The man who drew the Apple logo

“I was born in Mexico City, but grew up in El Chante,” he says, “a small town outside Guadalajara.” There, for a period of time, he was separated from his mother, who had come to the States to work and send money back home. During her absence, his aunts served as his surrogate parents. “They had tremendous faith in me,” he recalls. “They would always tell me, Vas a hacer cosas grandes. That faith gave me the permission to dream and the confidence to know that what I dreamed could be a reality.” 

This transformative time would serve as a precursor to another. 

The design industry was one of the first to be reinvented by the digital age. Like any transition, this brought the end of an old state, complete with a set of tools and techniques which had remained relatively constant until then.

But unlike previous transitions, the industry’s new state wasn’t just new, it was ever-changing. The space it came to inhabit is normal now, but was alien at the time—a world of constant updates and mandatory upgrades, where planned obsolescence is the only thing anyone can predict. 

As a designer on the first marketing communications team to manage the Apple account, Pérez’s work gestured toward the change about to come. In his portfolio are numerous collateral design and production assets used to help launch the Apple II. 

Anyone who used the Apple II could never forget it. With its one-megahertz processor and four-kilobyte memory, it teleported middle-schoolers everywhere to The Oregon Trail. It turned fourth period classrooms into small game hunting preserves. It was eleven pounds of beige bliss. It was also the first time a lot of kids—especially those of working class backgrounds—ever explored the world of computing. 

In 1977, Pérez and Rob Janoff were colleagues at Regis McKenna. Janoff designed the Apple mark, while Pérez created its initial rendering and master artwork. Pérez also rendered the typographical solutions that would accompany the Apple logo brand, designed and art directed the first Apple newsletter, created the masthead and co-designed the first Apple magazine. He inked all of this by hand, relying on his mastery of drafting and illustration techniques, because the hardware and applications now ubiquitous in the realm of graphic design simply did not yet exist. 

Pérez recalls this era with a kind of excitement that’s difficult to put into words. It’s in his eyes when he talks about the long-haired, torn-jeaned Steve Jobs walking in to talk shop, like it was no big deal. It’s there when he reflects on the talent that helped inspire him, specifically, the design team consisting of Rob Janoff, James Ferris, Lee Beggs, Mauricio Arias and others who he says, “paved the way for the most recognizable mark on the planet.”

It is appropriate that at a time when most people were still groping in the dark for their on switches and screaming insults at their dot matrix printers, Pérez was doing some of the best design of his life. Upheavals were nothing new to him. Like other professional Latinos, he had transitioned between worlds before. 

As a boy, his creative aspirations were so apparent that his aunts arranged for him to apprentice with a local artist. By 1972 he was in the States, studying art and design at San José State University. Two years later he was awarded an apprenticeship by the Western Arts Director’s Club, an honor reserved for only the top three graduates. This apprenticeship begat another, at the prestigious advertising firm of Regis McKenna. He struck out on his own in 1980 with Carlos Pérez Design Inc., now known as ArtOrigin. Here he has done work for both IBM and Hewlett Packard, leading design teams that helped launch product systems and develop typographical character systems. Today Pérez is working on publishing a book and on developing his own line of creative products based on his Latino/Chicano cultural heritage.

One of his ongoing commissions is with the Cinequest Film Festival. Pérez is the creator of the Festival’s Maverick Spirit Award, which he has personally presented to such notables as Harrison Ford, Rosario Dawson, James Olmos, Sir Ben Kingsley, Lupe Ontiveros, Diablo Cody, Spike Lee, Lalo Schifrin, Danny Glover, and Benjamin Bratt; only a few of the talent that this Maverick Spirit Sculpture has been presented to.

When asked about the things that drive him most today, Pérez comes back to family and community. His extended family includes a writer, photographer, nurse, make-up artist, communications major, three grandchildren and his wife and business partner Analisa, all of whom live and work in San José. A product of the 60’s Chicano Student Movement, he considers community-building through the arts as central to his life as a creative professional, and works consistently with South Bay non-profits and arts organizations to connect art to the communities it serves. He hopes this will help “foster a cultural climate where creative thinkers are treated as professionals with equal credentials and not as third class citizens.” In such partnerships, he sees the importance of technology and abstract ideas, but he emphasizes the role of individual creativity “I’m reminded of a quote from advertising guru Bill Bernbach” he says. “An idea can turn to dust or magic depending on the talent that rubs against it.”

Article written by David C. Pérez, published by ByDesign

Artist Influences