Who designed Apple’s rainbow logo in 1977 at Steve Jobs’s request?

Rob Janoff designed Apple’s rainbow logo in 1977 at Steve Jobs’s request. Janoff was an American graphic designer hired by the advertising agency Regis McKenna, which handled Apple’s marketing at the time.

The logo showed a bitten apple with horizontal rainbow-colored stripes. The bite helped distinguish the apple shape from a cherry or another round fruit, while the stripes gave the mark a friendly, colorful appearance. Janoff has said the bite also allowed the logo to be recognized at small sizes.

The design replaced Apple’s much more detailed early emblem, created by Ronald Wayne, which depicted Isaac Newton beneath an apple tree. Janoff’s simpler mark became one of the most recognizable corporate logos in the world.

Apple used the rainbow version from 1977 until the late 1990s, although later versions removed the stripes and used monochrome or metallic treatments. The logo is often mistakenly credited to Steve Jobs himself; Jobs commissioned and approved the work, but Janoff designed it.