HIGH TECH TRADEMARKS
John Mendenhall
John Mendenhall: HIGH TECH TRADEMARKS. New York: Art Direction Book Company, 1985. First edition. Quarto. Black fabricoid titled in silver. Printed dust jacket. [154] pp. 563 black and white examples. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. Inexplicably uncommon.
7.5 x 10.25 hardcover book with 154 pages and 563 black and white examples of high tech trademarks representing the state of the art, circa 1984. Fascinating as both a curated conspectus and a Graphic Design time capsule published concurrently with the market introduction of the Apple Macintosh and Adobe postscript technology.
Includes work by Paul Rand, Saul Bass, P. Scott Makela, Yusaku Kamekura, Lawrence Bender, Woody Pirtle, In House, Primo Angeli, Michael Mabry, April Greiman, Chermayeff & Geismar, Josef Müller-Brockman, Susan Kare and many others.
Appendix includes Apple Macintosh menu icons by Susan Kare, and IBM dictating equipment symbols by Paul Rand. In "The Trademark as an Illustrative Device" Rand wrote that "the trademark becomes doubly meaningful when it is used both as an identifying device and an illustration, each working hand in hand to enhance and dramatize the effect of the whole."
Susan Kare (b. 1954) is an artist and graphic designer best known for her interface elements and typeface contributions to the first Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. She was also Creative Director (and one of the original employees) at NeXT, the company formed by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in 1985 and has since worked for Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, and Pinterest. In recognition of her design work, Kare was awarded the American Institute of Graphic Arts medal in April 2018. In October, 2019, Kare was awarded the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.
John Mendenhall is a professor of graphic design and design history at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Previously he designed computer type fonts at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory in Urbana, Illinois, and was a graphic designer for the Agency for International Development. Mendenhall received a BFA degree from the University of Illinois in Urbana and an MA from Stanford University. He has taught at several universities and is the author of five books on trademark design.