest.” Corporate logos are not easy to design and, while Bob and others wanted a new logo, there was no guarantee a winner’s entry would be suitable for adoption. So a competition was launched in September 2007, with a November 17, 2007 deadline. An iPod was the prize for the competition; adoption as the corporate logo would require approval of the Board.
Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged
I was dubious of the merits of a competition. We’ve had lots of suggestions over the years, ranging from illegal (using someone else’s logo) to the badly drawn. I made my objections known, pointing out that a good logo should be identifiable when used on a business card or blown up to billboard size, should look good in both black and white and in color, and needed to be flexible enough for use in the Journal, on the Pi Web site, and on polo shirts and other various things the club might create from time to time. It should ideally look good with and without the full name of the corporation and, unlike the first club logos, should not include the logo of any other company. I made so many objections that Bob appointed me one of the three judges for the competition, arguing that I obviously felt deeply about the subject (and maybe being a judge would make me just shut up…)
The other judges were Nora Korc, design and production editor for the Journal, and Valerie Burghardt, an instructor in the Communication Arts Technologies Department at Montgomery College. Spicing things up a bit, Valerie assigned her entire Graphic Design III class a project: design a logo for Washington Apple Pi.
Diamonds and Rubies
The three judges met at the Pi office on November 24 to look at the entries. All the entries were mounted on black cardboard, with no names or identification on the front, just the logo mockups. Everyone in Valarie’s class did at least two logo presentations or variations, showing the logo on a mock-up of the Web site or the Journal, and some submitted several variations. Combined with those submitted by Pi members, there were well over 50 designs to consider. To my great annoyance, none of them sucked. It is much harder to sort diamonds and rubies than to sort the wheat from the chaff.
We began by going around the room and trying to pick the “top” ideas. This didn’t work, so we tried a gradual pruning process. Some of the designs were very heavy, with either heavy lettering (very thick, dark strokes) or heavy designs. For various reasons, all three of us decided this just wasn’t what we wanted, and these designs were withdrawn from consideration.
Many designs tried to incorporate computer technology. One very clever design had a circle with a vertical stroke through it, the same symbol used on Apple’s power buttons. Others had CD-ROMs or mice, and one had an outline vaguely similar to that of a flat-panel iMac. Over the years, I’ve seen similar technology-derived logos look quickly dated: many user groups once used a drawing of an Apple II in their logo or the original 128K Mac; to modern users, these look positively ancient. Eventually, all technology-based designs were laid aside, too.
A large percentage of the entries focused on the symbol for pi. Some of these were elegant, reinterpreting the Greek symbol so that it looked like Japanese or Chinese calligraphy. Other entries emphasized circles (appropriate for the club), or in one case a triangle. One by one, we took all these out of consideration, often because the typography used didn’t match the design, or the design lacked flexibility.
Only one entry focused on the “Washington” of Washington Apple Pi, and featured an outstanding montage of boldly drawn DC edifices, including the Washington Monument. This entry was also rainbow-colored, using the same colors used in Apple’s logo for the first quarter century. While I was very fond of the entry, Valerie and Nora felt it wouldn’t scale well (the design was quite complex), and all of us had doubts about reproducing it in black and white. But what doomed the entry: the artist had included a very Apple version of an apple, complete with a missing bite.
Jobs and his damned rounded rectangles
If you’ve ever read a book about Apple design, especially the “new” Apple since the return of Steve Jobs, you’ve heard about his obsession with rounded rectangles. He insisted that the very first Mac use rounded rectangles for on-screen buttons rather than the flat squares and rectangles used by everyone else. Rounded rectangles show up not only on the screen, but are the screen: a flat-panel iMac has a rounded rectangle for a screen, and virtually all iPods, not to mention the iPhone, are rounded rectangles. Jobs is obsessed with rounded rectangles.
And the one design Nora, Valerie, and I all agreed on had: rounded rectangles. This wasn’t a consideration at the time, but in retrospect: rounded rectangles win out again.
In addition to the Jobsian rounded rectangles, the winning design has a very modern, fresh look, and the reflection adds a nice piece of Mac-like polish. It is compact and has a simple elegance that should look good on a business card, envelope, or poster. For a variety of reasons, it shouldn’t look dated any time soon, as it is not tied to any specific era except, perhaps, the 21st century.
Hugo Segura Miranda, the winning artist, was born in La Paz, Bolivia, and graduated from Montgomery Blair High School before going on to Montgomery College and finding himself in Valerie’s graphic design class. For his efforts, he reportedly will get a decent grade in his class, and Bob Jarecke personally presented him with an iPod nano for his winning entry.
Not wasting any time, Bob called an “emergency” meeting of the Pi Board of Directors in late November and, after reviewing the competition results, the Board formally approved Hugo’s logo as the new corporate logo. It is a fitting way for the Pi to begin its third decade.
One thing missing: we no longer clearly state which Washington the club represents. Forward all phone calls from Puyallup and Toppenish to president@wap.org.