Rolling Stones Logo Essay

 

Throughout out our lifetime we see a wide variety of logos and/or symbols we either remember vaguely or remember distinctly. For example, the stop sign, we’ve all seen the sign before we automatically know what it means. Powerful symbols tend to that. In 1971 John Pasche created a symbol of a pair of lips and tongue. Little did John know those lips and that tongue would have the same reaction in hundreds of millions of people. In 2008, the red lips and tongue logo was ranked #1 on 50’s greatest band logo of all time on Gigwise.com through a This logo help represent arguably one of the greatest English rock bands of all time.

During the creation of the  logo for the Rolling Stones 11th album “Sticky Fingers”, John said that the mouth was inspired by the mouth of Mick Jagger during the their first meeting also the Hindu goddess of death, Kali. John said that tongue and lips help suggest sexual connotations and an anti- authoritarian attitude which were popular themes in the Rolling Stones music.

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The original is the one on the right and the new version is the one of the left. The new version is found on shirts, wallets and a wide variety of accessories. Throughout it’s existence there were only few adjustments that were made such as there are now two highlights on the tongue, the red is more saturated, the outline is complete on the end of lips, the corners of the lips are more sharp, there is a shadow on the tongue from the teeth. While there have been adjustments to the logo, there are those who made their own variations of the logo such as American contemporary artist Ron English, and another which was done by Mark Norton who made different variations of the logo for the rolling stones voodoo lounge tour. Powerful symbols tend cause a wide variety of reactions such as inspiration, fear sadness, happiness, anger, while symbols are just symbols in the end, it’s the powerful ones that are unforgettable.

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