Papa Roach is an American rock band founded in 1993 in Vacaville, California by four school mates. In 1994 they already produced their first EP disk and three years later issued a full-scale album, after which the band started gaining popularity across the United States. At the end of 2000, they went on a tour to Great Britain and, later, to Japan, after which the musicians started to become known all over the world. By today, the group has released eight studio-recorded albums and eight mini-albums, which have been sold in more than 20 million copies.
Whatever form the band’s logo was given during the relatively long life of Papa Roach, its name that was present in all the versions was its name. This name was given to the band back in 1993, when the musicians, as their soloist Jacoby Shaddix put it in an interview, were “young and dumb”. The young musicians were influenced by many bands they were listening to. As other groups had rather weird names, they decided to name their band accordingly, to match the style of the music that they played at the epoch.
Thus, the choice of the band name is not surprising. Surprising is another fact: it had a piece of the reality behind the story; Roach was the name of Shaddix’s grandfather who as called “Papa Roach” by his family. Other musicians accepted this choice with a philosophic approach having decided that the name had a sense of longevity in it, as “roaches last”.
In 2004 Papa Roach placed its logotype into a horizontally stretched ornate frame, which looked extremely elegant and sleek. As for the wordmarks, it was written in all capitals and executed in solid and bold Sans-serif typeface with geometric shapes and a slight shadow, adding some air and volume to the composition.
The redesign of 2006 made the lettering look sophisticated and fine, using a custom typeface with some interesting decorative elements. Though the color palette was still black and white, the emblem of these years looked completely different from the previous ones. It was also underlined by a thin curved line, and the vignettes on it made the whole composition more playful and unique.
In 2016 the band adopted a new logo reminiscent in style of the 2000 year version but with a much thinner font. The wordmark received a new feature, it was like scratched through with several lines.
The current logo was developed in 2018, it’s to a great extent the same as the previous one but stricter, the letters are made all even and there is only one cross-through line, inscribed in the font graphics.