I still can’t fathom why NASA completely retired the worm in favor of the meatball from 1992 until last year. The worm looks like something from a high-art sci-fi movie, while the meatball looks like it’s from, well, 1959.
Because of that, the return to the meatball was intended as an internal morale boost, a look back to what NASA could be rather than what it was currently.
They do probably need to better balance public morale and internal morale, but it's a hard problem.
However, I LOVE that combination of both.
I worked at NASA about 10 years ago, before the worm revival. The logo was still visible on older equipment from that era, and everyone had a great deal of respect for its design elegance. But Dan Goldin made Worm vs. Meatball a political fight that people still had PTSD from. It took a crafty political outsider like Jim Bridenstein to find a solution that everyone could be happy with.
I think it also helps that after the Shuttle was retired with no successor, people now look back at the worm days (which were the glory days of the Shuttle) with nostalgia.
It’s all nostalgia.
Logo design for the worm was exceptional in everyway. It was thrown away for reasons of executive team wanting to do something new.
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/symbo...
He was reportedly prone to fits of rage when he saw a worm logo. Very Dilbertian.