Calder Guitar Case Story Ch 10 First Logo First Marketing

Jan 04

Finding a name for the company. Came up with lots of seemingly cool names like Transcaster, Jelletele but all too contrived and too linked to Fender.

Looked at the great guitar companies - all named after the guys that made the guitars - so ok give the company my name. Comer-Calder - too long (my wife's surname joined with mine) so I chose Calder. A little embarrassed about this seemingly ego-centric idea mailed marketing man Chris Abel. Chris wrote 'yes - sounds good' and here's a logo I knocked up for you...


Chris's logo looked fine to me - elegant distinctive. Anticipating that my cases would be copied I decided to add 'Originals' to emphasise the point our brand was about originality and innovation. 'Yeah maybe you can buy a knock off at half the price - but you aint got a Calder Original.'

The CO logo's first outing was material we sent to distributors and guitar manufacturers to tempt them into meeting with me at Frankfurt in April 04. This is what we sent...





category: early development

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