Here’s something cool to start off your Monday – NASA has released a free pdf of its 1976 graphics standard manual.
Blast to the past! From the guide:
“A driving force and the use of innovative techniques and ideas have brought NASA the image of a get-it-done agency, and the record backs up the reputation. As we move ahead to an even more exciting era in aeronautical research and space exploration, we have added a new tool to enhance and symbolize the progressive path we have always followed. Not as suspenseful as a Command and Service Module splashdown nor as dramatic as a Mariner flyby, it is nonetheless of major importance because it is designed to achieve maximum communication of the agency’s program objectives, both internally and externally. We have adopted a new system of graphics-the visual communications system by which we are known to those who read our publications, see our vehicle markings and signboards and the logotype that unmistakably brands them as NASA’s.”
According to Verge, the timing of the NASA release could’ve been aimed at New York-based designers Jesse Reed’s and Hamish Smyth’s Kickstarter campaign, that was focused on reissuing the manual. If you don’t want to pay for a high quality copy, downloading the PDF is the way to go.