Rolling Stone is an American magazine founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason, with its first issue appearing on November 9, 1967, featuring John Lennon on the cover. [1] The magazine’s name came from the Muddy Waters song “Rollin’ Stone,” itself inspired by the saying “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” [2]
Design and History
The first Rolling Stone logo was a sketch by Rick Griffin, a psychedelic poster and underground comic artist whose work was prominent in San Francisco in the 1960s. The lively art nouveau design featured engraved shading, outlines, inner shading, and drop shadows. [3] In 1975, art director Tony Lane commissioned lettering artist John Pistilli, co-designer of the typeface Pistilli Roman, to create a cleaner logo that elevated the original while keeping its trademark features. [3]
In 1977, art director Roger Black introduced a new design for the magazine with a custom type family by Jim Parkinson, later digitized as Parkinson. Parkinson also drew a matching logo, which first appeared on the magazine’s tenth anniversary issue. [3] Parkinson described the dimensional oblique serif style as “Nicholas Jenson on acid.” [4]
After several years, Jann Wenner tired of the new logo’s more sober appearance and asked Parkinson to revisit his work. Parkinson stretched out the tail of the R and revived the inline of the original, adding swashes, ball terminals, a complex g, and bulked-up dimensionality. [3] This version, hand drawn in 1981, became Rolling Stone’s most famous logo and graced over 400 covers until 2018. [5]
In 2018, creative director Joe Hutchinson brought Parkinson back for a third time for a dramatic shift to a single-color version of the logo. Parkinson described the process: “It wasn’t about modernising. It was about simplifying. Correcting. The previous logo was like an over-decorated Christmas tree.” [6] The flat logo ran from 2018 through 2022. [7]
After living with the flat logo for four years, CEO Gus Wenner and Joe Hutchinson felt the visual identity had lost its signature audacity when the letterforms lost their depth. [4] Roger Black approached XYZ Type to redesign the classic logo in 2021, and type designer Jesse Ragan led the update. [4] Ragan kept the crisp serifs and confident S from 2018, reinstated 1981’s strong ball terminal on the R, and brought back 1977’s simplified e. The letterforms no longer overlap, and the freewheeling wobble of the g was traded for a more stable typographic structure. [4]
Ragan meticulously reconstructed the intricate shading structure from the 1981 logo, which had never been redrafted in digital form, reverse-engineering Jim Parkinson’s logic for the placement of facets, lines, and transitions. [4] The new logo system includes a primary version for the magazine cover, a simplified small-size version for digital use, a flattened one-color version, and an “RS” monogram for app icons and social media avatars. [4]
Meaning and Symbolism
The Rolling Stone logo is registered as a trademark with red claimed as a feature of the mark, described as “Rolling Stone” in red stylized lettering. [8] The bold red logo with black and white edging remained at the top of every cover and masthead until 2018. [9]
Roger Black, reflecting on the 2022 redesign, said Ragan brought back the engraved drop shadow from 1967 and improved on the basic letterforms. “The letterforms are refined and elegant, but have a sense of fun, a bit of rock and roll,” Black noted. [3]
Typography and Design
Jim Parkinson started working on a custom typeface for Rolling Stone in 1975 and was assigned to design a compatible logo, which appeared in 1977. [10] The magazine used a font family made by Parkinson with Roger Black, called Parkinson, since the Seventies. [7]
In 2024, Rolling Stone underwent a magazine redesign with the design studio Food, working with designer Mark Leeds and type designer Christian Schwartz, who crafted exclusive fonts for the magazine. [2]
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