Gay Dad: Logo #6

Created in 1999 by Factory Records design genius Peter Saville, the "Walking Man" innocuously heralded a British guitar band whose short creative life was battered by controversy and ended after a three-year rocket ride from top to bottom. Capitol was thwarted in its intentions to promote the band Stateside; the conventional wisdom was summed up by one apocryphal publicist who "said he'd resign if he had to work a band called Gay Dad," according to singer Cliff Jones. In this sign there is a clever override of daily experience that - Protestant work ethic aside - effectively makes every crossroads in the United States a four-way advertising campaign. For gay dads. And of course the implicit observation with this logo is that with every street come pedestrians, and some of them are dads, and some of those dads are gay. But at least they're white gays, so that should have been comforting to someone.