Show Me the Bunny
I received this new magazine in the mail the other day called FPO [For Publication Only]. In The Summer 2008 issue is an article about Branding and how it is more then skin deep. They analized a bunch of magazines through time and how the brand was built and grown over the years.
One of the magazines the they covered was Playboy. While it is an interesting read, I found the portion about the origins of the Playboy logo the most interesting.
Excerted from FRO
Hefner came up with the idea of a rabbit because of it “humorous sexual connotation: and it’s “frisky and playful” image. The tuxedo was added for sophistication. In addition, he chose a rabbit of means of tweaking the nose at the Esquire and the New Yorker, which uses men as symbols. The rabbit logo was designed by Art Paul, who was hired as a freelance to design the logo but stayed on to become the art director of the magazine for the next 30 years. According to Paul. “If I had any idea how important that little rabbit was going to be. I probably would have redrawn him a dozen times to make certain I was doing him justice. As it was, I did one drawing and that was it. I probably spent all of half an hour on it.
I finding really interesting that something that has been a HUGE icon for nearly 60+ years has changed very little and was done in less then half an hour!