Guitar Center’s logo finally gets a ‘real’ ‘G’ in redesign

By Michael P. Hill Article may include affiliate links

Music supply store Guitar Center unveiled an updated logo design in the spring of 2022 that finally stopped trying to pass off the outline of a guitar as the letter “G.”

For years, the chain has used a logo that featured a drawing of a guitar at an angle with the letters “uitar” tucked in under the neck.

The idea was that the outline of the body of the guitar along the intersection of the neck and sound hole created something that very roughly resembled the shape of a “G.”

While creative, some were never quite convinced of how well the shape actually looked like a “G” — at least without a bit of squinting, head-scratching and imagination.

The company redesigned the logo and now spells out its name in full, “normal” letters, which has significantly and reduced the risk of anyone thinking the store is called “Uitar Center.”

The guitar has been redrawn as well, with the oval sound hole replaced with a circle, which helps make it look less like a spoon than it did before.

A new typeface was also introduced. It’s still highly geometric but loses bit of the retro look that the distinct “a” and “e”s brought to the old layout.

The design retains the practice of moving the baseline of the “C” down a bit so that the “mouth” of the letter aligns vertically with the “e” next to it, though the design did not take the time to refine that ends of the stroke to match the curve of the “e” — which is debatably a bit of an oversight.

One update that does help unify the look is how the curve of the guitar body now flows around the curve of the “C” better.

Meanwhile, the “G” baseline is also tweaked to bring it down slightly which appears to be an attempt to try to eliminate the awkward trapped white space above the letters “e” and “n.”

The redesign notably loses the angled customizations done to the letters “u,” “i” and “t” as they intersect the neck of the guitar — namely because those letters are now farther away from the icon.