By: John Page
I thought this might be kind of an interesting thing to write about… how does one go about developing a logo for their work? I’ve done this quite a few times. Many of those times I’ve done it with Pamelina, sometimes with my son Adam, this time was with both. As I looked at my drawing table, with all of the logo’s evolution laid out on it, I’d thought I’d tell you about it, so here’s the story.
As I’ve written about recently, I’ve decided to build some guitars again. That process alone requires thousands of decisions related to design, tooling, materials, sourcing materials, marketing, sales, shipping, way too many to list. One of the key decisions in the design of the guitar was the actual “John Page Guitars” logo on the peghead. So together with my son Adam, an excellent artist and web designer, we came up with the simplistically elegant logo that adorns the peghead… my artistic, yet illegible signature, and a simple font, spelling out the obvious… perfect!
With most of the actual guitar development behind me, it’s time to move onto creating the marketing for my new project, John Page Guitars. To market anything, you have to create the “image” of the product first… how do you want the public to “see” you and your product… what image do you want to project. I want the image I project to show several things, my experience and history in the guitar industry, my attention to detail, my commitment to quality, my love of music and art… okay, okay, that’s probably too much to expect any logo to convey. But, I can simplify it down to this… “an artistic, iconic signature”. If I can hit that, I’ll be thrilled!
I was really happy with the logo that Adam and I came up when it was on the peghead, but I wanted something more for when it’s not. It works really well on the peg with the addition of the shape of the peg as part of the equation, but taking it away left the logo a bit “hungry”, to me. My designs are always a combination of very simple details combined to create the whole, hopefully a well-balanced composition that looks “uniquely familiar”… something very “Page”. The logo needed something more to use it off of the peghead, so I called long-time friend and cohort, Pamelina.
Months before, when I first told Pamelina that I was thinking of making guitars again, one of the first things she said was “I want to design your logo”. I responded with heartfelt thanks, but told her that my son Adam and I were going to do it. She was wonderfully supportive, as usual. But when I came to this next juncture in the road, I called her. She told me that she was extremely busy, but immediately said yes anyway. She said that she had some ideas for my logo, and put aside the work she was doing, and began to make sketches. What a babe!
Her initial idea was to pickup the aesthetic identity of the guitar, the P-1, and combine it with my signature. These first versions are shown in version #1 and #2.
When I received the designs, they just didn’t do it for me. As sexy as the upper body perimeter is, it looks like a whole bunch of other guitars out there. I felt it didn’t capture enough of an “iconic signature”, so I asked her to try it again using the pickguard as the background, instead of the guitar body. Her next attempt was version #3.
When I received this one, I thought it was a lot closer, but it still wasn’t right. It was maybe too obvious, and thereby too… well, boring, so I drew a line on it with a Sharpie marker and sent it back with the phrase, “I want to imply the perimeter of the pickguard”. I also asked it she could make it chrome, like automotive molding.
I then did a slightly better version than my Sharpie rendition in Photoshop, and then sent that to her.
Now I could tell we were on the right track! She responded with versions #4 and #5, beautiful refinements of my crude scribbling. We made a couple of slight alterations and ended up with #6.
I had decided that this one was it… it hit me… that’s what it’s supposed to do! I had one more request, that she reverse the color combos so that I could see it on a black background… viola! Version #7!
Since I had worked with Adam on the original version (and I value his artistic opinion greatly, like Pamelina’s), I sent it to him for his opinion. He shared my enthusiasm for it, but thought that it would look better with a black chrome look as opposed to a silver chrome look. Pamelina and I both thought that it was a great idea, so we made the change and ended up with this final logo:
Well, there you have it. It’s kind of a long way around, but I thought it might be interesting to see that things just don’t happen… they evolve, or perhaps more appropriately, are forced to evolve. Art is a very dynamic thing, and it’s not always easy. Oh, and if you’re wondering why I wanted to see the logo on black… well that’s easy. Black is the only color for respectable music tee shirts! And, yes… they’re available on my new website… imagine that!
Feel free to come by the site and visit: www.johnpageguitars.com.
