Playboy bunny logo designer Art Paul, aged 93

Magazine designer Art Paul, who created Playboy’s famous tuxedoed bunny head logo, has died. He was 93.

Mr Paul died of pneumonia at a Chicagoarea hospital, according to his wife, Suzanne Seed.

He was a freelance illustrator when he started working with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner as the magazine’s first employee in the 1950s.

He has said he crafted the bunny logo in about an hour and also hired artists to create illustrations for Playboy, including Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol and Shel Silverstein.

Mr Paul was the magazine’s art director until he retired in 1982.

“We didn’t think it would be such a success right from the beginning, just Hefner and I putting it together,” Mr Paul had said. “Hef was kind to me. I think I gave him a lot. He gave me a lot.”

Mr Paul was born in Chicago on January 18 1925, and studied on scholarship at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before serving in the Second World War with the Army Air Corps. He returned to Chicago after the war and picked up studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Aiga, the professional association for design, says it is a “testament to Paul’s design acumen” that the Playboy bunny logo is universally recognised even without the Playboy name.

“Art deserves the credit for the illustrator’s liberation,” Christie Hefner, daughter of Hugh Hefner and former chairman and chief executive of Playboy, said.

Art Paul was the original art director for Playboy magazine.