NASA Logo Designer Bashes Trump’s Space Force Logo, TMZ
“Richard Danne — the designer of a NASA logo from 1975 — went off on Trump’s Space Force artwork. Danne ripped into the designs released by the Trump Administration … telling TMZ, “This logo effort is typical of the present administration: impulsive, ill-advised, superficial, and second-rate.” “A random student from the Los Angeles Art Center could put these logos to shame … They are, in a word: sophomoric!” Richard is peeved some of the Space Force designs were lifts from past NASA logos. “The images are totally derivative from NASA graphics but are — All flash and no substance, and comical really.”

Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member...

33 replies on “NASA Logo Designer Flunks Space Force Logo Designers”

  2. I’ve got to agree – all these designs really *are* quite childish and derivative efforts. Several have already attracted online mockery.

  3. They may be a crime against art and design, but the real crime is that they’re only being used to raise money for the Trump campaign! They have no official standing, but the public doesn’t realize it.

    1. What is funny is how they are getting so many folks who don’t like President Trump to promote it for them by writing stories and putting it on blogs. Yes, their core followers are laughing at it, but it is still getting the funding message out for them for free. The spirit of Tom Sawyer is alive and well 🙂

      1. I’m tempted to say it’s more like Victor Lustig or Carlo (Charles) Ponzi than Tom Sawyer… The connection between fund raising and government policy is a bit too close for me to call it clearly ethical. But for what it is, it’s fairly well done and demonstrably successful.

  4. I like the idea of having a Space focused defense organization.

    I really, really agree with that the logo’s put forward are horrifically poor art work.

  5. It would be interesting to see just how many shirts they are selling, and the money they are raising for President Trump’s campaign given all the publicity they are getting. Sure a lot are laughing it at, but its not costing them a penny so if even 1 percent seeing posts like this buy or donate it’s revenue.

  6. I was thinking Gerry Anderson (Thunderbirds, Space:1999) instead of Irwin Allen, but the same basic idea. Then you’ve got to have the titles start out with a stentorian announcer going “SSPAAACCE FFOOORRCCE!”

  7. “Space Force design were lifts from past NASA logos”. Now suddenly their “sophomoric” and and “comical really”. Sounds like a case of Trump dersnsngement syndrome.

    It looks like they quickly whipped together some logos to put on gear to sell for campaigning. I know of a NASA project in climate science that spent the first year working on their logo. They didn’t get much done in the first year except a really nice logo- and the program was cancelled.

    Do you really expect a shoestring campaign to spend a lot of time designing logos? Only the taxpayers end up paying for fancy logos on gov projects. Campaigns throw things together to sell stuff.

    1. These supposed proposed logos are actually quite horrible. The style is far more like a comic book cartoon than an official government agency logo. And ripping off NASA logos is quite bizarre when the USAF has a long history in space.

      I’m sure they were put together and approved by the White House not anyone who’s actually in the USAF.

      1. It’s not the White House or USAF doing this- or any gov agency. It’s a campaign group. They’re just throwing a logo just to quickly sell stuff. NASA is the public face on space technology. It reflects their ignorance regarding what the space force is really about.

        Those of us who actually work or have worked in NASA and/or the USAF know this- and would have come up with a better logo to represent the actual mission of the new Space Force.

        The campaigns are made up of people from a cross section of the the public. Those doing this logo are just throwing together something they think look neat, will sell, and most of all cut-and-paste easy. The cool NASA perspective sells better and looks more exciting than DOD weapons/reconnaissance to the public. The campaign people doing this logo stuff are probably as ignorant about the space force as their logos indicate.

      2. After reading the article linked(with some excerpts), the logo effort was handled very high up in the campaign without the normal coordination- saying the campaign went rogue. So another possibility besides incompetence is that the campaign purposely did this to make PTrump look silly and undermine either the Space Force concept or PTrump personally. Given the very high involvement of campaign officials, I doubt it was just incompetence.

        Excerpts:
        “The Space Force has caused its first collateral damage, exacerbating tensions between the White House and Trump’s re-election campaign.”

        “What happened: Multiple sources tell me White House officials were surprised when, shortly after the vice president gave a sober speech announcing Trump administration plans to develop a Space Force, the campaign blasted out an email fundraising off the idea.”

        “We had an objectively good roll out…and then the campaign does that and makes it all look like a joke,” one White House official told me. “It was done with zero White House input. Campaign went rogue.”

        https://www.axios.com/space…

  8. I’m glad to have already read Dave Fowler’s comment in an earlier thread that the Institute of Heraldry at Fort Belvoir has the responsibility for designing military emblems. “SF” needs to have something the other five branch emblems have — a semblance of military ethos & dignity.

    These “space happy stickers” all look like the artists are either over-the-hill community “artistes,” breathing Happy Vapors and channeling the ’60s (Age of Aquarius on continuous loop), or are they are simply runner-ups from Ms Wormwood’s third-grade spacey-art class,

    My vote (from same earlier thread) is still for something along the lines of AFSPC’s emblem. THAT one, at least, won’t cause you to hum theme songs from old Saturday morning cartoons

    1. These are not, nor will they ever be, official logos. These are just graphics to raise money for the Trump 2020 campaign.

  10. Speaking of bad logos or slogans, does anyone know who decided that the Strategic Air Command’s official moto would be, “Peace is Our Profession”? Somehow I can’t see General LeMay coming up with that.

    1. It actually started as a recruiting slogan under Gen. Power, the third commander of SAC. Here is the reference for it.

      https://fas.org/spp/eprint/…

      “Under Power’s command, SAC adopted the slogan “Peace Is Our Profession”.(8) This slogan can be viewed as a result of SAC’s underlying position: nuclear war was considered a final act. By maintaining alert crews and planes loaded with weapons, the U.S.was dispatching a message to the Soviet Union and other hostile countries.”

      “8. Polmar, 60. During an reenlistment drive in 1957, a status board was maintained to reflect the names of commanders who met the quota. The theme of the reenlistment drive was Maintaining Peace is Our Profession. When a painter could not find room to accommodate all of the words, project officers decided to omit the word “Maintaining” from the sign. Visiting
      Headquarters SAC, Colonel Charles T. Van Vliet, Eighth Air Force Director of Information, saw the sign and liked it. He took the idea back to Westover AFB and placed a large sign that read “Peace is Our Profession” at Westover’s main gate.”

      1. For those of us (the few, the proud, the “SACumcized”) who proudly served under the motto and the logo with the mailed fist, lightning bolts, etc., the current motto of Air Force Global Strike Command, “To Assure and Deter” is a poor substitute. Let’s hope that whatever emblem and motto is adopter for US Space Force, will be a positive representation of the mission, that will help inspire the members.

        1. I’ve no objections with that. I’ve just always found it ironic that SAC had “Peace is Our Profession” as a motto when its most famous commander advocated preemptive first strikes on at least one occasion. I didn’t mean to imply that SAC’s mission or members reflect all of LeMay’s views.

          1. You need to remember that General LeMay was from the Pearl Harbor generation of officers, one of those that warned of that type of tactic on the part of the Japanese government and he didn’t want to see the U.S. blind sided again.

          2. More to the point, there is a common view within the US military (going back to General Grant) that a short war, no matter how destructive, is better than a long, drawn out war. That the casualty rate is less important than the total number of casualties. I believe that was part of General LeMay’s logic. (And, in the movie _Fail_Safe_, described by one character saying that the difference between twenty million killed in a nuclear war, and a hundred million killed was, “eighty million.”)

          3. Like anyone else, Old Iron A$$’s views changed over time. Besides, he wasn’t the one who coined the phrase, that was Tommy Powers. You know, LeMay initially opposed missiles over bombers, but came around to them as a complement to aircraft.

  11. A junior campaign operative worked them up on a desktop graphics program in about twenty minutes.

  12. To be fair, blame the person, or people, in the Administration who approved the logos. Artists tend to go whatever direction the client wants. And if the client has no idea what they want, how is that the artist’s fault?

    That said, these logos look nothing like official military logos. That says a lot in and of itself about who approved them.

    1. To be clear, the logos are from the campaign, not the Administration. There is a lot of confusion and muddying of the waters about what should be a bright line separating the two entities (not that the current administration has the ethics to keep the two separate).

    2. These logos were put out by the Trump reelection campaign to sell merchandise. They have no official standing in the government.

    1. Not bad at all. Can you do a version with a wingless vertically-landing eagle?
      Oddly, “The Space Force” rings in my mind like “Teh Facebooks”.

      1. I like it. Maybe the eagle shown as it was on the Apollo XI patch (three-quarter view with wings partly spread for landing…probably without the lunar landscape under it…although, maybe someday soon!)

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