O’Neill - logo history
O’Neill - logo history
1952
1963
1966
1972
1985
the original o’neill logo Jack O’Neill opens the world’s first surf shop
designed by jim foley
I f irst m e t J ack O ’ N e il l around 1957 surfing on e of the br e aks off O c e an Be ach in S an F rancisco . J ack had r e c e nt ly op e n e d up the S urf S hop just off the Gr e at H ighway a l ong O c e an Be ach.
The logo was a black stencil of a picture of Dewey Weber riding a wave. I always thought it looked too homemade and unprofessional. It also didn’t lend itself well to a window sticker. About the same time, I was trying to build up my GPA in high school to get into college, and I enrolled in a couple of art classes. One of the assignments was drawing the human body showing all of the
At some point in my doodling I drew a surfer made of continuous lines that flowed into the wave he was riding muscle groups. I took the assignment a few steps further and interconnected the muscle groups with continuous flowing lines. The art instructor was impressed to see the human form turned into an abstract art form. I experimented with this style with other drawings, and, since my mind was usually on surfing, the flowing lines were particularly effective in drawing waves. At some point in my doodling I drew a surfer made of continuous lines that flowed into the wave he was riding. I colored in the areas within the lines so it looked something like a stained-glass window. I showed the early drawings to Jack. He immediately saw the possibility of a logo for his business. After a few refinements, the surfer in the wave, and the colors within the lines all came together. The original design included the name
“Surf Shop,” but that was later changed to “O’Neill,” and the entire design was enclosed in a circle. All that happened in 1958 when I was seventeen. Just a couple years later, I drove down to Huntington Beach to enter the surf contest and also set up a booth for Jack to sell a few wetsuits, T-shirts, and O’Neill surf decals in between heats. I made a large four-by-six-foot sign using the design and filling in the areas with cut-outs from colored transparent fin layup sheets . The 250 decals I brought were sold before noon. It was rewarding for me to see such interest in my design. This sign, looking like a stainedglass window, was then tried in front of the 41st Avenue shop but did not stand up well to the weather and was replaced with the basic black-and-white version that was in place throughout the 1960s. There were a few modifications of the original O’Neill logo design in the early ’60s. I drew an elongated eye-shaped version that fit well when mounted vertically on the surfboard stringer. There was also a windsurfing sail added for a still later variation, plus a simplified version for a clothing line sold only in Japan. Now the logo has been simplified to just the wave, and although I was not involved in this latest design, I think it’s great and fits in well with other current worldwide sports identities.
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1993
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