The Front of Your Cajon - Tapa Graphics
TL;DR The graphics on the front of a cajon may reflect just about anything: the company that re-sells it, the company that made it, personalized artwork, reproduced artwork or a promotional logo or name to entice you to buy the product.
The front of the cajon is called the tapa. The tapa is a wonderful marketing tool for cajon sellers, basically someone is banging on a drum, which attracts you to look directly at it: a marketers dream. But the tapa is also a showcase for the beauty of wood, a big sell point for many cajons. So there's a compromise which keeps the logo smaller and often off-center. Most artisanal cajon makers as well as most major cajon brands use distinctive logos and graphics on the tapa to identify and promote their products.
There are also cajon brands or models using the tapa and/or cajon box as a canvas for artwork. Some are individual works of art, some use factory methods to reproduce artwork. In these cases the whole box or tapa becomes promotional. For a fee, some cajon makers will personalize the tapa artwork.
In general a tapa with nothing on it is usually a DIY cajon - a cajon of very limited production. However, there are a few professional builders that leave the tapa clear, but they are rare. Some brands put the model name on the tapa. This can make it confusing trying to find the original builders information.
There are big, efficient factories on this planet that make a lot of cajons. They only sell cajons in bulk, and they have many models to choose from. You put in an order, they make it to your specifications. They will put almost anything you want on the front or sides of the cajon. You provide them artwork, they deliver. As an example, my business could order 100 cajons branded on the tapa as... let's say 'Alaska's Best Cajon'. If I want, I could have several different logos or artworks applied to portions of the order. Say, "Alaska's Best Cajon" on 30 units, "BS Cajon" on 30 units and a full color photo of a brown bear on the remaining 40 units. The factory, lets say it's in Indonesia, makes them up and ships them to me in Alaska, USA. I can now sell them on Internet buy-sell sites, in my music store, or at the local market. My business is based in Alaska, but the cajons were made in Indonesia. In this scenario the tapa graphics do not reflect any information about the business or about the country of manufacture, they are purely designed to attract and secure a buyer.
