- Take a look at the Star Wars logo for a second.
It's iconic, it's beautiful,
it's also subtly wrong.
This is the actual Star Wars logo.
Early on it went through quite a few designs.
Ranging from very weird,
to plain and boring,
and also just slightly off.
Near the end of the process as they
were trying o come up with which logo
would be the official Star Wars logo.
They were deciding between three
almost identical designs
that were just off by one letter.
One of those designs was actually made by
a then dying comic book company
that you might have heard of.
But more on that in a bit.
Today's episode is brought to you by the letter "W".
As in why are there already spoilers in the comments?
Let's just run through the history of the Star Wars logo.
Special shout-out to the
Tenth Letter of the Alphabet,
that's the blog not the actual 10th letter of the alphabet.
They have a ton of great information out there.
Link in the description down below,
if you want to learn more about the Star Wars logo.
But let's get right into it.
Now, I'm sure a lot of you guys know this,
but the original title for Star Wars was "The Star Wars".
They eventually dropped the "the".
It's cleaner.
But with that came this original decal
artwork designed by Ralph McQuarrie.
You might actually recognize this,
it's been used on a lot of Star Wars stuff.
And you might think that the person
right here is Luke Skywalker.
But it's actually, Han Solo.
Or at least a very early version
of what they thought Han Solo would look like.
McQuarrie explains quote:
End quote.
That logo was short lived,
the next one we got was on corporate letterhead
that you can see right here.
It was often paired with McQuarrie's
artwork for some poster concepts, or book covers.
It even made an appearance on the
1976 San Diego ComicCon before anyone would know
what this "Star Wars" business was about.
But the thing that I find worth noting,
is that it was designed by none other than Joe Johnston.
Who, if you're like me,
might recognize that name as the director
of the Captain America: First Avenger film.
Oh and other stuff like Jumanji,
and the Rocketeer, et cetera.
Kind of a fun piece of trivia.
Also not the last time we're gonna be
hearing about Johnston in this video.
Now December of same year, 1976,
also saw a novelization of the screen play.
And it had this logo, which is just,
it's just Helvetica.
It's real boring.
Then we got a storyboard panel by Alex Tavoularis.
Which showed the logo in 3-D but also
importantly introduced the concept of perspective.
And this has been said ad naseum,
I'm sure we all know by now.
But George Lucas was inspired by old serials,
like Flash Gordon and Green Hornet,
to make Star Wars' famous opening crawl.
Title artist Dan Perry wanted to take
that concept of a vanishing point and
really make it his own in this Star Wars
logo that I really love.
It was never in the movie, of course,
it was only ever used in ads and posters,
lots of promotional material.
But, so good.
We'll come back to that one in a bit.
But we also have to talk about Suzy Rice.
She is the person responsible for most of
the Star Wars logo that we know and love today.
I say most, you'll see why.
Rice has explained her experience working with
George Lucas in a two-part blog post
that I will link in the description below.
It has a ton of detail in there that
I do not have time to get into today.
But, absolutely is worth a read.
Originally she was only brought on to design
a brochure that would be sent to theatre
owners to promote Star Wars.
She met with George Lucas and famously
he told her that he wanted the Star Wars logo
to be quote:
End quote.
He also said that he wanted it to very intimidating
and rival that of AT&T.
A lot of you might be thinking of this logo.
But back in the day, AT&T's logo was actually this.
Very intimidating.
Nonetheless the search for a fascist font
lead Rice to, once again,
Helvetica.
Always Helvetica.
Of course, that was just a starting point.
Rice heavily modified it connecting letters together,
extending them longer, and she also made the "W"
very pointy.
Once again this logo was used on a ton of promotional stuff.
But, this is where the story gets a little complicated.
So, according to Rice,
Lucas was planning on using her logo
in the movie instead of Dan Perry's,
because his just didn't fit the
opening shot that they wanted.
However, the Star Wars poster book
tells a very similar story but,
with the roles slightly reversed.
Saying that Rice's logo was the one
that didn't work for the opening shot.
Now to be honest, both stories could be true,
perhaps they weren't happy with any
of the logos they had up until that point.
But regardless, what we do know is that
Suzy Rice's "W" on Star Wars was
slightly changed to
this one.
And guess who designed it.
That's right.
Joe Johnston.
This is the logo that was used in the actual film.
And of course, it's the one that we see all over the place.
But, there's still one more Star Wars logo
that made it into a ton of promotional material.
And this is when the comic book nerd
in me gets very excited.
Because we have a special guest appearance from ...
Marvel Comics.
So if you missed it last year,
we did a whole video about how
Marvel Comics was actually saved by Star Wars.
Just a quick recap of that video,
Marvel was going bankrupt.
But thankfully they were signed on to make
a Star Wars comic series before the movies
even came out.
Those comics ended up being the thing that
helped Marvel stay afloat.
Now the letterer for those Star Wars comics was Jim Novak,
who saw the Star Wars logo and really didn't like it.
He said it wasn't very " Marvel".
So he redid it.
Specifically, he didn't like the "W".
And it's unclear which "W" he was talking about.
It could be Rice's "W",
It could be Johnston's "W".
But either way, it had to go.
In it's place, he created this "W".
Also weirdly he disconnected the letters in Star Wars,
which were later reconnected probably
for trademark purposes.
Either way Novak's logo with his very specific
"W" was printed on everything.
Calendars, albums,
books,
sometimes sharing covers with
Suzy Rice's Star Wars logo.
But, in the end, it was Johnston's
small re-vision to Rice's design that
became the official Star Wars logo
that we know and love today.
With of course, minor variations over the years.
There's this thingy.
I don't even know what this one is, but it exists.
I'd love to know in the comments below,
which Star Wars logo is your favorite?
Is it the classic one?
Is it any of these other ones that we've talked about today?
Is it that one that I just pointed out with zero context?
And of course, did I miss any logos, designs?
I'm positive that I did.
Thank you so much to our patrons who supported this video.
Their names are in the description down below.
If you want your name there go to Patreon.com/nerdsink.
And if you want more Star Wars videos,
of course you do,
check out this entire playlist that we've got.
I highly recommend starting with
"How Star Wars saved Marvel Comics".
We have a small cameo from a goat in that video.
And if that doesn't peek your interest,
I don't know what will.
Also make sure to hit that big, sexy subscribe button.
My name is Scott,
reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.