Stop what you're doing: Guitar Center has added a real 'G' to its logo (2024)

Anyone who uses Twitter will know that it, notoriously, is a forum on which anything and everything can (and probably already has) become the subject of vigorous, protracted debate.

To that end, Twitter's merciless lens recently fell upon the logo of guitar/music retail giant Guitar Center, which has stayed largely the same for the better part of 50 years.

In particular, some have recently been taking to Twitter to voice their discontent with the fact that a guitar was used in Guitar Center's logo to represent the letter 'G'.

Humorous as these critiques of the company's logo were, they aligned with the opinions of a number of Guitar Center employees, such as Jeannine D’Addario, who has served as the company's chief marketing and communications officer since 2017.

“It was designed in the ’60s without a computer, which is challenging when you move into a digital environment,”D’Addario explained to AdWeek in a recent interview.

With that in mind, D’Addario decided to – along with some other changes to the brand’s style guidelines – prioritize making some subtle, 21st century-minded changes to the logo.

According to AdWeek, the company spent six months or so giving its famous logo a small facelift, during which it found – via testing – that consumers clearly preferred the addition of a proper 'G'. It's now begun gradually shifting to the new-look logo in its official communications, and on its website and social media channels.

“I joke that my legacy will be, ‘I’m the girl who put the ‘G’ in ‘Guitar Center,'” said D’Addario, who also said in the interview that Guitar Center is currently opening more stores, and hopes to have 300 in total in the United States (up from its current tally of 298) by the end of 2022.