1966

1966

Exxon Oil by Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewe tells...
"...I was in my New York office in March 1966 when I received a visit from Jersey Standard's counsel; he had come, he said, at the suggestion of the board of directors. The company had decided to change the Esso into another one, and, and for reasons he chose not to explain, the fact was to be kept in the most severe conditions of secrecy. The project was to be known as "Nugget".
We signed a contract and I left immediately for my winter residence in Palm Springs, California.
In less than a week I found the name I wanted: Exxon, and I made seventy-six rough pencil sketches based on the word, placing the visual emphasis on the double x's.
After making photocopies for my files, I air-mailed the originals to Joseph Lovelace, then vice-president of my company in New York, whom I had selected as Nugget's project manager.
I indicated the version of Exxon which I preferred, and it was eventually selected, adopted, and used by Jersey Standard. The skectch shown here is the original one I made in Palm Springs in March 1966.
Then a large team of Jersey Standard's Executives started - in close collaboration with my team - the research, explorations, and so on, essential to such a major tansition as a change of name and logotype for one of the world's largest corporation. The end result of such intimate cooperation, carried out in top-secret condition, was the word Exxon.
I valued the double x for its neo-subliminal memory-retention value and also for a certain similarity to the two s's in Esso..."