Hard Rock Café Las Vegas

The first Hard Rock Cafe was established in London in 1971. At the time, the franchise’s iconic badge logo was composed of the brand’s name in letters on two different fonts set within a circle. While this logo has seen variations through the years, it has kept a consistent and simple design, featured prominently on the franchise’s iconic guitar-shaped neon signs around the world.

Hard Rock Cafe Las Vegas debuted in 1990, on the corner of Harmon and Paradise. The property’s signage is the first large neon guitar in the franchise’s history, modeled after the custom-made Gibson Les-Paul guitar played by Pete Townshend, guitarist of the rock band The Who. Manufactured by YESCO (Young Electric Sign Company), the guitar measures 82-feet tall and 24-feet wide, and consists of approximately 4,110 feet of neon tubing and over 700 individual neon units. This signage features a partially animated design, using motion and light to depict dynamic action, in this case, the throbbing of the neon tubing at the guitar’s neck creates an optical illusion in which its strings are vibrating. Colors used on the sign include Ruby Red, Clear Red 3500K White, and Yellow Gold II.

Large-scale guitars eventually became a signature of the company’s visual identity, each boasting a unique design. The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino’s cherry red guitar signage in Biloxi, Mississippi, for example, was originally constructed in 2005 and broke records for its size and scale. This signage—which endured an unprecedented thrashing when Hurricane Katrina struck the area in 2005—still stands 112-feet tall, weighs 95,000 pounds, and is set on a foundation 90 feet deep.