Sun Microsystems logo: the most beautiful logo design (objectively)

Sun Microsystems logo: the most beautiful logo design (objectively)(commons.wikimedia.org)

74 points by wis 2 years ago | 54 comments

crmd 2 years ago |

Silicon 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.

masfoobar 2 years 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.

sgt 2 years ago | |

My 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?

pjerem 2 years ago | | |

As said above, Nintendo 64

oldnetguy 2 years ago | |

SGI had the best computers back then in my opinion. They were ahead of their time.

ortusdux 2 years ago |

I've always been fond of Taiwan's recycling symbol

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recycle_symbol_Taiwan.s...

Doctor_Fegg 2 years ago | |

Similar 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-margare...

frogpelt 2 years ago | | |

I 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 2 years ago | |

Yes, 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.

feoren 2 years ago | |

It's pretty, but it doesn't look cyclic to me. It looks like "throw everything in this pit in the middle, where nothing can leave." The "cycle" part is important in recycling! I actually prefer the U.S. recycling logo.

ortusdux 2 years ago | | |

The negative space makes the cycle. The green arrows represent items going to a central location to be recycled, while the white arrows represent them going back out into the world.

rpdillon 2 years ago | | |

The genius of the logo is similar to the genius of the FedEx logo: you have to look at the negative space to see the arrows heading back out.

frogpelt 2 years ago | | |

There are arrows pointing out.

gklitz 2 years ago | |

Ok, with that one there’s definately a swastika and it’s not even slightly hidden.

feoren 2 years ago | | |

I 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?

Hasnep 2 years ago | | |

There are swastikas all over Taiwan (卐, the Buddhist kind) so probably not a big deal for the designers.

RoyalHenOil 2 years ago | | |

I'm not seeing it.

saithound 2 years ago | |

Ugh, a seamless combination of a swastika with an arrow cross. I don't think this would go well in Europe.

(It's not just me. The page has a legal disclaimer:

"This image shows (or resembles) a symbol that was used by the National Socialist (NSDAP/Nazi) government of Germany or an organization closely associated to it, or another party which has been banned by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany." )

29athrowaway 2 years ago | |

Looks questionable.

apercu 2 years ago |

I think it's an objectively "clever" logo but not necessarily objectively "beautiful" one. Does that make sense?

passwordoops 2 years ago | |

I think you just introduced subjectivity to the conversation

frizlab 2 years ago | | |

Beauty is always subjective isn’t it?

wesamco 2 years ago |

I 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 2 years ago | |

I 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

jph 2 years ago |

It'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.

abraxas 2 years ago |

The 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_f...

2. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/Nintendo_64_L...

maxkonrad 2 years ago |

You should check out the Turkish Airlines logo (THY is the abbreviation for Turkish Airlines in Turkish)

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.

wesamco 2 years ago |

The 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 2 years ago | |

It 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/Fil...

jonathankoren 2 years ago | | |

I 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 2 years ago | |

Wow, now that you pointed it out, I just saw the "un" part of that. Until now, I just thought it was four 'S's.

mindcrime 2 years ago |

It 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_ 2 years ago | |

I didn't get the reference, but thanks for the heads-up.

office_drone 2 years ago |

Reminds me of "square Kufic" and this book https://jeffe.cs.illinois.edu/teaching/algorithms/

s1291 2 years ago | |

is that "Al-Khwarizmi" in Arabic?

office_drone 2 years ago | | |

Yup. The namesake of 'algorithm'.

AdmiralAsshat 2 years ago |

And it didn't cost $100,000 to create, either! [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXT#Original_NeXT_team

lttlrck 2 years ago | |

That seems like a good deal considering he delivered the entire brand identity and name.

echelon_musk 2 years ago |

I 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.

Lammy 2 years ago |

This logo is also technically a swastika in the heraldic sense (four-armed cross, arms bent at 90 degrees, with rotational symmetry).

23B1 2 years ago |

Have stared at this logo for far too long, at some terminal in the middle of a too-cold server room, contemplating my life choices.

bitwize 2 years ago |

Every time I see someone wearing a Columbia jacket I think "were they once an employee or client of Sun?"

jamesdhutton 2 years ago |

And it's a perfect match to Sun's slogan: "The Network is the Computer."

fweimer 2 years ago | |

Isn't it ”We are the dot in oracle.com” nowadays?

rhelz 2 years ago |

Yet 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.

fmajid 2 years ago |

I like the Plessey Electronics (UK) logo. Looks like an oscilloscope trace, but when you look closely, it’s like “plessey” in lower case.

gklitz 2 years ago |

It looks kinda like there’s a hidden swastika in there but it goes away once you start to look for it.

matrix12 2 years ago |

It's also the back side of the Facebook Thumbs up sign.

DrNosferatu 2 years ago |

Clever? Most definitely so.

Beautiful? I’ve seen better.

Latrina 2 years ago |

I agree. I miss Sun..

sys_64738 2 years ago |

"We make the network"

yencabulator 2 years ago |

"un un un un"

> 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