Our Wordmark

You know it when you see it

Our signature, lightning-strike design was patented in 1910. The resulting wordmark logo has been reproduced innumerable times for product labels,  signage, advertising, service manuals, and Hollywood movie credits. At peak ubiquity, all one had to do was lift a telephone handset to find the mark engraved on the handle. People knew the name meant quality.

A discerning eye will notice minor changes to the fifteen characters throughout company history, each iteration slightly different from the next. But all shared the same deeply slanted strokes and thorny, electrified serifs as intended by the original artist:

“The design of my new ornamental font of type is accomplished by the ornamental application to the letters and characters of the thorn of the hawthorn bush...so arranged as to give to the appearance of the letters and characters an electric effect...”

In 1969, Saul Bass famously overhauled Western Electric’s global branding (along with the entire Bell System) with a contemporary, simplistic approach. His project was a masterclass in corporate identity design, but it meant the stylized wordmark was replaced in favor of a trendy Helvetica facelift:

In the 1980s, at the demand of a growing crowd of hi-fi collectors around the world, the old wordmark was reintroduced at the Kansas City Works for printing on newly manufactured 300B electron tubes. By this time, a limited range of original Western Electric products was still being manufactured, but only in name. The company itself had been divested, nearly into oblivion, following the Bell System bust-up four years earlier.

300B production ceased in 1988 and the well-worn wordmark would sit dormant until 1997. That year, Charles Whitener officially resumed tube production at the Kansas City Works as part of a larger commitment to re-establish Western Electric—not only as a brand name, but as a proper hi-fi manufacturer. Retaining the original wordmark was critical to the new company’s success. People never forgot the name means quality.

In 2019, the current wordmark was commissioned. Before then, we relied on digital scans of pre-digital brand artifacts to generate a “hand-me-down” wordmark (see overlay below). We worked with graphic artists to create a historically consistent, designer-friendly standard now used on all newly manufactured products. The new characters uphold the classic electric effect with renewed  balance, curve, and precision.

You (still) know it when you see it.