New hands of Cupertino
After “The hands of Cupertino” and “More hands of Cupertino” here are new examples of the prominent use of hands in Apple’s promotional iconography.
The images featured are from the new iPod lineup introduced in the September of 2009.
All images are © and courtesy of Apple.
The Lombard Ad: words in motion
The launch of the Macintosh PowerBook G3 “Lombard” in 1999 marks a new stylistic direction for Apple television ads and animated movies.
The use of typography is a mainstay of Apple which has used it since the early Eighties to market products and most of all its brand. The ad for the Lombard PowerBook (also known as “Bronze Keyboard”) takes the use of typgraphy even further marrying the images of the laptop witha series of words in many languages (actually the same word and/or concept) alternating and speeding towards the viewer.
This style will be later used not only in promoting the follow-up, the PowerBook Pismo, but will also be part of all the intros to Apple’s operating systems.
In the 1999 ad “slim” and “slank” were Apple’s key words, still set in Apple Garamond as would the similar Mac OS 9 intro.
The last of the “classic” Mac OS also started the “Welcome” ritual which has been used (so far) in all of the Mac OS X intros since 2001 although set in the Lucida Sans and from 10.4 with an added 3D effect.
And you’ll see…
Written by Steve Hayden and Lee Clow, produced by Chiat/Day and directed by Ridley Scot with a budget of 900.000 USD the “1984″ Macintosh spot was “officially” shown on 22 January 1984 during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, a match between the Washington Redskins and theTampa Stadiums.
The ad, which was then broadcast in a shortened 30 seconds version, borrowed the core of George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and its dystopian future under a “Big Brother”, unanimously perceived as an allusion to IBM, Apple’s adversary on the market.
More hands of Cupertino
In “The hands Cupertino” it’s been stated that notwithstanding Apple’s long and heterogeneous output there is a constant in its promotional iconography: the use of hands.
To make the point more clear here are more examples, taken from a very wide spectrum of Apple products, strategies and eras.
The hands of Cupertino
If you take a look at Apple’s output of information and promotional material there is one thing that stands out: the prominent use of hands.
During its’ thirty year the Cupertino company has conceived, produced and release an incredible amount of products and strategies but has been incredibly consistent in its imagery. Be it the need to explain the workings of the mouse, to show the very small footprint of its computers on the desktop or the reduced thickness of a player, the professional results one can get, the revolutionary interfaces or just how easy the networking is, Infinite Loop’s “hands on” and extremely personal approach is unmistakable and very clear from the iconography of Apple’s ads throughout its history.
