Firstly, there is the NASA "seal". It is the most complicated of the three, and it originated in 1959. The seal was created by an illustrator at the NASA Reasearch Center at Lewis Field and is used strictly for ceremonial and formal occasions in connection with the NASA Administrator, never as a logo. The seal is a blue circle, containing imagery of the Earth and the Moon, an orbital path, several star clusters, and a red "vector." It is encircled by red text.
Shortly after the generation of the seal, James Modarelli, the head of Lewis's Research Reports Division, was tasked with the creation of a simplified, usable logo utilizing similar shapes and iconography. This is known as the NASA "insignia." He eliminated the planets and the red text, opting to let the blue circle itself be representative of a planet. He retained the stars, representative of space; the red chevron, depicting a state-of-the-art hypersonic wing from the time of its creation, representative of aeronautics; and the orbital path, obviously representative of space travel. He reoriented these elements around his newly added white NASA letters. In NASA jargon, this logo has been nicknamed the
"meatball."
In 1975, the NASA logotype was created to be a more modern look. This design, which is officially deemed the "logo," was nicknamed the "worm." It is made of thick red lines that create simple letterforms to spell NASA, and is considered by Ellen Lupton in Mixing Messages to be one of the "few graphical triumphs of the Nixon administration's Federal Design Program." The simplified angles of the "A"s are said to be indicative of rockets. In 1992, however, 6 years after the Challenger disaster, Dan Goldin, who was the administrator of NASA, felt they needed the nostalgic romance of its old insignia to rejuvenate optimism towards the space program. The meatball was reinstated to prove that, in his words, "the magic is back at NASA." Since the worm's official retirement from NASA's true visual identity, however, it has stayed around, and its primary usage is in merchandising opportunities.
According to the NASA Visual Identity Office, the meatball insignia consists of two basic colors: red (PMS185) and blue (PMS286). Building through 4 color process, the ratios are as follows: red=100 magenta + 100 yellow, blue=100 cyan + 60 magenta. Used in full color, the insignia must be presented on either white, black, grey (PMS423), or silver (PMS877). The insignia is never meant to have a white outline around it.
Space being the final frontier, NASA has grappled, visually, with how they would like people to relate to it. The worms were modern, and cutting edge, and a little mysterious, intentionally futuristic and potentially unsettling in that they give a sort of adrenaline rush of the unknown. The meatball, on the other hand, has this classicism, a kind of storybook quality, and beauty, as though there was just this unclaimed knowledge and experience waiting for us, and all we had to do was make it into space. The worms were exciting, while the meatball was reassuring. Each had their crucial times of use, and we've come back around to the meatball most recently, but who is to say, if NASA picked back up in momentum, if it would still be appropriate to the feelings of the space program today? And if not, what direction might the newest logo take?
on an utterly different note, i'm going to share with you this link whether or not it is appropriate because it is a brilliantly well made short mockumentary: the old negro space program. if you've got 10 or so spare minutes, i highly recommend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment