History of NI Logo
John Graff
1976 – First company logo. Dr. T and Jeff Kodosky trace an oval from an office trash can to create the design of the first NI logo.
1979 – First stylized logo with the “NI Eagle” logomark. NI paid an agency called The Marketing Group out of Dallas $1500 for the design.
Early 1980’s – The NI Eagle logomark was changed to blue (officially PMS 301 blue).
1986 – The tagline “The Software is the Instrument” was added to the logo in conjunction with the launch of LabVIEW
1995 – As the company prepared to go public the text on logo was changed to a sans serif font to make it easier to reproduce on marketing collateral and on products (especially the PCBs of the company’s growing line of data acquisition boards).
1999 – As company expanded its product offering and started talking about “measurement and automation”, the tagline was dropped from the official logo, although the statement was still used in content and presentations.
2020 – NI launches major rebrand, changing name from National Instruments to NI, changing logo and changing corporate color.
