$92,500 for Rolling Stones Tongue Logo

The V&A Museum just bought the original Rolling Stones logo artwork. Here, we talk to its creator, John Pasche

A fan wears a T-shirt emblazoned with the iconic Rolling Stones lips and tongue logo, in use since 1970. The original artwork just sold for $92,500. Getty Images

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September 3, 2008 at 10:47 PM UTC

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You're the lead singer in the biggest band in the world and you need someone to design a poster for your next tour—what do you do? If you're Mick Jagger in 1970 you call up the Royal College of Art and ask them to recommend a student to do it.

So it was that John Pasche began a working relationship with the band that produced one of the most memorable and widely-recognised graphic devices ever created. Pasche was part of a talented group of graphics students at the college—his contemporaries including George Hardie and Storm Thorgerson. Following Jagger's phone call to the college, he went along for a meeting with the star, the upshot of which was a pastiche of a 1930s travel poster which was used to promote the Stones' English tour that year.