I disagree. I think the logo is nice, I think it looks ok even in small size, I don't think it unbalanced the NeXT machines when it was put on them, I think the colors are cute and the font is sharp.
Well, fair enough. I don't think you would be a good designer though. As brutal as that may sound, design is a full contact sport. I'd say the same to you in person.
Your comment fascinates me, as if you feel you can uniquely tease out the objective from what most consider largely subjective. I'm not contesting, just curious for elaboration. Is it designer hubris, like audiophile, or wine tasting hubris, or a reproducible, measurable thing? Are you implying that he'd be a bad consumer as well, because he responds abnormally, and that other laymen would have less appreciation for the Next logo? Does your experience let you tap into something fundamental? Do people universally react similarly to certain design features in an exploitable way? Is it a percentage game? Or do designers design mainly for other designers? Is it all post-rationalization?
And in fact he printed it in various scales (large to tiny), in both color and black and white, to show how it still looked identifiable and good (not shown properly in TFA, you can find the design studies with the various sizes on the web easily, its part of the same document).
