65 years of NASA's meatball: Original logo lives on despite detractors NASA is celebrating 65 years of its iconic "meatball" logo, despite spending the best part of 17 years trying to kill the poor thing. Workers painting the NASA meatball on the side of the Vehicle Assembly Building Painters work on the official NASA insignia, nicknamed "the meatball," on the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s …
I would need to admit the same here but my own memories are not the point for me. The meatball is individual and absolutely unique, the worm is simply a typeface choice and a common one from the 1970's at that.
As a design choice the meatball is 'timeless' because it can, only, be identified with NASA. The worm's typeface choice can be seen in many other products and services from the period. As graphic layout is part of my job there is only one obvious choice: a logo that can *never* be mistaken or a typeface that others have also used.
That's definitely all true, but I think a modern logo designer would note that the meatball is extremely cluttered-looking and requires at least two colors to print. Having both an elaborate logo and a simpler "wordmark" is pretty common these days, so the worm has its place too.
I was a child of the 80s, and I resented it when they switched from what was still a good, very modern-looking logo (back) to something that looked old-fashioned in a way that it almost had a musty-old-book smell about it.
In hindsight I can understand that the older logo had the more positive associations of NASA's late 50s to early 70s heyday and they most likely wanted to return to it for that reason. But I'm still not a big fan personally- it's absolutely stuck in that post-War/50s era.
What's odd is that there were only, apparently, seventeen years between the 1959 "meatball" and the 1976 "worm", yet they feel like the products of very different eras. (And I suspect the former already looked that way in 1976).
Whereas, despite the fact that the "worm" logo is now much, *much* older than the meatball was back then, it still looks "modern" today despite being just a couple of years short of its fiftieth anniversary. (Something it has in common with many "modern" logos the late 60s to early 80s era, e.g. Saul Bass' classic early-1970s Warner Communications logo).
(Warning; this is where I get distracted by the more general idea of how bizarre it is that now-forty-to-fifty-year-old-stuff still seems "modern" and relevant. Feel free to read on or, er... not.)
What's noticeable is how how many things from (e.g.) the 1980s still hold their appeal and influence the culture today. For example- an in particular- kids listening to 1980s music.
I always had a soft spot for Toto's "Africa"- one of the first songs I enjoyed after I started getting more into music and following the charts as a kid. Like many 80s hits- still considered a "banger" (cough) today by kids born decades after it came out, yet it's forty-two years old.
Yeah, that's surprisingly old in absolute terms, but- for those of us who grew up at that time- what really puts it into bizarre perspective is to consider what music of a similar age would have been back then. You'd have been talking about WW2-era musicians like Vera "We'll Meet Again" Lynn or Glenn Miller and similar "big band" material.
No disrespect to any of those artists, but you can't even *begin* to imagine how utterly ancient any of that stuff would have seemed to a Top-of-the-Pops watching kid in 1982, or how bizarre and unlikely it would have been for most of us to be interested in it.
That wasn't even my (boomer) parents' generations' music or era; it was near enough two generations back. Even twenty-year-old black-and-white footage of the early Beatles looked somewhat old to me back then.
Early 1940s music and culture in general would have seemed so distant by 1982 that I don't think anyone of my age would have been able to relate to it *or* its style, yet the 80s music and culture we're still listening to and treating as relevant today is now just as old.
And that's... weird.
Michael Strorm,
On your last point about the difference in 40 years - I'm not so sure. I wonder if the kids today don't think we're as much dinosaurs as we did for those back in the 40s/50s. Even I think a lot of 80s music sounds pretty old - there's a definite 80s sound of synth bass, synth drums or heavy use of snare drums with either loads of echo or all the the echo removed. Plus a tendency to over-use saxophones. Do you remember those weird keytars - a guitar shaped keyboard on a guitar strap. For your keyboard player who didn't want to hide at the back - but to prance around centre-stage with either a big flouncy shirt or shoulder pads. Or both.
In the UK charts we even had Jive Bunny who did weird (terrible) Glenn Miller remixes.
In some ways rock music doesn't seem to have changed all that much since the 70s, sure it goes through phases but lots of bands go back to the old sounds. The big band era has mostly died out, but the jazz and musical standards / great American songbook era stuff is still very popular and there are still big star crooners singing it. But pop shifts and dates very fast.
Hearing a lot of 80s stuff makes me think, "God that was a long time ago! How old am I again?" But a lot of it feels to me like cheesy nostalgic kitcsch. Whereas a lot of Bowie from the 70s sounds like it's become classic and timeless. Although the 70s had plenty of its own cheesy kitsch. Michael Jackson's early 80s stuff should be classic - but when I listen to it - all I can hear is the crappy fat synth brass sound and horrible synch bass and it makes it sound cheap and nasty - although I suppose Thriller is by definition kitsch and silly.
Oh and we hava user on the forums who calls themselves Like a Badger. Every time I see their username, I can hear Madonna in full 80s mode in my head singing "Like a badger - touched for the very first time. Like a ba-a-a-a-dger."
You're arguing this from the point of view of someone who was there at the time, though.
I suspect that the 80s would seem a lot more distant if they hadn't been constantly referred back to by popular culture (something which the Internet has made easier and reinforced).
Jive Bunny was novelty party music that threw Glenn Miller into a multi-generational grab bag (and most of their stuff was pilfered from the rock'n'roll era and the 60s). Despite having several big hits, they weren't the sound of their era, late 80s Hi-NRG and the nascent acid house/techno scene which came to define the 90s was.
> In some ways rock music doesn't seem to have changed all that much since the 70s
That's almost a red herring, though. Rock is no longer dominant in the way it was back then, or in the 80s and into the 90s- it's been effectively supplanted by rap and hip-hop-derived music forms.
The rock that *does* seem to be popular among younger audiences nowadays does, ironically, seem to be the "big name" classics from the 70s through to the early 90s (e.g. Queen, Nirvana, etc.) (*)
> Hearing a lot of 80s stuff makes me think, "God that was a long time ago! How old am I again?" But a lot of it feels to me like cheesy nostalgic kitcsch. Whereas a lot of Bowie from the 70s sounds like it's become classic and timeless.
You can argue that a lot of 80s stuff sounds dated, overproduced and of-its-time, and I wouldn't entirely disagree with you personally. That doesn't change the fact that artists today are *still* constantly harking back and paying homage to the 80s- and to an increasing extent the 1990s- arguably more than the 70s.
I get the impression that the whole production and aesthetic of 80s music is easier to relate to for modern listeners who grew up after music production became technology/computer-centred.
I mean, I can listen to the horribly synthetic, generic "trap"-derived beats on a lot of modern music and think they're abysmal- you have all this technology at your fingertips and *that* identikit shite is the best you can do?!- but you can trace a line through the increasing use and availability of computer technology and software that started in the 80s through the 90s to see how it came to be.
Modern music producers still gush about the likes of (e.g.) the Roland TR-808 drum machine from the early 80s, and use it all over the place. Personally, I think it's overrated crap, but my opinion isn't the point, which is that 80s aesthetic is still all over the place today.
Jazz still has its fans, but it's never been anything even near a major- let alone dominant- part of popular culture since the end of its original heyday. Even that "Great American Songbook" stuff enjoys timeless low-level popularity- e.g. Rod Stewart's endless rehashes show there's still a market for it- you can't say that it's ever got to the point where Irving Berlin et al were going to push Taylor Swift or Dua Lipa off the streaming charts.
(*) That brings me on to another aspect, the fact that, yeah, the "80s" *is* still popular, but the focus is on a very narrow sliver of horribly overplayed songs, to the exclusion of anything else, even things that were almost as popular at the time. I asked a twentysomething work colleague- who listened to an obnoxious radio station that played the exact same, overplayed old 80s and 90s songs day after day- whether he knew any A-ha songs other than the played-to-death nostalgia staple "Take On Me", and he didn't. Not his fault, you'd never have known that they had numerous top ten hits, because they don't play any of the others. Ditto all the other overplayed 80s staples- I really liked a lot of those at the time, but they've been so lazily overplayed that I'm sick of most of them now.
Michael Strorm,
Thinking about it, my impression of modern pop is that a lot of it is most heavily influenced by the 90s. But, as you say, there's a lot of overt and hidden 80s influences out there. I went to see a young Irish rock band last week (Dea Matrona) - and in their still pretty small repertoire of original songs (maybe about 14) they've got one obvious 80s-influenced rock one. They've clearly also listened to a bit of Van Morrison, so there's a couple that are influenced by him, and therefore more indirectly by jazz. They're in their early 20s - and their direct influences probably go back as far as the 60s.
I'd agree with you that the nostalgia thing is very much more readily available nowadays. And the nostalgia industry doesn't seem to go back much past the mid 60s. The fifties and before is mostly ignored - unless catering directly to the real oldies. My parents' generation - born just before or during the way. The Boomers tend to get the 60s stuff.
As you say though, 80s nostalgia is very much a limited range of new wave pop and electonic stuff. I was a Madness fan, still am. I guess they still turn up at parties, and there's always a chance of some program playing The Specials over footage of 1980s strikes.
It's funny how stuff changes. As you say, rock doesn't dominate. And yet Coldplay were an indy guitar-led rock band when they first hit the scene twenty years ago with Parachutes. Became the biggest band in the world, at the same time as they gradually morphed into a more pop direction.
Still, the great thing is that if you don't like the stuff in the charts - you can still listen to old stuff. And there's so much old stuff, that some of it will be new to you - and still feel like you've made an amazing discovery. And there's such a vibrant live music scene that you should be able to find good bands to go and see. And with the internet you can try before you buy in most cases.
"the worm is simply formed from a common typeface style used in the 1970's, nothing unique about it at all"
Indeed, so non-unique is it that, whenever I see something in that sort of typeface, in red, NASA is absolutely the *last* thing that comes to mind...
...no, wait, I tell a tiny bit of a fib there, it's the FIRST thing that comes to mind.
Similarly, if I see something written in upper-case ITC Garamond Bold Italic, my first thought will always immediately be of the Commodore Amiga, and there are countless other similar text-based logos which are outwardly similarly simple in their construction, yet which have an indelible connection to one specific brand/product despite the typeface used also being seen elsewhere.
So yes, the typeface used to construct the logo may well not be unique, but that's not the point - a) regardless of what you might think about the design itself, it WAS the logo and therefore is worthy of its place in history in its own right, and b) as probably the most well known user of that combination of typeface and colour, millions of people around the world will associate it with NASA even if they see that combination used to spell out something else, so it's achieved a level of uniqueness through association with NASA specifically.
We are not living forever, nor chopping heads here. We can have two logos, no problems.
Personaly, I would use the meatball when space and printing capabilities where not an issue.
The worm I would use in places where a monocromatic - or easier to recognize logo - were needed.
Yes, the meatball is iconic, but try printing it REALLY small...
And I w9uld use the worm on rockets. Its proportions are MUCH better suited to a thin colinderbthan the meatball.
1. If you need someone to explain the meaning of your logo, the design has failed. I never understood what swoopy red part of the meatball logo meant.
2. For another example of a classic logo, look here:
https://w140.com/tekwiki/images/thumb/b/bb/Tek-logo-1968-1976.jpg/200px-Tek-logo-1968-1976.jpg
3. For an example of a bad logo (for the same company), look here:
https://www.tek.com/-/media/project/tek/images/logos/tek-monogram.svg
4. The whole meatball/worm wax-on/wax-off rigamarole happening at NASA leads me to believe two highly-placed, bitter office-politics rivals are in a pissing match and are trying to demonstrate or claim their power over various areas of NASA.
As far as that "classic" logo goes, you might prefer it aesthetically, but I'm not convinced that it's that great *as a logo*.
Yeah, it definitely has more personality than the new logo, which isn't great either (a bland, forgettable all-a-bit-of-a-muchness generic take on current design trends). It definitely has a retro, atomic age feel, which is fine if you're going for a "Fallout"-style aesthetic, but as an actual modern company logo isn't so great- it's definitely too much of its time, and still cluttered by modern standards.
(The URL says 1968 to 1976- my feeling that it looked old even for 1968 was confirmed by this, which suggests that it was merely a variant of a logo that had been in use since the 1940s at least).
> The whole meatball/worm wax-on/wax-off rigamarole happening at NASA leads me to believe two highly-placed, bitter office-politics rivals are in a pissing match and are trying to demonstrate or claim their power over various areas of NASA.
I do have to suspect that you're right here...!
"4. The whole meatball/worm wax-on/wax-off rigamarole happening at NASA leads me to believe two highly-placed, bitter office-politics rivals are in a pissing match and are trying to demonstrate or claim their power over various areas of NASA."
I just find it funny not only that most people outside of NASA top brass and PR departments (and those in the logo design industry making a living from them) even care about the logos, their age, whether it's a "significant birthday" but even have a cutsie name for the different logos so they know which one they mean when having a conversation about it. I don't think I have ever in my life had a conversation about logos that required that level of detail, or even went on for more than a sentence or two :-)
It speaks volumes about the dysfunctional culture at NASA that they've spent so much resources (from brain power to finances) on their logo, but right now they're not even capable of getting a crew to the ISS and back on schedule. The meatball should have been retired permanently in 1975, because it looks like those glory days are indeed over. I'm not a fan of Musk as a person (in fact he makes me break out in hives) but when it comes to results, SpaceX puts NASA to shame, and the rest of the commercial sector is set to follow that example.
So chop-chop, NASA! Pay less attention to logos, and more effort to launching space craft that don't leak and don't get stuck up there with a BSOD once you finally get them into LEO four years behind schedule.
> It speaks volumes about the dysfunctional culture at NASA that they've spent so much resources (from brain power to finances) on their logo
The logo redesign came from Nixon's Federal Design Program not from NASA, and across the US gov it *saved* money on printing costs (less paper, fewer colours of inks, clarity, ease of reproduction) and making gov communication clearer.
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/nasa-graphics-standards-manual/
https://info.ksiadvantage.com/blog/how-the-u.s.-government-had-groovy-design-but-seemingly-lost-it-and-how-to-get-it-back
Exchange between James Fletcher, NASA’s administrator at the time [of the Worm logo's introduction], and his deputy George Low during an early presentation of the graphics system:
Fletcher: I’m simply not comfortable with those letters, something is missing.
Low: Well yes, the cross stroke is gone from the letter A.
Fletcher: Yes, and that bothers me.
Low: Why?
Fletcher, after a long pause: I just don’t feel we are getting our money’s worth!
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/nasa-graphics-standards-manual/
The big round logo looks absolutely nothing like any meatball I've seen, so how did it get the name? Also are people responding negatively to the name rather than the image?
As other commentards have noted, it is totally unique and therefore has a very strong association - something that product promoters would sell their grandmothers for.
With print houses steadily moving to fully digital systems, the 'too many colours' argument falls flat.
IMHO, based on my youth, "Meatball" is and always will be the RCA round red logo of 1922 to 1968. Red because we only had meatballs in spaghetti (tomato) sauce (actual meatballs cooked grey).
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/RCA
https://embark.tcnj.edu/Media/images/S.525.1_TCNJ.jpg
Yes, employees casually called it "the meatball"-- "we need a meatball for this letterhead". This logo is ALL over RCA gear of this period, also several city blocks in Camden, some now-gone blockhouses in Moorestown.
There were several RCA logos post-1968, and the plain-font ones IDed the products, but nobody did rah-rah and then Sarnoff's passing took the spunk out of the whole operation.
Yes, the NASA ball now has seniority and is widely cherished too. And RCA meatball fans are aging-out.
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