So they emailed Richard Danne, the design director for NASA’s 1970s graphics reinvention. Within hours, Mr. Danne said yes. (The material is in the public domain.)

In spring of 1974, a request for proposals for the NASA redesign had landed at the office of Danne & Blackburn, a firm that Mr. Danne had started with another designer, Bruce Blackburn.

The National Endowment for the Arts had started a program to encourage federal agencies to clean up and update their appearances and communications. NASA was one of the first in line to get a visual makeover.

“All of the U.S. agencies put out bad stuff,” Mr. Danne said. “No one had a clue.”

For a small, young firm, it was an opportunity for attention, and NASA was still basking in the glow of the Apollo moon landings. “Even though the money in it was minuscule, we had to go for it,” Mr. Danne said. “We knew it was high profile.”

Mr. Blackburn, who also designed the logo for the country’s bicentennial celebration, set to work on a logo. Since 1959, the year after its founding, NASA had used what was affectionately called “the meatball” — a blue circle filled with stars, a red swoosh that represents an airplane wing and a spacecraft orbiting the wing.

“The meatball was something that was contrived by jet pilots, and it went all the way back to Buck Rogers in terms of its sophistication,” Mr. Blackburn said. “It didn’t look like a modern space agency.”

Image Backers of a Kickstarter campaign will receive a hardcover reprint of the graphics standards manual for their $79 pledge. Credit... Hamish Smyth

Mr. Blackburn tried pictorial approaches, but concluded that the best embodiment of NASA was its recognizable acronym.