The emblem of the group is completely non-standard and unusual. Panic! at the Disco logo looks like someone hastily scribbled letters on a wall with paint. The style shows freedom, transgression of boundaries, and music loved on the streets and caused a stir in the discotheques.
Panic! at the Disco: Brand overview
Founded: | 2004–present |
Founder: | Brendon Urie, Ryan Ross, Spencer Smith, and Brent Wilson |
Headquarters: | Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. |
Website: | panicatthedisco.com |
Panic! at the Disco is a musical rock band formed by four childhood friends in the USA. Now its line-up has been completely renewed, and only Brendon Urie, who started his career with Brent Wilson, Spencer Smith, and Ryan Ross, remains from the previous members. Currently, the backbone of the band is Brendon Urie (vocals), Kenneth Harris (guitar), Nicole Row (bass guitar), Dan Pawlovich (drums). The repertoire has also changed: in addition to pop-rock, compositions in the genres of electropop, pop-baroque, alternative rock, emo, and punk now sound from the stage. The band’s debut album was called A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. It was recorded in 2005, which is considered the founding year of Panic! at the Disco. The team appeared in Summerlin, in the suburbs of Las Vegas, Nevada.
The group was “put together” by two teenage friends (Ryan Ross and Spencer Smith) when they were still studying at the local Bishop Gorman school. Then they invited Brent Wilson from the neighboring Palo Verde school to the team, and he called his classmate Brendon Urie. The result is a classic quartet – the Blink-182 cover band. Ross was supposed to sing, but after hearing Urie sing, the guys appointed him as the performer. The first rehearsals were held at Smith’s grandmother’s house.
After founding the musical group, the teenagers began to have problems, but they seriously focused on their stage career. Two of them fought with their parents, one was kicked out of the house, and all four had to work hard to save money for a rehearsal space.
Moreover, young people did not follow the beaten path: live performances, free concerts, and only then recognition. They immediately became popular by promoting the group through the Internet. Friends sent their recording from their LiveJournal account to bassist Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy. He came, listened to them, and offered a contract with Decaydance Records. So, without a single live performance, the guys received an agreement with a recording studio.
Then active work began: recordings, new songs, a platinum composition, tours, and more. However, the original composition of the team did not last long. Gradually, almost all the founders left it. Only Brendon Urie, the main performer and frontman remained. As a result, Panic! at the Disco became his solo project, which is recognizable by the old emblem. Indeed, for so many years of existence, the musicians have changed their outer shell, but the essence has remained the same – the group’s name.
Meaning and History
Every studio album from Panic! at the Disco with its recognizable logo. However, most of them contain the name of a musical group decorated in different styles – from frilly old English type to modern futuristic design. Some fans think the phrase “Panic! at the Disco” was inspired by the famous British rock band The Smiths. But in fact, the famous name was taken from the song “Panic” (2004) by the little-known emo band Name Taken (formerly All That’s Left). Brendon Urie himself announced this.
2005 – 2008
The debut collection, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, was decorated with Old English lettering. They were frilly symbols with rounded serifs and thin curls like a vine. The font used for the title is in the upper case. The double rounded ends of the letters made them look like gnawed bones. The inscription was stretched out in one line and painted in golden color with a barely noticeable white border in some parts. Such an emblem claimed Gothic elegance and subtlety.
2008 – 2011
A 2008 compilation called Pretty. Odd. was marked with a radically different style. It was something bright, catchy, defiant, but pleasant. The inscription occupied two rows. At the top was the word “Pan!c” with an exclamation point instead of an “i.” The second one contained “at the” in small inconspicuous characters and a large “Disco.” The idea is to replace “i” with “!” came from the fact that they are very similar and look almost identical, only upside down. This brought life to the logo. But the Old English style of letters was preserved and even highlighted: the characters received characteristic protrusions in the middle and a 3D format. The boring color palette has been replaced with a bright one consisting of gold, white, purple, and grey turquoise.
2011 – 2013
On the cover of the Vices & Virtues collection, there was a completely different emblem from which only the group’s name remained familiar. The letters received a Gothic design: sharp and elongated ends, spikes, curls, fine patterns, short single lines, stars. The phrase differed from Gothic only in color – it was light gold. There was rounding in the center, but it was not closed into a solid ring but diverged into miniature strokes of different directions. The designers put an exclamation point at the end of the line with the word “Panic!” and instead of a dot over the “i,” they used a large star. Words began with capital letters, while all the rest were in lowercase.
2013 – 2016
The album Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die, added a new design to the logo. And since in the first row, along with “Panic!” got a fragment with “at the,” then the exclamation point was in the middle of the line. Moreover, his point was common to the letter “i” from the bottom row in the word “Disco.” The inscription acquired a minimalistic style: the handwritten text was located diagonally and was made in thin, rounded letters. Its design resembled calligraphic handwriting.
2016 – 2018
In 2016, a music collection called Death of a Bachelor was released. It was complemented by an emblem of a radically different format than before. Monochrome and subtle lines were retained, but they received a different specificity. The words were written in capital letters of various configurations as if they were written by hand. This was emphasized by the uneven lines that made up the inscriptions. The exclamation point in the middle of the phrase looked harmonious since all the characters were uppercase. In this case, “PANIC!” was perceived as a separate short sentence, followed by the second – “AT THE DISCO.” The white text was on a black rectangle stretched out horizontally.
2018 – 2022
The appearance of the Pray for the Wicked album was the start of another redesign of the logo. So the musicians received a non-standard wordmark. In this case, the title is again split into two lines, with the first line containing the exclamation “Panic!”. The inscription is made in the form of careless strokes made with black ink or paint. The rows go a little diagonally, with an invisible rise up.
2022 – today
In 2022, the seventh studio album, Panic! at the Disco, was called Viva Las Vengeance. Its cover was decorated with a line of text in which individual fragments of letters were shifted horizontally or vertically. This design resembles interference on a TV screen when the picture jumps due to a bad signal. The “A” line that has slid down, the two asymmetrical “Ts,” the “H” torn in half, and the “ISCO” cut diagonally look like they have been divided into pieces, but not completely because the parts of the letters are still in contact. In the official version, the logo is black and the letters in the phrase “PANIC! AT THE DISCO” are upper case. The modernized lettering is based on a bold sans-serif typeface, but it isn’t easy to identify in its revised form.
Font and Colors
The evolution of identity has moved from complex and frilly to simple and sloppy. This was a modification of the musical styles in which the group played. If at the beginning gothic prevailed, then frank rock appeared at the end. All this is reflected in the design of the collections that regularly come out of the recording studio.
In the Panic! at the Disco emblems, there is no single font: each collection is signed in an original way. The glamorous printed letters were replaced by handwritten and drawn ones, like inscriptions on the walls of gateways. They are not the same in height and thickness have different slopes and lengths, but they are individual, as the musical team members.
The same can be said about the color scheme. At first, multi-component brilliance prevailed, and then simple monochrome. It manifests itself as a unifying moment and shows that the group is united in its conceptual impulse. Previously, the palette included gold, purple, turquoise gray now;, it is represented only by a fatal combination of black and white.
Panic! at the Disco color codes
Black | Hex color: | #000000 |
---|---|---|
RGB: | 0 0 0 | |
CMYK: | 0 0 0 100 | |
Pantone: | PMS Process Black C |