Why The Playboy Logo Is A Rabbit

Illinois Tech Magazine has the full story about the dawn of the Playboy rabbit logo. It's important to remember that when Playboy launched in 1953 — ahead of the 1960s cultural revolution — it was designed from the ground up as a finely-tuned, highly architected, well-marketed product with a very clear consumer base. Playboy was a guy magazine for guy stuff in the most exaggerated, stereotypical sense possible, but with an allegedly high-brow slant. Its pages were intended to conjure visions of permanent bachelors cruising around living luxury lifestyles in tuxedos and with coteries of female followers in tow. Founder Hugh Hefner's original name for the magazine says it all: Stag Party.
Hefner, though, didn't make such decisions by himself. Building Playboy required a team of artists, creatives, and business partners, including art director Arthur Paul. Paul was something of a rogue who, while respecting artwork of all stripes, had an interest in fusing high and low art forms — just like Hefner. Paul, brought on board the Playboy team through a word-of-mouth referral, went along with Hefner's original concept and drew a stag logo for Playboy to place at the end of articles like an on-brand period. But when the Playboy team pivoted away from the deer motif, Paul took an hour or so and retooled the deer into the similar shape of a rabbit. And to poke fun at the whole "suave man about town" thing, he gave the rabbit a tuxedo collar.
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