2020 may be the year of the pandemic. But we prefer to think of it as the year of the Worm.
Danne & Blackburn’s iconic NASA logo debuted in the early ’70s, and was used in spaceflight and across innumerable agency touchpoints before being retired in 1992. (Check out the actual pitch deck that sold NASA on the logo here.) Earlier this year, NASA delighted designers and space aficionados alike when it announced that the logo was being returned to skies on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle.
On the day of the planned launch, Standards Manual also announced a new book, The Worm, featuring more than 300 images of the logo in use.
Now, a new initiative is seeking to put the Worm directly into your hands—quite literally. Register Seven is Kickstarting a project to bring the logo to life in desktop sculpture form.
“The logo is typically viewed as a landmark of typographic design, but I wanted to make it more 3D and tactile,” a representative for the project told us in an email. “So the goal was to fuse aerospace-grade machining and materials with the iconic typography NASA fans know and love.”
As for that machining: the characters are crafted from a block of 6061-T6 aluminum—“the same method commonly used to make parts which are bound for space, Mars, or other high-performance applications. … It is absolutely overkill, completely unnecessary, and we hope you like it!”
The sculptures also featured anodized coating (“you might recognize anodizing from the NASA A7-L pressure suit Apollo 11 astronauts wore on the moon”), and measure 2 x 1 x 7.5". They come in three colors: Gray, NASA Red (naturally), and black.
At around $85, a set isn’t cheap … but being that it’s the year of the Worm, well, sometimes it’s OK to splurge.
Find out more about the project here.
