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Sun Microsystems logo: the most beautiful logo design (objectively)
- jph 2y agoIt's even better when you see the logo is made of 8 switches. In other words, 8 bits that make a byte. I'm a former Sun employee and loved that logo so much.
- wesamco 2y agoThe logo SUN Microsystems had is a 4-way ambigram with rotational symmetries. Designed by Professor Vaughan Pratt of Stanford, the logo features 4 interleaved copies of the word "sun", forming a rotationally symmetric ambigram, with the letters U and N in each word forming the letter S for the next word. You can read the word "sun" if you rotate your head by 45°, 135°, 225°, or 315°. * Objectively according to me. :P
- ChrisGranger 2y agoIt reminds me of Columbia Sportswear's logo [0] but it's cleverer. There's a third logo that reminds me of both of those but I've forgotten whose it was... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Sportswear#/media/File:Columbia_Sportswear_Co_logo.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Sportswear#/media/Fil...
- jonathankoren 2y agoI wonder if rotating each quadrant by 90 degrees was an effort to avoid trademark confusion. Also, I would have liked some Sun swag from Columbia.
- cosmotic 2y agoWow, now that you pointed it out, I just saw the "un" part of that. Until now, I just thought it was four 'S's.
- rhelz 2y agoYet one more amazing thing that Dr. Vaughan Pratt invented. Its depressing how big of a gap there is between the top computer scientists and everybody else.
- bitwize 2y agoEvery time I see someone wearing a Columbia jacket I think "were they once an employee or client of Sun?"
- apercu 2y agoI think it's an objectively "clever" logo but not necessarily objectively "beautiful" one. Does that make sense?
- passwordoops 2y agoI think you just introduced subjectivity to the conversation
- frizlab 2y agoBeauty is always subjective isn’t it?
- Lammy 2y agoThis logo is also technically a swastika in the heraldic sense (four-armed cross, arms bent at 90 degrees, with rotational symmetry).
- office_drone 2y agoReminds me of "square Kufic" and this book https://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/ https://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/
- s1291 2y agois that "Al-Khwarizmi" in Arabic?
- office_drone 2y agoYup. The namesake of 'algorithm'.
- wesamco 2y agoOh wow, this book cover art-piece has the same concept, but even more impressive; the Sun logo has 3 "sun" words in the logo not 4 (I know I also thought they were 4 initially), but this art piece has the word "Al-Khwarizmi" 4 times, one for each edge of the square. Edit: I can't count, both have 4 words, one word for each edge.
- ortusdux 2y agoI've always been fond of Taiwan's recycling symbol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recycle_symbol_Taiwan.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recycle_symbol_Taiwan.s...
- 29athrowaway 2y agoLooks questionable.
- Doctor_Fegg 2y agoSimilar concept to Margaret Calvert’s logo for Glasgow (Prestwick) Airport, which doubles up as the Scottish saltire: https://www.logohistories.com/p/glasgow-airport-logo-margaret-calvert-1964 https://www.logohistories.com/p/glasgow-airport-logo-margare...
- frogpelt 2y agoI read this as "doubles up as Scottish satire" and clicked trying to find the satire. Very cool logo, though, so I wasn't disappointed.
- idiotsecant 2y agoYes, this is the kind of logo that will last for a thousand years. Really gives a sense of spaciousness, I feel like I can really stretch my elbows in this logo.
- gklitz 2y agoOk, with that one there’s definately a swastika and it’s not even slightly hidden.
- feoren 2y agoI can't make myself see a swastika even if I look for one. Can we really not use any symbology with 90-degree rotational symmetry but no mirror symmetries, ever again?
- RoyalHenOil 2y ago
- mindcrime 2y agoIt is nice, unless you stare at it too long - in which case you might suddenly find yourself gibbering madly, staring at the walls, and chanting Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Iä! Iä! Iä! Iä! over and over again...
- alt0_ 2y agoI didn't get the reference, but thanks for the heads-up.
- crmd 2y agoSilicon Graphics is my favorite logo from this era, but Sun is solid. I have great memories of being assigned my very own Ultra 2 desktop with Creator3D graphics on the first day of my first tech job.
- sgt 2y agoMy favorite logos of computer companies of that era: 1. NeXT Computer 2. Sun Microsystems 3. Silicon Graphics (SGI) - the silver metallic one 4. Digital (DEC) 5. Norsk Data (with all those cute dots) 6. HP maybe ? Not sure about the rest. Any thoughts on other great logos of the era?
- oldnetguy 2y agoSGI had the best computers back then in my opinion. They were ahead of their time.
- masfoobar 2y ago> Silicon Graphics is my favorite logo from this era... Agreed. The 3D-pipe cube was beautiful. I believe they changed this logo to a simple "sgi" one by year 2000. tbh, if the company still existed today, with the 3d-pipe logo, I would still class it my favourite logo. :-) I really wanted one of their machines back in the day.. being a teenager. Of course, you need to money for one. How times changed when 3d cards came along, giving us SGI-powered-like machines for a fraction of the price.
- 23B1 2y agoHave stared at this logo for far too long, at some terminal in the middle of a too-cold server room, contemplating my life choices.
- maxkonrad 2y agoYou should check out the Turkish Airlines logo (THY is the abbreviation for Turkish Airlines in Turkish) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines. If you look at it from different angles, you can see "Thy" and, at the same time, a flying wild goose, symbolizing the airline's ability to cover long distances and soar high above.
- gklitz 2y agoIt looks kinda like there’s a hidden swastika in there but it goes away once you start to look for it.
- echelon_musk 2y agoI have a circa 2000 Specialized Hardrock Comp 17" white/blue mountain bike and I always thought it was cool that the aluminum frame was "Designed by Sun Microsystems" complete with this logo.
- jamesdhutton 2y agoAnd it's a perfect match to Sun's slogan: "The Network is the Computer."
- fweimer 2y agoIsn't it ”We are the dot in oracle.com” nowadays?
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoAnd it didn't cost $100,000 to create, either! [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT#Original_NeXT_team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT#Original_NeXT_team
- lttlrck 2y agoThat seems like a good deal considering he delivered the entire brand identity and name.
- yencabulator 2y ago"un un un un"
- abraxas 2y agoThe original Silicon Graphics logo[1] and the Nintendo 64[2]were up there with Sun's in my opinion 1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/SGI_O2_front.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/SGI_O2_f... 2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/Nintendo_64_Logo.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/Nintendo_64_L...
- fmajid 2y agoI like the Plessey Electronics (UK) logo. Looks like an oscilloscope trace, but when you look closely, it’s like “plessey” in lower case.
- DrNosferatu 2y agoClever? Most definitely so. Beautiful? I’ve seen better.
- Latrina 2y agoI agree. I miss Sun..
- wesamco 2y agoI just realized that the PNG file for the logo hosted on wikimedia, is 232KB! That is a lot, that's unnecessarily large for such a simple logo, so I used vtracer, a raster image to SVG vectorizer, written in Rust, and SVGO, a SVG optimizer, to create the SVG file version of the logo, it is 16KB. a 93.1% improvement in size! (and they look the same) The 2 commands used: > wget 'https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png' --2024-05-14 17:33:31-- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png Loaded CA certificate '/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt' Resolving upload.wikimedia.org (upload.wikimedia.org)... 185.15.59.240, 2a02:ec80:300:ed1a::2:b Connecting to upload.wikimedia.org (upload.wikimedia.org)|185.15.59.240|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 237484 (232K) [image/png] Saving to: ‘SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png’ SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigr 100%[=============================================>] 231.92K 821KB/s in 0.3s 2024-05-14 17:33:32 (821 KB/s) - ‘SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png’ saved [237484/237484] > vtracer --input SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png --output SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png.svg Conversion successful. > svgo --precision 1 -o SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png-opt2.svg -i SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png.svg Done in 73 ms! 63.162 KiB - 76% = 15.148 KiB > ls -lah total 114M drwxr-xr-x 2 wis wis 4.0K May 14 17:34 . drwxr-xr-x 4 wis wis 4.0K May 14 17:29 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 wis wis 232K Jan 12 2019 SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png -rw-r--r-- 1 wis wis 16K May 14 17:34 SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png-opt2.svg -rw-r--r-- 1 wis wis 64K May 14 17:33 SUN_microsystems_logo_ambigram.png.svg Makes you think how much the Wikimedia Foundation can improve the loading experience for users and save in bandwidth costs, if they optimize all the PNG raster images that can/should be optimized, which this file is a prime example of.
- npteljes 2y agoI think it's up to the users themselves, who sometimes also write bots like this. I have encountered a lot of such effort when clicking on an image, especially on the more popular ones. As an example, check this out: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tux.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tux.svg
- sys_64738 2y ago"We make the network"
- matrix12 2y agoIt's also the back side of the Facebook Thumbs up sign.