Great Clips Logo

Great Clips Logo PNG

Great Clips is a hair-salon franchisor founded in Minneapolis in 1982 by Steve Lemmon and David Rubenzer. The company’s own account records the founders and the early history of the business in its history document. The logo’s recurring elements are a plain sans-serif name and, in several versions, a sail or sailboat device.

Meaning and history

The montage shows a changing wordmark alongside a recurring nautical motif. The stages vary in lettering, layout and whether the name appears alone or with an emblem and the words “for hair.” The stage dates below are the archive’s labels; they should not be read as independently confirmed rollout dates.

1983 – 1984

This early stage presents the name as a wordmark without the large, separate sail emblem seen in some later versions. The company’s history connects the sailing motif to the early identity: when the business changed its name from Super Clips USA, Inc. in 1983, keeping “Clips” was important in part because of that motif.

1984 – 1986

This version places a prominent geometric sail device to the left of the name. “Quality Haircare” appears beneath the wordmark, adding a service descriptor to the lockup. The emblem and lettering form a wider, more illustrated composition than the simpler wordmark-only stage.

1986 – 1987

The supplied stage image is a dark, low-contrast rendering, so its letterforms are difficult to distinguish. In the montage, this stage appears as a restrained name-only treatment, without the large sail emblem or service line shown in the preceding design.

1987 – 1991

This stage is also difficult to read in its individual dark rendering. The timeline montage shows the name accompanied by a smaller line of text, consistent with the “for hair” phrase used in Great Clips branding. That phrase was in commercial use by the late 1980s and was registered in Canada in 1992, according to the court-record account and the franchise disclosure document.

1991 – 1994

The archive’s montage shows a wordmark-led treatment for this stage, with a lighter, more open appearance than the heavier lettering in the 1984–1986 version. Great Clips changed its corporate name to Great Clips, Inc. in 1991, as described in the company history; that corporate change does not by itself establish a logo rollout date.

1994 – 2005

Here the sailboat and the “Great Clips for hair” wording sit together inside a rectangular outline. The boat motif was not new to this stage: it was already part of the early identity. The franchise disclosure document records the SAILBOAT MOTIF as a Canadian registered mark in 2000 and describes a 1992 agreement restricting its use to contexts where GREAT CLIPS appears in direct conjunction.

2005 – Today

This stage shows the familiar name alone, in black lettering on a white field. The current identity uses the GREAT CLIPS word mark, and the 2026 franchise disclosure material lists it among the company’s marks. The 2005 date remains the archive’s stage label, rather than a documented introduction date.

Wordmark and emblem

Across the stages, the name uses sans-serif lettering, but its weight, spacing and arrangement change. The sail device provides the main pictorial element where it appears; some versions pair it with a short descriptor, while others use the name by itself. The franchise disclosure document records the Canadian registrations for GREAT CLIPS and GREAT CLIPS FOR HAIR, as well as the sailboat motif. Great Clips’ 2024 United States word-mark filings are listed in trademark filing records.