There is a certain degree of timing involved. It may be that the Worm seems pedestrian now because, in the 18 or so years it was in use, it had so many imitators, in much the same way that the swoopy Star Trek: The Motion Picture titles font seems overly mannered now because every dang scifi property in the galaxy came up with a similar-looking font in its wake.

(Similarly, one expects the designer of Impact was not envisioning the day when the sight of the font automatically calls to mind cat photos with preciously misspelled captions.)

Also, I should note that the red element of the "meatball" insignia, which as you point out often gets used without the rest of the logo, is called the Vector, for obvious reasons. (I believe it was retconned in Star Trek: Enterprise that the Starfleet arrowhead logo evolved from the Vector. For all I know, that may actually be true in a metafictional, the-art-designer-was-looking-at-a-NASA-brochure kind of way. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

While I can see that in some cases that would be true, in my case I've disliked it for the whole time it was current. If they'd just updated the font in '75, or done a cleanup on the graphics, it would probably have been better. (See wormball or noball) However, in my experience, rebranding "experts" often overdo it in an effort that seems more calculated to impress their peers, rather than help their clients. (One of my worst insults regarding a design is "It probably won a prize.")

<info on ST and the Vector I'd not known>

Cool, but it must have caused some interseries continuity issues. How did they retcon the TOS starfleet logo?

-VR
I mean, there are regiments that have had the same arms for centuries...it's hardly broken their image. Besides, it's not old-fashioned, it's retro!
"They copied all they could follow, but they couldn't copy my mind,
And I left 'em sweating and stealing a year and a half behind."

I don't remember if the Vector-like "intermediate" form that appeared in Enterprise was only part of the title ship's mission patch, or was an agency-wide insignia. (They also introduced another organization that used a logo which was recognizably the star from the TOS "Command" version of the Enterprise insignia, the implication being that they eventually converged sometime between the 2160s and the 2260s.)

For the most part, later properties have mostly ignored the fact that the famous emblem was only on Enterprise crewmen's uniforms in the original series, probably because it would take too long to explain on-camera. They've discarded the concept entirely in the recent movies, for example; in the opening scene of Star Trek (2009), the Kelvin crew are wearing it 20-some years before Enterprise was built, so in that timeline it's evidently always been the logo for all of Starfleet.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

The opinions of the crews of other ships is not recorded.

* Which probably isn't official, admittedly.

Unfortunately, it isn't, a victim of "The Great Canon Massacre of the 1980s." Paramount decided (in a fashion that Disney would later ape) to deal with the wealth of fandom in the lead-up to the launch of TNG by declaring that anything they didn't directly own was non-canon. Which is a real shame, as the book is one of my favorites as a Trek fan.

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CdrMike, Renegade Time Lord

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Fearless creatures, we all learn to fight the Reaper
Can't defeat Her, so instead I'll have to be Her