Apple logo tattoo

It’s no secret that I love the old six-colour Apple logo – to me it epitomises the part of Apple history of which I’m most nostalgic for.

There are very few corporate logos which survive for 40+ years untouched – and, although Apple’s logo (largely) retains its shape, management (starting in Steve Jobs’ second reign) moved generally to a  monochrome treatment of the logo.

As an admitted Apple logo hagiographer, I’ve certainly enjoyed the occasional nod from modern management to the logo’s colourful past, such as the WWDC 2012 logo, its appearances in this MacBook Air ad and six-colour themed Apple tv promotional material. I fully support Apple’s move to the modern logo treatment, but I think it says a lot about the company that they’re still prepared so readily to acknowledge and utilise their logo’s colourful past.

For many years I suggested to my family that I’d like to get a six-colour Apple logo tattoo – then I really could say I’d bled six colours!

In my role as the family’s Great Procrastinator, however, this wish never formalised into a plan, let alone action.

And so, as my 40th birthday approached, my kids made a wonderful suggestion – they would pay for my Apple logo tattoo for that landmark birthday!

Of course, acceptance of such an offer is only half the battle – I wanted to make sure whoever ended up doing the tattoo not only got the colours right (without the black outlines you sometimes see on Apple logo tattoos), but the shape also had to be spot on.

And then there are the issues of size and position – I’d originally thought of getting the tattoo on my back, but then I wouldn’t see people’s reaction to it! And my wife wanted it to be as small as could be – I knew getting the colours right on a small tattoo would be difficult, and if I was going to get a tattoo, I didn’t want it to be just 1cm tall!

So I suggested a size twice as big as I wanted, and “compromised” down to the real size I was after – approximately 4cm tall. With the “wanting to see people’s reactions” argument, I was able to successfully pitch for having the tattoo placed on the left hand side of my chest towards my shoulder. This has the added benefit of people thinking I wanted to have the logo “close to my heart”, which really didn’t come into it at all!

After a lot of web searching and asking around, we finally settled on Megan at Inner Vision Tattoo, in the Sydney inner suburb of Chippendale. Megan has a great portfolio of detailed colour work which mightily impressed us.

Mine was Megan’s first (and perhaps still only) Apple logo tattoo, but she was very willing to take on the challenge of getting the shape and colours right. After an hour and a half of “not as bad as I’d feared” pain, I had a shiny new six colour Apple logo tattoo!

Megan did phenomenal work on the joins between the colours, and to this day, nearly 8 years later, people still think it’s actually a sticker, not a real tattoo!

And so now, I have the most portable way of proving to people I meet just how much of an Apple fanboy I am! Which can’t be a bad thing…can it?!

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