We don't do logos

I often accompany our sales people on initial sales calls. Explaining what our company does is somewhat difficult, a challenge that I will leave for another post, but clearly we work in most areas of materials science. What I really enjoy is when the clients ask what we don’t do. If the atmosphere is light enough and I’m quick enough, I can interject: “We don’t do logos”. It always gets a good laugh.


Certainly we needed a new logo a few years ago, as our previous logo was clearly dated.
Can anyone guess what that large central section of the leaf is a portion of? (Answer at the bottom of this post). Hint: you need to be at least 30 years old or if not that, had access to a computer that’s at least 15 years or so. I don’t know why that was part of the logo, as we certainly didn’t develop computer software either.

We can’t do anything that looks like an aspen leaf, as the Aspen Medical Group in town already has a logo like that and our lawyer just doesn’t want to go anywhere close to that.
Being no longer closely linked with any piece of human construction, our new logo clearly will not become dated as technology advances, but we (i.e., most of my colleagues) still don’t like it. It’s not that we’re opposed to pentavalent compounds, as they clearly exist: PF5 and ClF5 to name a couple. It’s just the cartoonish nature of the logo, the green and the black, the distorted perspective. One former manager called it a squished turtle.

Answer: it’s part of a 5 ¼” floppy drive.