Microsoft Unveils Logo for “NERD”

Robert Buderi7/8/09Comments (4)Follow @bbuderi

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Microsoft’s New England Research & Development Center at One Memorial Drive here in Cambridge, MA—NERD, as it is so affectionately called inside and outside the company—has quickly become one of the central gathering spots for the Boston tech community.

In late March, the company opened a big conference area on its second floor, and almost from day one has been making it available for free to a variety of outside groups—from Tech Tuesdays to the Environmental Defense Fund, which just last week held an unconference about green business practices at NERD.

Well, as part of that welcoming spirit, I guess you would call it, the company has quietly posted its logo for the facility. The logo shows the Boston skyline (roughly as seen from NERD) in shaded blue, and the stylized Longfellow Bridge connecting it with Cambridge in orange. “We kind of flipped the switch this morning,” says Sara Spalding, senior director of NERD. “We really felt that we wanted to have a design that reflected our presence her in the greater Boston area, and Cambridge in particular.”

Out to get to the bottom of the story in true hard-hitting journalistic fashion, I asked her if there was a deep symbolism behind the logo, such as a metaphorical bridge linking Microsoft with the larger Boston innovation scene.

Nope. “There’s no clever reverse image or play it backwards on your stereo,” she says. “There’s no deeper meaning.”

Bob is Xconomy's founder and editor in chief. You can e-mail him at bbuderi@xconomy.com, call him at 617.500.5926, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/bbuderi.

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Comments (4)

• James Coletti

  7/9/09 10:08 am

  The New England Research & Development Center provides space for the Boston WordPress Meetup (http://www.meetup.com/boston-wordpress-meetup), a fast-growing community of WordPress users, PHP developers and web designers. The facilities are unmatched and the staff has been extremely helpful and generous. The new logo certainly suits NERD. I highly recommend any local tech enthusiast to attend one of the many events held at this venue.

Links to This Post

• Microsoft NERD gets a logo | Coded Style

  8/13/09 8:40 pm

  [...] Xconomy mentioned their new logo recently in a post about how the office is something of a hub for the local tech community in Boston. I wish we could do the same with our offices in London but it’s more tricky given we don’t own the space. Our Reading HQ hosts a good number of events though but these guys have a tonne of events. [...]

• Microsoft NERD gets a logo | Geek & High Tech

  8/14/09 1:08 am

  [...] Xconomy mentioned their new logo recently in a post about how the office is something of a hub for the local tech community in Boston. I wish we could do the same with our offices in London but it’s more tricky given we don’t own the space. Our Reading HQ hosts a good number of events though but these guys have a tonne of events. var a_vars = Array(); var pagename=”; var phpmyvisitesSite = 8; var phpmyvisitesURL = “http://www.potpot.fr/stats/php.php”;   [...]

• Microsoft NERD Logo unveiled

  8/14/09 5:17 am

  [...] that reflected our presence her in the greater Boston area, and Cambridge in particular,” reported. Loading google.load(‘search’, ’1′); google.setOnLoadCallback(function(){ new [...]