The logo, with its thick lettering and crossbar-less A’s reminiscent of rocket nosecones, was the centerpiece of a broader document called the NASA Graphics Standards Manual. Danne & Blackburn’s proposal hinged on a futuristic word-mark that came to be known as ‘the worm’ for its zigzag appearance.
It came under the Federal Graphics Improvement (FGI) Program, an ambitious effort to revamp the visual identity of government agencies, most of which were, in a word, ugly. It was 1974, and Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn, founders of New York design studio Danne & Blackburn, had just responded to such a request, one asking the firm to re-brand NASA.
It outlined how the logo and the rest of the graphics system should be enforced on everything from spaceships to stationery. The 90-page manual filled a ringed binder, and for decades NASA had just a handful of copies. It’s since been photographed and widely posted online, but originals remain rare.
Until the early 1970s, design was an afterthought for the government, if it was a thought at all. The logos of the day, often a circle with the name of the agency around a gaudy illustration, were more like crests. NASA’s first logo, colloquially and dearly called “the meatball,” was a perfect example of the aesthetic: a blue circle inscribed with “NASA” in a heavy serif font, a rocket against a sprinkling of stars, and a strange curving red arrow.
Loges says, the NASA logo itself had to be smaller than the US flag and the words “United States of America” marking. “NASA was sort of secondary.” However, Danne, Blackburn and Loges spent the next decade working on the manual, eventually writing 90 pages of design directives that explained how to use the graphical elements in a huge variety of situations.
This time, it was NASA that loved the logo and the designers who hated it. “It was not back to the future,” Loges says. “It was back to the past.” And Danne, as you might imagine, took it hard. Seventeen years are nothing, but he had hoped the logo would see many more launches. “It’s all part of the game and there is little you can do about it,” he wrote in his memoir in 2011. “But reflecting back on the NASA program, it is still painful.”
Even though the logo is long retired, Danne says he gets an email or two each week from someone, usually a student, eager to discuss the worm. “They seem to get it,” he says. “The past is prologue to the future.”
