The New Chris Craft Commander Club Logotype

It is an honor for the Executive Committee to present the new logotype for the Club. Impressive don't you think? So it should be. The story behind it's creation is quite impressive.

It all started out when the new Executive Committee immediately had to deal with a number of  issues regarding the former logo (see the side panel). The ex. governor, Dick Morland, mentioned the story to his friend and the Commander chief stylist Dick Avery. Avery proved eager as ever to help. He soon provided a number sketches on paper to the Executive Committee for scrutiny.

The preferred sketch was then passed on to Club members, and professional design wizards, Whitney Pillsbury and Josh Beatman, who digitized the logo and gave it it's final design.
 

An important issue was our desire to incorporate the original Chris Craft logotype in the Club's logo. Chief Commander, Chris Orphal, contacted Chris Craft and managed to get a “go ahead” blessing by none other than Steve Heese, President of Chris Craft. And, if that weren’t enough, Meghan Stout, Director of Marketing at Chris Craft offered the Club the service of  “polishing” the logo at no charge.

The details

So here we are. A new logo, designed by Dick Avery, the designer of the Commanders in the sixties, fine tuned by Commander enthusiasts Whitney Pillsbury and Josh Beatman then Chris Craft's design department, and finally approved by Chris Craft President Steve Heese. Now, that is a lot of heritage in one new logo!

Note!

The Chris Craft Commander Club oval logo, and bow logo, and website are © copyright of the Chris Craft Commander Club, Inc. Use of either logo or website content requires written permission by the Chris Craft Commander Club, Inc.

Nameplate on most Commanders in the

60-ties and early 70-ties.

New ones are available through

LPX-Sales

Creators and Sponsors 

Dick Avery, Whitney Pillsbury,Steve Heese, Josh Beatman

Why change logo?

The first Commander Club logo was a very nice logo designed by one of the Club's founding members, Paul Pletcher. The central element in this logo is the bow of a 38' Commander with the years 1964 and 1972 on either side. The logo came both in a light blue color and in black & white.

Paul Pletcher kindly offered to transfer all rights to the Club once the Club got incorporated, which he also did.

However, the old logo had a couple of small - but important - inherent flaws. First, it did not feature the original Chris Craft logotype (initially because, at the time, the owners of the Chris Craft logo were reluctant to grant anybody the right use of their logo). Even with Chris Craft's permission, adding the Chris Craft logo would have called for a major redesign of the logo since Chris Craft would most likely not accept that we had to "bend" their logo to fit in the round circle where the words "CHRIS CRAFT" appeared in the old logo. Secondly, some members owning Commanders built outside of the time frame 1964-1972, questioned the relevance of specifying the years in the logo itself.

In context of this legacy the Executive Committee found that it would be in the best interest of the Club to have a entirely new logotype.

In order to avoid that the "bow" logo would be used for other purposes than those in the interest of the Club, Paul donated the "bow" logo to the Club.