Adam and the Ants: Logo #11

Designed by Danny Kleinman in 1980, this underrated, catchy symbol projected the public image for the burgeoning Ant Liberation Front, an unheralded pop meme used by everyone from the Kiss Army to the Insane Clown Posse's Juggalos. Kleinman, the guitarist who in 1971 founded Bazooka Joe (the pub rock precursor to Adam and the Ants), would go on to project other public images whose impact on the psyche of that decade's pop culture is almost like the scent of the campfire to yonder Neandertal. His videos include Thomas Dolby's "Hyperactive!," Wang Chung's "Dance Hall Days," and the extortionately bizarre "Go Insane" video for Lindsay Buckingham, and he's designed the title sequences of every James Bond film since "GoldenEye". Adam and His Ants represented a side of punk that would be mainly exterminated through a trinity of yobs, heroin and conservatism. It was composed of highly literate (and literal), funny, imaginative gestures against the status quo, coming from seemingly nowhere and often of indeterminate sexual origin. That its individuality has been beaten out of the pop landscape with clubs of irony and conformity is everyone's loss and boredom's tirelessly tiresome gain.