The Worm is Back: A Discussion with Designer Richard Danne, NASA
“NASA Worm creator Richard Danne answers your questions in a conversation about the relevance of the Worm in the 1970s and today, and why the Worm continues to be so popular, now available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLe4lOrj3Ck. Bettina Inclán, Associate Administrator for Communications, hosts this conversation, which includes a presentation from NASA’s Worm Working Group on the philosophy of the comeback of the logo, led by David Rager and Bert Ulrich.”
LOST IN SPACE; Meatballs Devour Worms!!, NY Times, 10 January 1999.
“For the past six years NASA has been trying to wipe out the tubular red logo (”the worm”) that has symbolized space exploration since 1975. The chief exterminator is Dan Goldin, NASA’s administrator, who says that the original 1958 emblem (”the meatball”) better commemorates the program’s mission. But wasting the worm, which has adorned everything from welcome mats to wind tunnels, is taking longer than Goldin would like. Keith Cowing, an ex-NASA payload manager who documents worm sightings on the NASA Watch Web site raps Goldin’s subordinates for obsessively hiding the worm from the boss.”
Keith’s note: I sent a note to NASA PAO the other day: “Decades before the current leadership’s time at NASA, as you know, I ran “worm watch” on NASAWatch which traced Dan Goldin’s attempt to eradicate the worm. I believed in the worm when no one else did. I even ended up in the New York Times as a result. I had many interactions over the years with worm designer Richard Danne. Bettina asked me to submit a question for him to answer in the video but she did not include it. This is the question I submitted to Bettina:”
“The worm logo is on the records carried by the twin Voyagers which are now traversing interstellar space. It adorns the Hubble which has opened the universe to us. Simple question: what is it like to have something so simple in form spring from your mind – something that goes on to become the symbol that adorns humanity’s tools for exploring the universe?”
I got this response from Richard Danne today:
Hello Keith! Well it finally happened… and the Worm is Back. Thanks for this great question which I wish had been asked in the Town Hall video. My response: I’m fully aware of your ongoing support of the Logotype over these many years, and I greatly appreciate it. One of the things I’m most proud of is that those extraordinary missions, Voyager and Hubble, still proudly carry our mark through interstellar space. Even when the program was scuttled, I could still point to that profound fact. It’s a glorious feeling to have helped create one of the most famous logos of the last half century. “Simplicity” is one of our guiding principles and it played a major role in the development of the NASA worm. We knew back then as we know today, that if a mark is to be useful and successful for decades it must be born of simplicity. I think we got it right… and all has been proven out over some 46 years now. It’s thrilling, especially seeing how the younger people have gravitated to it. Very rewarding with great validation! Thanks again Keith for your good work and long-term support. And, as always, Onward! Dick”
Getting rid of the NASA Worm never made any sense even as it was happening. That logos act as kind of markers in time that encapsulate entire eras, and not just transient branding, was something understood as its elimination was ongoing. It’s not some post-2000s nostalgia thing. Major companies have been using “retro logos” for 40 years or more when they want to associate a product with an idea, time or concept. It was never any different with NASA. The meatball and the worm were never in competition anymore than the Apple Computer stripe logo and the four logos they’ve had since then (2 flat variants, 2 faux “3D”).
I always felt Goldin did it because he wanted to make NASA boring and to bring it’s public face in line with the reduce ambitions of “faster, cheaper better”. Ya know… replace nascent starfleet with it’s marketing-friendly adventure logo with a more conventional, a little more boring hard-to-market- “government-style” logo. Any kid can write the worm logo with a red marker. The meatball? Good luck. The meatball and the NOAA logo are almost cousins. Why? I mean, look at the time. Mars was off the table. The ambitions of a fleet of vehicles to support Space Station Freedom was long gone. The dream of launching shuttles dozens of times a year was well in the past. It really seems like reverting to the meatball – still a great logo mind you – was a symbolic attempt to put NASA in a more confined (cheaper) government box.
It’s great the worm is back. But to me, an early millennial, it’ll always mean Space Shuttle Program to me. It’ll always be what’s on the wing and cargo door in my minds eye. I hope that while we keep it around and use it, as we go forward with commercial, build Gateway, go to the moon and go to Mars we have a new “third” logo to use along side it, one specific to this era so that a hundred years from now when NASA is trying to send manned missions to the moons of Jupiter or something, this era we live in now will have an identifying design of its own distinct from Apollo / Classic NASA (meatball) and the Shuttle Era (the Worm).
>Major companies have been using “retro logos”
Sometimes a logo has to stay. i.e. when Pratt & Whitney moved to a modern abstract logo from their previous, some responded, “does that mean P&W no longer makes dependable engines?” The old logo returned.
The worm has always looked like some art major’s concoction: UGLY!
I wouldn’t go as far as ‘ugly’ – though I prefer the meatball for what it’s worth. I think there’s room for both of them.
Glad to see a big new Meatball up at JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/im…
I appreciated Goldin bringing back the meatball, with all its sense of nostalgia and glory days of Apollo and such. But it was wrong to lose the worm then. Great to have it making a come back and ironic that nostalgia is part of the reason, just as bringing back the meatball was years ago. And what a great response from Danne to your question, Keith.
just saying,
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
I’m personally a fan of the meatball, but, I’d be open to compromising with those who love the worm and updating the meatball to include the worm rather than the Space Meatball Font. Best of both worlds, besides, the world could use a little compromise right now and NASA is a perfect place to start given such a robust history of international cooperation. Just a thought.