George Opperman (January 5, 1935 – November 27, 1985) was a

graphic designer A graphic designer is a practitioner who follows the discipline of graphic design, either within companies or organizations or independently. They are professionals in design and visual communication, with their primary focus on transforming ...

who co-founded the design consultancy Gruye-Vogt-Opperman, and later created the original

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames) and its focus is on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and bl ...

logo. The Atari symbol was designed by George Opperman in 1972/3. At the time, Opperman was the head of his own design agency, Opperman-Harrington Inc. The Atari logo, later described as a "Fuji" (as in

Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano located on the Japanese island of Honshu, with a summit elevation of . It is the highest mountain in Japan, the second-highest volcano on any Asian island (after Mount Kerinci on the Indonesian island of Sumatra), a ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

), looks like the letter " A", and was meant to represent the game ''

Pong ''Pong'' is a 1972 sports video game developed and published by Atari for arcades. It is one of the earliest arcade video games; it was created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, but B ...

'', with "two opposing video game players with the center of the Pong court in the middle." In addition to the Atari logo, Opperman produced art for Atari's coin-op cabinets, and backglass artwork for Atari

pinball Pinball games are a family of games in which a ball is propelled into a specially designed table where it bounces off various obstacles, scoring points either en route or when it comes to rest. Historically the board was studded with nails call ...

games such as ''Airborne Avenger'' and ''

Superman Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, which first appeared in the comic book ''Action Comics'' Action Comics 1, #1, published in the United States on April 18, 1938.The copyright date of ''Action Comics ...

''. George Opperman died of lung cancer at age 50 on November 27, 1985.

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Video game artists 1935 births 1985 deaths Logo designers {{graphic-designer-stub