“The colored experience”

Iggy was a fearless earthworm. It was a beautiful day when a few drops of rain began to fall. A colored rainbow was shining in the sky and took Iggy for a ride to live an amazing experience. After a few hours surfing on its curves, getting to know different places, she ended up falling into a colored apple tree. That place looked like a fairy tale, filled with new experiences, challenges and beyond all, it was really tasty. She would never forget that fantastic trip and the moments of pleasure that she lived there.

. . .

Behind Apple’s products lies an amazing experience of brand identity. The first Apple logo designed by Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne in 1976, featuring Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree was a good start, but in the end, Steve wasn’t 100% convinced. In 1977 he commissioned designer Rob Janoff to focus more on the apple biting experience.

Do you know there was no briefing at all?

Jobs didn’t want people to confuse it with a cherry and he tried putting on words ‘bite’ and ‘byte’ to lend a geeky flavor to the fruit. “Don’t make it cute”, said Jobs. Rob presented two versions of the logo. One with and one without the bite and several variations like striped version, solid color version, and metallic version.

The logo provoked so many speculations to its meaning by designers at the time. Some consider the Apple’s logo to a tribute to Alan Turing, an unrecognized man humiliated by estrogen injections intended to ‘cure’ his homosexuality, bit into an apple he had laced with cyanide.

Rob confirmed that hippie culture experience was a big influence, but the real solid reason for the stripes was that the Apple II was the first home or personal computer that could reproduce images on the monitor in color. So it represents color bars on the screen. Also, it was an attempt to make the logo very accessible to everyone.

It was kind of iconic about taking a bite out of an apple. Something that you can experience. It goes across cultures. If you ever had an apple you have probably bitten into it and that’s what you get.

Experiences form our memories and keep things salient or front of mind. Humans experiences are what we remember and strong experiences create memories. Think about it.

Do you have any special experience with some brand? Again, show me in the comments friends!