('CAUSE ACCORDING TO P-FUNK'S GEORGE CLINTON, NI***RS ARE IN OUTER SPACE TOO (PART 2))!!! "INSIDE THE RISE AND FALL OF NASA’S BELOVED WORM LOGO"

We continue offering more intergallactic insights regarding NASA and design with the story behind NASA's "worm" logo  (see our ''CAUSE ACCORDING TO P-FUNK'S GEORGE CLINTON, NI***RS ARE IN OUTER SPACE TOO" PART 1... post) and what, if anything, George Clinton and his funked up P-Funk fantasies had to do with this ish. 

ONE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN’S most famous love triangle begins, as most graphic design stories do, with a request for proposal. It was 1974, and Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn, founders of New York design studio Danne & Blackburn, had just responded to such a request, one asking the firm to re-brand NASA. It came under the Federal Graphics Improvement Program, an ambitious effort to revamp the visual identity of government agencies, most of which were, in a word, ugly.

Danne & Blackburn’s proposal hinged on a futuristic wordmark that came to be known as “the worm"...

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And what does George Clinton and P-Funk have to do with all of this? He/they have absolutely nothing and also everything to do with NASA, its "funky" "worm" logo, and space exploration! There's no Connection save a Mothership one if, like us, you grew up Black w/a telescope at your disposal, a love for sci-fi, a love for graphic design and art, watched the space shuttle take off and land live on TV, had a turntable (maybe two) at the ready, and a pair of fly parents with the Funk Mob's music in their record collection! We did, so, whenever we think of anything having to do w/space exploration we get good and ready to rock steady and sweaty while imagining that sweet chariot might actually swing down, stop, let us ride into space, and make that connection with the Mothership. George Clinton calling out that funkafied roll call y'all, adding us to his list of "n***ers in outer space too".