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An Ongoing History of the Computers &
Music Logo
Computers & Music is a retail store, the first of
its kind when established by Joe West in Daly City, California
in 1982. The identity of the commercial artist who designed the
first logo in 1983 (to the left) is, unfortunately, unrecalled
at this time, but I can say that the font chosen was GillSans
Ultra Bold with a GillSans Extra Bold ampersand. Several versions
of the Computers & Music logo evolved, largely retaining
the GillSans family, and, unless otherwise noted, were created
by Jane Marie Cleveland. Some were created speculatively, and
never utilized. Pertinent captions appear under the illustrations.
Link to Computers
& Music site
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The above abstractions of the letters C and M were just
a few of dozens that I amused myself with circa 1995. None were
pressed into service.
The above basic logo was created around 1995 and has appeared
in mailers, on envelopes, rubber stamps, advertising, the catalog,
the web (until 2001), business cards, the Geary store window,
and big black plastic display letters (just waiting for jane to
get a ladder and put them back on the wall, as they were at 649
Mission). Design considerations: The previous logo had
been created using the GillSans font family and Paul Craner had
specified GillSans extensively in the Computers & Music print
catalog, so it was a natural choice for maintaining a sense of
continuity. Why the big ampersand? Keeping the "&"
at the same font size as COMPUTERS and MUSIC, made it appear a
little wimpy and not logo-like, once the musical notes were dropped
from the logo. Since an ampersand is visually very similar to
the musical treble clef, it was easy to justify emphasizing it.
The ampersand was blown up just until its upward swoosh would
match the height of COMPUTERS and MUSIC.
Logos for the web: I don't recall the first C&M
web banner, but around 1998-99, Alan Stewart scanned Jane's mailer
version of the basic logo and added a filter or two. The good
news was that our logo was on the web. The bad news was that it
was busy and not crisp (no image available). In 2001 Matt Scully
created a good-looking but radically departing web logo with lower
case letters, and a thinner, serif font (no image available).
In 2002 Alan returned with a new logo (immediately below) with
the Impact font that he said was the closest he could find to
GillSans, but he also used lower case letters - although Impact
has short descenders.
The top banner, above, is the current (March 2002 - December
2002) online design created by Alan Stewart. He said he used the
lower case Impact font because he didn't have GillSans and Impact
was as close as he could get. The bottom 3 variations of the current
web banner, were created in Aug/Sept 2002 by Jane to reintroduce
the "original" GillSans logo into the current webpage
format with as little interruption in visual continuity as possible.
Current considerations and rationale for "adjusting"
the basic font: It is important to keep a basic "brand"
visual identity. To that end, the following are unchanged: 1)
text remains all caps, and 2) COMPUTERS and MUSIC remain GillSans
Ultrabold Condensed @ 90% width. The ampersand remains GillSans
Ultrabold, but the font size is now equal to COMPUTERS and MUSIC
and the width is 200% [when displayed on one line] or 260% [when
displayed on two lines], instead of 150% (to maintain a visual
balance and retain the same extra "fatness"). Why
shorten the ampersand? 1) It saves crucial pixels when applied
to the web, and for the same reason, COMPUTERS & MUSIC would
best be displayed on the web in one line. and 2) Jane likes
it.
The above variation has been seen once in Electronic Musician
and 4 or 5 times (sans color) in the SF Smart Yellow Pages®
(not this year, though - sorry - but same fonts/caps/proportions).
The "Serving performers..." tagline has been with us
a long time.
One of the two above banners, I don't remember which, appeared
on PacBell's SmartPages® website from summer 2001 to fall
2002.
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Left, logo from seminar
mailer, September 2002 |
Above left is the current (November 2002 - December 2003) Yellow
Pages ad. Shown at larger that actual size, it is a smaller ad
than we had had in previous years and because it is in "portrait"
format, rather than the previous "landscape" format,
it was neccessary to squeeze the kerning in order to get more
height, and hence, more attention to the key word "computers"
in the Musical Instruments Retail section of the Yellow Pages.
Above right is the source design, circa 1999, created for fun
in Painter and Photoshop.
Above left is the insurgent logo designed by Matthew Scully
and installed at the website in December 2002.
Above right is the deposed, template-ready logo designed by Jane
who has been grinding her teeth and knotting her stomach in exile.
Above is just an example of creating variations in the basic
logo without changing its essential configuration. The benefit
of changing the "tagline" to "software hardware
and know-how since 1982" is that it is rhythmic, pithy, and
hence, easy to remember... I don't like the idea of changing the
tagline, but whatever happens, it is essential to retain that
"since 1982"
Following are some more possibilities and links to prototype
spec webpage redesigns:
spec webpage 2
spec webpage 3
spec webpage 4
spec webpage 5
All logos are the trademark of Computers
& Music.
Page posted 9 December 2002
