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url: /design-history/apple-logo-history/
title: "Apple Logo History | Rob Janoff, Bite, Six Stripes | TGDS"
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# Apple Logo History | Rob Janoff, Bite, Six Stripes | TGDS

Apple logo (Rob Janoff, 1977)
Design history · Iconic works
The logo that survived forty years of revision without losing its shape.
The Apple logo — an apple with a bite out of its right side — was designed by Rob Janoff in 1977 and has survived four major revisions and the transition from print to digital without losing its underlying shape. One of the most studied logos in graphic design history and a reference case for our brand identity teaching at TGDS.
History & context
The Apple logo is usually credited to Rob Janoff. The logo that Janoff replaced is sometimes forgotten. It was drawn by Ronald Wayne, the third Apple co-founder alongside Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, in 1976. Wayne’s mark was an ink illustration of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree, with a quotation from Wordsworth around the border. It appeared on the Apple I computer manual. Wayne sold his ten per cent stake in Apple back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800 in April 1976. Jobs dropped the Newton illustration the following year. The combined decision has been described as one of the most expensive mistakes in business history — Wayne’s stake would be worth hundreds of billions — but it’s worth noting that the Newton drawing was quietly retired because it simply didn’t work at small reproduction sizes. For Apple II’s launch, Jobs hired Regis McKenna Advertising in Palo Alto. Art director Rob Janoff was handed the brief: a logo that could signal colour display capability (the Apple II’s selling point), work at small sizes, and project a friendly, accessible tone very different from the mainframe seriousness of IBM. Janoff drew an apple. He took a bite out of the right side — partly to distinguish it from a cherry at small sizes, partly because the word “bite” had useful computing connotations (a byte). He added six rainbow stripes. The whole design took about a week. The mark has been through four major revisions since. Monochrome in 1998 when Jobs returned and the company pivoted to minimalism. Aqua in 2001 with Mac OS X. Flat in 2013 with iOS 7. The underlying silhouette has been identical across all four.
Design principles
The Apple logo works because of a handful of precise design decisions. The bite. The most analysed element of the mark. Janoff’s stated reasons: distinguish the apple from a cherry at small sizes, and introduce a moment of visual wit. Rejected explanations: reference to Alan Turing, reference to Genesis, reference to the byte. All post-hoc. Janoff confirmed the distinguish-from-a-cherry explanation in interviews. The leaf angle. The leaf sits at about 90° to the bite — making the silhouette asymmetric but balanced. A symmetric leaf would turn the apple into an abstract circle; the offset leaf keeps the apple legible as an apple. The six-colour stripes (1977–1998). Chosen to signal the Apple II’s colour-display capability. Stripe order (green, yellow, orange, red, purple, blue) was selected by Janoff for visual balance rather than spectral order. The stripes were technically difficult to reproduce consistently — one reason they were dropped in 1998. Surviving abstraction. The single most important design achievement of the Apple mark is that its underlying silhouette survives complete revisions of its surface treatment. Six colour stripes, monochrome, glass, flat — all are recognisable Apple logos because the apple shape is the logo. “I wanted to simplify, and by taking a bite out of the side, it prevented the apple from looking like a cherry.” — Rob Janoff, interview 2009
Key works (variations)
Ronald Wayne’s Newton mark (1976) — the first Apple logo, used on the Apple I manual. Ink drawing, ornate, literary. Too complex for small reproduction; withdrawn within a year. Janoff six-colour apple (1977) — the foundational mark. Used for 21 years across Apple II, Macintosh, Lisa, LaserWriter and the 1980s marketing programme that included the “1984” ad and the “Think Different” campaign. Monochrome revision (1998) — Landor Associates’ simplified mark, dropped the stripes. Used across the iMac, iBook, iPod, iPhone and iPad launches. Aqua (2001) — glossy 3-D rendering for Mac OS X and iMac G4. Shape unchanged; surface treatment a product of the Aqua interface language. Flat (2013, ongoing) — iOS 7 era pivot to flat design. Returns the mark to a simple silhouette. This is the logo Apple currently ships.
Influence & legacy
The Apple logo occupies a peculiar position in graphic design history. It is one of the most recognised marks in the world, and yet it is not a reference logo for professional brand identity designers in the way that Paul Rand’s IBM or Raymond Loewy’s Shell are. Its influence is more subtle. It demonstrates that a mark can survive complete surface re-treatments without losing its identity — a property that matters enormously in an era of app-icon redesign cycles, social-media profile photos, animated logos and variable-colour brand systems. Its longevity also argues against a particular kind of rebranding logic. Apple has never done a “refresh”. Every revision has been a surface treatment. The underlying silhouette has been stable for over four decades. Very few modern brand systems can claim the same continuity. In design-history pedagogy, the Apple mark is taught as a counter-example to the “a logo must communicate what a company does” school of thought. Apple’s logo does not communicate computing. It does not communicate premium pricing. It does not communicate innovation. It communicates Apple. The brand fills the mark with meaning, not the other way around.
Learn at TGDS
The Apple logo’s revision history is a reference case-study in our brand identity teaching. If it interests you, the most direct next steps are: Certificate IV in Design (CUA40720) — our flagship qualification. Brand identity modules work with the Apple mark as one of several iconic case studies. 26 logos & their design evolution — our long-running case study on how famous marks change over time. Includes the Apple mark. 6 things to keep in mind when designing a logo — practical rules that illuminate why the bite in the apple works. Paul Rand — the designer whose IBM mark was Jobs’ reference when he hired Janoff for the Apple identity. Nike Swoosh — another iconic mark from the same decade, with a similarly minimal silhouette-based approach.
Further reading
Rob Janoff, Apple logo design background — Janoff’s own account of the 1977 brief and execution. Paul Kunkel, Apple Design: The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group (Graphis, 1997). Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs (Simon & Schuster, 2011). The definitive biography; covers the Wayne-to-Janoff transition and the 1998 monochrome pivot. Alan Deutschman, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs (Broadway Books, 2000). On the 1997–1998 identity re-simplification. Logo Histories — Apple logo — visual archive of all major iterations. Cooper Hewitt — Apple in the collection.