Who Designed the Rolling Stones' Tongue and Lips Logo?

The Rolling Stones’ iconic tongue and lips logo was designed by John Pasche, a 24-year-old graphic design student at the Royal College of Art. Mick Jagger commissioned him in 1970 for £50, reportedly because the band wanted a logo that could compete with the Beatles’ apple. Pasche took inspiration from Jagger’s own lips and tongue during a live performance, plus a Hindu goddess Kali’s protruding tongue he’d seen on a poster — a mix of rock ’n’ roll rebellion and religious imagery.

The logo first appeared not on an album cover per se, but on the inner sleeve of the Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers. The outer cover was the now-famous Andy Warhol zipper design, but peel back the sleeve and there it was: a bright red mouth set against black. Later that year it showed up on the “Brown Sugar” single. Pasche’s original artwork sold at auction in 2015 for over $300,000, making that £50 fee look like a pretty good investment.