JKR

4. Iconic design is never about just one thing.

Being iconic isn’t just about a distinctive logo – it’s about all the visual ingredients acting in concert to proclaim the core proposition – a gestalt of design elements.

To draw an analogy, its fairly safe to say that Marilyn Monroe was an icon – she was, perhaps still is, the definitive sex symbol. She achieved this among a crowd of equally blonde, curvy but ultimately doomed rivals through her particular gestures, costumes, breathless delivery & that little beauty spot (a gestalt of distinctive elements). It helped that her films (the “product”) were better than Jayne Mansfield’s, but probably more important was that her producers recognised the value of typecasting (which created a brand where once there was an actress).

Similarly, Apple didn’t become iconic when they launched the iPod. The groundwork was being laid many years earlier. Their long proclaimed “point” was that they thought differently. From their name outwards, they provide a more personable, “human” brand than technology-focused computer companies such as IBM or Microsoft:

Apple combined these aspects in design terms when they styled a PC in a funky lifestyle manner with bubblegum colours. The iMac didn’t rely on a logo – rather it is the unification of brand philosophy, material, shape and colour, which resulted in an iconic design expression.

The iPod equally bucked the convention that MP3 players with more buttons had more functionality, and the cliché that a chrome or black finish meant a technologically advanced product.

From ‘think different’ to ‘do different’:

By styling technology in an un-technological way, the iconography amplified the spirit Apple always claimed to have. Apples’ iconography is a gestalt of a “human” approach and “human” execution.

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