Visual imagery

The Ramones' art and visual imagery complemented the themes of their music and performance. The band members adopted a uniform look of long hair, leather jackets, t-shirts, torn jeans, and sneakers. This fashion emphasized minimalism, which was a powerful influence on the New York punk scene of the 1970s and reflected the band's short, simple songs.^[39]comic books, movies, the Andy Warhol scene, and avant-garde films. I was a big Mad Magazine fan myself."^[39]
Tommy Ramone recalled that, both musically and visually, "we were influenced by

The band's logo was created by New York City artist Arturo Vega, a longtime friend who had allowed Joey and Dee Dee to move into his loft.^[40] Vega produced the band's t-shirts, their main source of income, basing most of the images on a black-and-white self-portrait photograph he had taken of his American bald eagle belt buckle which had appeared on the back sleeve of the Ramones' first album.^[15] He was inspired to create the band's logo after a trip to Washington, D.C.:

"I saw them as the ultimate all-American band. To me, they reflected the American character in general–an almost childish innocent aggression. Then the first time I went to Washington, D.C., I was impressed by the official atmosphere of the buildings and agencies and all the flags everywhere. I thought, 'The Great Seal of the President of the United States' would be perfect for the Ramones, with the eagle holding arrows–to symbolize strength and the aggression that would be used against whomever dares to attack us–and an olive branch, offered to those who want to be friendly. But we decided to change it a little bit. Instead of the olive branch, we had an apple tree branch, since the Ramones were American as apple pie. And since Johnny was such a baseball fanatic, we had the eagle hold a baseball bat instead of the [Great Seal]'s arrows."^[15]

The scroll in the eagle's beak originally read "Look out below", but was later changed to "Hey, ho! Let's go!" after the opening lyrics of the band's first single "Blitzkrieg Bop", while the arrowheads on the shield came from a design on a polyester shirt Vega had bought. The name "Ramones" was spelled out in block capitals above the logo using plastic stick-on letters.^[15][41] Where the presidential seal read "Seal of the President of the United States" clockwise in the border around the eagle, Vega instead placed the stage names of the four band members: Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee, and Tommy. Over the years the names in the border would change as the band's lineup fluctuated. Vega went on to serve as the band's lighting director and sold their merchandise. In 2003 he had the original logo tattooed across his back with his own nickname, "Arty", in place of Tommy.