Field Journal 8: Corporate Identification - NBC

A major design activity around the 1950s and 1960s was giving visual identity to Corporate America. One of my favorite corporate logo is the colorful peacock of NBC.
NBC's very first official logo was created in 1942 based off of the logo that they had established for their radio station. The jagged waves on the left represent the radio station and the waves on the right represent television. This logo known as the microphone logo was their way of keeping their radio and tv networks connected.

In 1954, the Xylophone logo was introduced and was followed by the three-tone NBC chime, the same chin that is heard still today on NBC.

Color television became a big deal. With television now being in color, it allowed the NBC logo to be in color as well. In 1959 Fred Knapp created the first colorful and animated peacock logo. At this point, NBC was on the for front of having a  colorful logo which helped to promote color television.



A few years later in 1959, a new logo was released featuring the NBC letters simply together in black. This logo could be seen by itself or along with the colorful peacock and is known as the snake logo.


Three years later in 1962, the colorful peacock was redesigned to have smooth round edges and different colors.


The simple NBC logos were no longer in 1975 when they introduced a completely new  logo of a stylized "N". Unfortunately they logo did not last long since NBC was sued by Nebraska Educational TV who had been using the logo for 2 years before NBC introduced theirs.

In 1979, the abstract N had not completely left. A new logo was created with the return of the peacock. The logo combined the abstract N with the peacock on top of it, known as the "Proud N" logo.  The peacock symbol was originally made to advertise that NBC was broadcasting in color yet the peacock soon became NBC's primary logo.


In 1986, the Peacock logo which was introduced and redesigned by Chermayeff & Geismar, is still the current logo for NBC.  The current logo's peacock is made up of six feathers, reducing the number down from eleven feathers in the previous logos. The six feathers represent the six devisions of NBC; News, Sports, Entertainment, Stations, Networks and Production. This logo is one of the worlds more recognizable logos.

Fred Knapp sure knew what he was doing when he created the first colored peacock logo for NBC, and now look how far it has come.

Credits:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_logos
http://www.etiziano.com/I_love_logo_design/history_of_the_nbc_logo.html