NBC once dominated the entire landscape of American television of the ’80s, along with ABC and CBC, called together as “Big Three” of the American television network. Once a subsidiary of General Electric, the RCA (Radio Corporation of America) founded the National Broadcasting Corporation in 1926. The TV broadcasting network currently owns and operates 13 stations, has a long list of 200 affiliates under its belt, and is valued at $30 billion (as of 2017).
But the best thing about NBC’s history is neither its abundant buying and selling stories, nor the impact it has had upon many government policies, but rather the story of how it got a peacock for its logo.
This is How it Goes!
This is one of the best logo design story you would ever come across. So this is how it goes. Back when radio broadcasting was still a thing, NBC was owned a major part of it. It had already become a radio broadcasting heavyweight of the time by broadcasting some of the major events of the early 20th century of events in American. Like the Rose Bowl of 1926, the heavyweight fight between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey in 1927, and the coverage of Charles Lindbergh’s return after his historic trans-Atlantic flight of 1927, the first of its kind till that time.
The radio news station had a typical microphone till that point for its best logo design. Till 1926 to 1946, the company stuck with this microphone radiating zig-zag radio waves, which many like to call as lightning bolts. The logo was all true and good to the identity of NBC, the radio broadcaster, but things changed. As soon as TV sets started to replace radio, the station knew that it can’t afford to lose any bit of this new technological wave, and hence reinvented itself to become the best TV broadcaster that time. As the old microphone was the reflection of their radio-reader identity, the big minds in the newsroom knew that it needed to go, and hence they introduced a different logo this time, a xylophone. This xylophone, NBC’s new best logo design, was accompanied by N, B, and C; companies initials in the background.
But as they say, technology changes without a notice.
Comes the Peacock
The year was 1956, and the American public was ready to switch to color TV sets. A change which many TV stations never thought highly till that point, NBC viewed as yet another opportunity. John Graham, the in-house creative director of NBC, designed the legendary peacock, having 11 colors in its plumage. The idea behind the bird was the same as the logos before it, to represent the new wave of technology. Which, in this case, was the advent of colors in TV broadcasting. The 11-colored peacock was NBC’s reminder to the viewers of its technological advancement and prowess. But interestingly, the peacock was still treated as a reminder, showed only at the time when the station was about to telecast its color programs to the viewers.
And Finally…..
So, the peacock was only treated as a signal of NBC’s innovation in the field of color television, and it was nowhere close to becoming the sole best logo design of the network. The official logo of the network was still the capitalized “N”. But as soon as the network started to think more in the line of entertainment, and their position as an American entertainment TV station improved, people at the head office thought of giving a symbol to their newly invented image. And then, in 1980, by the efforts of Steff Geissbuhler, the renowned Swiss graphic designer of the time, NBC came up with their final logo, which the whole network uses till now. The “N”, which according to many at NBC stood for “Nothing” was gone. The mashup between “N” and the peacock was gone too. Geissbuhler toned down the the peacocok and reduced the 11 colors to 6. And the rest is history.
More info: Vervelogic
