Who invented The Beatles’ logo?
It’s almost not fair to claim that The Beatles started everything in terms of modern pop music. Even if they had the kind of timing that comes once every century, many of their innovative techniques were the result of them following their muse rather than trying their best to make the most outlandish song anyone had ever heard. While everyone paid attention to everything from how they looked to the music they played to the drugs they used, people often forget their impact on the world of graphic design.
After all, a lot of what made the Fab Four work was their image, and their calling card was always supposed to be more than their moptop hairdos and catchy tunes. There had to be some sort of seal to wrap everything around, and in terms of their marketability, Brian Epstein deserves a musical badge of honour for making the scruffy lads accessible to the mainstream.
Epstein might not have been entrenched in rock and roll like the rest of them, but he saw the potential for them to be big, and even if John Lennon was pissed to leave their leather jackets behind once they made it big, the shot of them in matching suits on The Ed Sullivan Show is the kind of bold image that made them irresistible to their female fans and dapper enough to be approved by their parents.
While Ringo Starr couldn’t do much from behind his kit, he still had a bass drum with a lot of visual real estate. And even though it wasn’t out of the question for bands to put their name on the drummer’s kit, changing only one letter of their name was what made them look a bit more exciting than any other group.
So who designed the Beatles’ drop-T logo?
But you have to remember that The Beatles weren’t all that different from any penniless Liverpool band when starting out. When they got the ball rolling, all they had was Epstein’s vision and a dream, but the minute they got a record deal with Starr behind the drumkit, one trip to see Ivor Arbiter’s music shop etched him into music history when he designed the famous logo.
Although anyone would have been proud to work on anything remotely associated with The Beatles these days, Arbiter saw the whole thing as a work job getting the final drum kit design, saying, “I had a phone call from the shop to say that someone called Brian Epstein was there with a drummer. Here was this drummer, Ringo, Schmingo, whatever his name was. At that time, I certainly hadn’t heard of The Beatles. Every band was going to be big in those days!”
What’s even more insane is that the logo came together almost as an afterthought. Since Epstein didn’t want to play for the new Ludwig kit, Arbiter fought for his paycheck but said that the Ludwig logo had to be on the kit somewhere. Epstein agreed on the condition that “The Beatles” had to be displayed in giant letters on the bass drum.
Even though the original design was discarded years ago, the various recreations of it in its original form are still among the most eye-catching looks of the 1960s. Whereas bands like The Rolling Stones had their signature tongue design and The Kinks had the shoes underneath their logo, The Beatles changing only one letter was almost a power move. They could have gone for something more graphic if they wanted to, but one letter was all they needed to get their look down.
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