You probably think of the Apple logo and see that sleek, minimalist fruit with a bite taken out of it. It’s clean. It’s modern. It’s basically the definition of global branding. But honestly, the first logo of Apple looked like something pulled out of a dusty Victorian attic or a medieval manuscript. It wasn’t a graphic. It was a literal pen-and-ink drawing of Sir Isaac Newton sitting under a tree.
It was weird.
If you saw it on a laptop today, you’d think it was a craft beer label or a logo for a high-end calligraphy shop. Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and the often-forgotten third founder, Ronald Wayne, started this whole journey in a garage in 1976. While the "Steves" were busy with the guts of the Apple I, Wayne was the one who sat down to create the visual identity of the brand. He didn't go for "techy." He went for "intellectual."
Why the first logo of Apple was so complicated
Ronald Wayne wasn’t just a bystander; he wrote the original partnership agreement and the manual for the Apple I. When it came to the logo, he wanted to capture the "moment of discovery." He drew a scene featuring Isaac Newton leaning against a tree, an apple dangling precariously above his head, glowing with a sort of divine inspiration.
The detail was staggering.
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Around the border of this rectangular image, Wayne hand-lettered a quote from William Wordsworth: "Newton... a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." It’s incredibly poetic, but from a marketing perspective, it was a total disaster. Imagine trying to shrink that down to fit on the side of a modern smartphone. You wouldn’t see Newton; you’d see a blurry smudge of ink.
The short life of the Newton sketch
The logo only lasted about a year. By 1977, Steve Jobs realized that if they wanted to sell computers to the masses, they couldn't look like a 17th-century science academy. He felt the design was too cerebral and, frankly, too hard to reproduce at different sizes. Jobs wanted something that felt like a brand, not a book plate.
He turned to an agency called Regis McKenna, specifically a designer named Rob Janoff. Janoff is the man who finally gave us the "Rainbow Apple." He stripped away the poetry, the borders, and the physicist. He left us with a simple silhouette.
The bite that changed everything
When Janoff presented the new design, the "bite" was added for a very practical reason. It wasn't a tribute to Alan Turing (a popular myth) or a play on the word "byte." Janoff added the bite so that people wouldn't mistake the logo for a cherry or a tomato. It provided scale.
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Jobs loved the rainbow stripes because they highlighted that the Apple II was the first personal computer that could display colors on a screen. This was a massive deal at the time. Most computers were pumping out green text on black backgrounds. Apple was bringing technicolor to the home office.
The first logo of Apple was an artifact of a different era. It represented a time when the founders weren't sure if they were starting a revolution or just a niche hobbyist club. Wayne’s drawing was about the "why" of science—the lonely pursuit of truth. Janoff’s logo was about the "how"—the actual machine sitting on your desk.
What we can learn from Ronald Wayne’s design
There’s a bit of irony here. Ronald Wayne ended up selling his 10% stake in Apple for just $800 shortly after creating that logo because he was wary of the financial risks. If he’d held onto it, that stake would be worth hundreds of billions today. His logo, much like his tenure at the company, was a brief, intense flash of creativity that didn't quite fit the explosive growth that followed.
But don't dismiss the Newton logo as a failure. It set a tone. It established that Apple wasn't just another calculator company like Texas Instruments. It was a company obsessed with the "seas of thought." Even though the imagery changed, that DNA stayed.
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Why complexity fails in modern branding
Modern design is all about "glanceability." You should be able to recognize a brand in the corner of your eye while driving 70 mph or scrolling at light speed on a social feed. The first logo of Apple required you to stop, lean in, and read poetry.
- Scalability: The original was an etching. It didn't work on small chips or tiny decals.
- Clarity: A logo should communicate a feeling, not a biography.
- Evolution: Most great brands start with "too much" and spend decades stripping things away.
Practical steps for your own brand identity
If you’re looking at your own project or business, the story of Apple's first logo offers some pretty blunt lessons. Don't get married to your first idea. Jobs was willing to scrap a deeply personal, hand-drawn piece of art because it didn't serve the business goal.
- Test your logo at 16x16 pixels. If it looks like a blob, you have too much going on.
- Focus on one metaphor. Wayne tried to use Newton, gravity, discovery, and poetry all at once. Janoff used one fruit. One fruit won.
- Think about the medium. Apple’s first logo was meant for paper. Their second was meant for a plastic chassis. Design for where your product actually lives.
- Ignore the myths. People will make up stories about your brand (like the Turing bite myth). Let them. It creates mystery, as long as the design itself is solid enough to hold the weight.
Apple eventually moved away from Janoff’s rainbow in 1998, pivoting to the translucent blue and eventually the "monochrome" look we see today. But it all started with a guy under a tree, waiting for a spark of genius to hit him on the head.
Check your current branding against these historical pivots. If you’re clinging to a "Newton" when the world wants a "Rainbow," it might be time to simplify. History remembers the thinkers, but it buys the symbols.