In today's Archive piece, Inventory Studio celebrates one of the music world's most recognisable logos, designed by a student at the Royal College of Art and based on a very famous pair of lips.
The Stones had been disappointed by designs offered by their label Decca Records and Mick Jagger approached the Royal College of Art in London in 1969 to help him find a design student. Jagger visited Pasche’s degree show and later commissioned him to produce a logo for the band's own label Rolling Stones Records.
Pasche has said that on meeting Jagger he was struck by the obvious size of his mouth and centered on this observation, he cleverly developed a logo that would combine various elements of the group's identity; the front man’s unmistakable lips, their panting sexuality and the rebellious attitudes of their music.
By establishing a truth about his client, Pasche created something that has survived passing trends and fashions, is still current and representative of the group’s identity.
First used on the inside sleeve for the Sticky Fingers album in 1971 it has stood for almost forty years and has become arguably the most recognizable logo in the history of pop music. It cleverly finds a balance between a human illustrative form and a reduced corporate mark, a strategy that is being attempted in an increasing number of large-scale corporate (re) branding jobs.
Looking at the logo now, as creatives privy to the process of identity design, it seems as if Pasche had melted down the band themselves, their music and their attitudes and reduced it all to a perfectly tasty sticky red jam.
Pasche was paid the sum of £50 for his work at the time but received the generous bonus of £200 a couple of years later, as well as some royalty rights which he later sold. The V&A Museum recently bought the original drawing of the logo for £50,000, securing its status as brilliant piece of identity design.
inventorystudio.co.uk
This article first appeared in Grafik 176, August 2009