Any way a fewhours later he came down from the loft with the design we know and love. It helped make it easier to find our stuff in the crunch.I still have an old toolbox with one of the stencils on it.Ī few days later I was talking to Bob and suggested that perhaps the words"Grateful dead" could be placed under the circle, using a styleof lettering that would appear to be a skull if you saw it from a distance(I guess I was influenced by too many posters of the time). This was the first version, and we put it onto all our gear. Then with one side up, the red half circle went on top ofthe dried white paint and after wiping off the red and turning the stencilover, the blue was applied. Then he held the stencil to an amp and sprayed a circleof white paint. But it was a half circlewith a jagged edge. One was a circular hole, about 5 1/2 inches in diameter, and the otherwas a part of a circle 5 inches in diameter. A thought occurred to me:if the orange were red and the bar across were a lightning bolt cuttingacross at an angle, then we would have a very nice, unique and highly identifiablemark to put on the equipment.Īt the warehouse I told Bob the idea that I had, and he made a quick sketch.A mutual friend, Ernie Fischbach, who was visiting with Bob, said "Giveit to me, I'll show you an easy way to put it on the boxes." Whereupon he proceeded to cut holes in a couple of pieces of stencilpaper. I couldn't read the name ofthe firm, and so was just looking at the shape. One day in the rain, I looked out the side and saw a signalong the freeway which was a circle with a white bar across it, the topof the circle was orange and the bottom blue. I was in the habit of driving from Oakland to Novato in a little MGTF whichhad plastic side curtains, which were not very transparent, due to agingof the plastic. I decided that we needed some sort of markingthat we could identify from a distance. Wewould spend a fair amount of time moving the pieces around so that we couldread the name on the boxes. Sinceevery band used pretty much the same type of gear it all looked alike. The Dead in those days had to play in a lot of festival style shows wherethe equipment would all wind up at the back of the stage in a muddle. Bob Thomas, an old friend of mine had just moved fromLA to the Bay area and needed a place to stay, and we needed someone tolook after the warehouse, which had had a problem with break-ins.īob was a superb graphic artist whose work is now familiar to most Deadheadsin the form of the Live Dead album cover and the Bear's Choice cover, onwhich the popular Dancing Bears appeared. Iwas sound man for the band at the time, and lived in Oakland.
![dancing bears grateful dead icons dancing bears grateful dead icons](https://i.redd.it/p3kon1jvi2e51.jpg)
In 1969 the Dead were renting a warehouse in Novato, California. Bob made significant changes in the basic design when he derived it for the album.This is the logo that Bob Thomasand I designed for Grateful Dead One of the best known is the ubiquitous American company, Bear Wheel Alignment, whose logo is almost an exact duplicate of this little type-character. This generic design has been used in several commercial logos over the years. You can also see what some people think are "bibs", are actually a sylization of the chest fur of the bear. I don't know why people think they are, their positions are quite obviously those of a high-stepping march. I guess you may have realised by now that the bears on the album cover are not really "dancing".
![dancing bears grateful dead icons dancing bears grateful dead icons](https://1000logos.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Grateful-Dead-Logo.png)
![dancing bears grateful dead icons dancing bears grateful dead icons](https://embrosoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Grateful-Dead-Dancing-Bears-frontal-photo.jpg)
Bob Thomas gave this one to me and said it was the inspiration for the circle of little multi-coloured marching bears on the back cover of Bear's Choice. It is a 36 point lead type-slug of a generic bear, a standardised figure from a printer's font of type, which particular font, I don't know. The photo to the right shows the source of the design of the bear motif on Bear's Choice. The little bears found in the form of stickers and stuffed dolls are taken from Bob Thomas' album cover art.
![dancing bears grateful dead icons dancing bears grateful dead icons](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/cf/ba/83cfba8701ac423c892a8da2b937c485.jpg)
I am often asked about the origin of the so-called "dancing bears" which were commonly seen around GD shows.