Logo minutiae

Harry

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While looking over my CD collection on the shelves, this fact struck me: not very many A&M CDs actually have the classic A&M trumpet logo on their spine. I suppose it's a holdover from the days of vinyl when spines were really too small to do justice to a logo, and when A&M started pressing CDs, they basically stuck with the old way of doing things: artist, title, catalog number. And true to form, all of those CDxxxx discs just have text printing on them.

So where would one find an A&M CD with the logo on the spine? Looking first through my multitudinous collection of Carpenters discs, the first one I find with the A&M logo on the spine is the 2000 release of SINGLES 1969-1983. It's found on the spine of the slipcase of the Japanese release, as well as the spine on the US release. From there, there are quite a few Carpenters comps from Universal that have the logo on it - and some that don't. But it took until the Universal years for the logo to show up.

How about Herb? There is only one Herb Alpert CD in existence that I know of with the A&M logo on the spine and it's DEFINITIVE HITS. Again, it took until the Universal years for the logo to show up on the spine.

Sergio? Not too many. It's found on the 20th Century Millennium Collection and that's about it.

AMLogoSm.jpg

Harry
 
I never was too concerned about the logo being on the spine. That said, I always thought it was a shame that the once bold, large logo which appeared very conspicuously on the early albums in the 60s got radically downsized even on subsequent vinyl releases in the 70s and into the 80s. I know that A&M was always "artist oriented". But that logo was special, now iconic.

Never was too wild about the redesigned version used in the mid-late 80s, though. The ampersand got simplified, and the trumpet lost it's detail.
 
Does anyone here have a Herb Alpert Presents CD label picture so i can see if it replicates the Original A&M Issued Lp or Single Labels? Thanks!
 
The original A&M logo design remains forever etched in my memory i too didn't care much for the Mid/late 80s redesign and the switch from the silver/tan vinyl label to black. To me It kind of signaled the beginning of the end of an era of sorts.
 
The original A&M logo design remains forever etched in my memory i too didn't care much for the Mid/late 80s redesign and the switch from the silver/tan vinyl label to black. To me It kind of signaled the beginning of the end of an era of sorts.

I agree. I understand why they did it, what with A&M having a "VIDEO" and "FILMS" series as well, so it was easier to have the A&M block logo with "RECORDS", "TAPE", "VIDEO", "FILMS" or whatever inserted underneath. But unfortunately, they oversimplified the A&M logo itself to the point where it just looked chintzy. And if you'll remember, those black labels (a la RCA Records) got that gray fog after a while and you had to wipe it off. The white single label design wasn't too bad. But still nowhere near as stylish as the silver/white label from around '73 on up to '85.
 
I so remember this logo back when i had my first cassette player at age 11 and my first couple of A&M Stereo tapes which were Herb's TJB Greatest Hits vol 1 and Chuck mangione's Main Squeeze on cassette later to be replaced with the vinyl versions.
 
These are all the earlier logos. The late 80s logo was nowhere near as detailed as these were. And the "RECORDS", "FILMS", etc. was outside (below) the box. The trumpet sihouette was a joke, and the ampersand was a simple " & " .
 
Thanks. Harry. Not sure where you got these, but you are very resourceful. At any rate, these are the logos I was talking about. If they had left the original logo alone and just boxed it, they could've done the same thing with each category listed outside the box. But the trumpet on these later logos looks like something out of a cartoon.
 
The logo changes can be attributed to two things: Making it look more "modern," and the fact that it needed to translate well to smaller and smaller media packages. The original logo (especially the ampersand, and also the trumpet graphic) looked great on LP jackets and labels and in ads, but was too intricate to reproduce well on cassette spines, smallish CD booklets, and so on. That's why they went with the more simplistic designs.
 
Another reason for the change to that square streamlined logo that Harry posted was A&M's move to branch into other media. By removing the "RECORDS" from within the logo they could place the logo above whatever media the product was. This can be seen in Harry's logo with the word DISCOS (for the AyM releases) VIDEO and TAPES. I even saw a draft logo for A&M BOOKS and A&M SOFTWARE at one time while I was in film school in the 80s.

--Mr Bill
 
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Another reason for the change to that square streamlined logo that Harry posted was A&M's move to branch into other media. By removing the "RECORDS" from within the logo they could place the logo above whatever media the product was. This can be seen in Harry's logo with the word DISCOS (for the AyM releases) VIDEO and TAPES. I even saw a draft logo for A&M BOOKS and A&M SOFTWARE at one time while I was in film school in the 80s.

--Mr Bill
Makes even more sense.
 
Resurrecting this for a sense of the timing of the logo change.

Looking at my Herb Alpert albums, it appears that 1983's BLOW YOUR OWN HORN was the last of his albums to use the classic logo (RECORDS inside box). The newer square logo appeared on 1984's BULLISH. Was this the first A&M to use the new logo? BULLISH-era singles were still printed with the red fly-out older logo.

Going back to CD 5000, Joe Jackson, I see the new logo on the face of the CD, but the old logo still in force on the LP.
 
Resurrecting this for a sense of the timing of the logo change.

Looking at my Herb Alpert albums, it appears that 1983's BLOW YOUR OWN HORN was the last of his albums to use the classic logo (RECORDS inside box). The newer square logo appeared on 1984's BULLISH. Was this the first A&M to use the new logo? BULLISH-era singles were still printed with the red fly-out older logo.

Going back to CD 5000, Joe Jackson, I see the new logo on the face of the CD, but the old logo still in force on the LP.
I think it was a Transitional thing I think the newer logo was implemented on the CDs first and close to the time Bullish and other albums were released ( which was a short time after SP 5000 which was one of my Favorite Joe Jackson titles) I remember seeing the subtle change in the logo as it was the summer of 1984 as I was doing a lot of Record buying that year
 
The flip side of this is when did PolyGram reinstate the classic logo? My evidence points to 1995.
 
The flip side of this is when did PolyGram reinstate the classic logo? My evidence points to 1995.
I think so too especially when saw the classic reinstated seeing the "Greatest Hits" Backlot series appear in the bins with the classic !ogo
 
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