Showing posts with label art rock logos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art rock logos. Show all posts

Monday, December 10, 2007

Logo #128: Scissor Sisters

Designed by Scissor Sisters' guitarist Scott "Babydaddy" Hoffman in 2001. Hoffman: "...it was sort of the first couple of days (together as a band), and we decided to record music, and Jake {Shears} had the name on the tip of his tongue. He told it to me, and I made the logo the next day. It was sort of done and made sense. And then we performed." Elegant in its simplicity and faintly chortlesome in its double-entendre (the band is named for a particular sexual position not involving genital mutilation), it's a logo for a group who are, we are told, infinitely more popular in Europe than the United States - which is fine, because as with most artists who are prophets in their own time, the bread's better, the natives are more interesting and they have more money. Not that our nail salons and frozen yogurt stands aren't lovely - and there's Disneyland on both coasts now. It's happenin'!

Allegations surfaced online in 2008 as to the provenance of the Scissor Sisters' logo: "Actually, this logo is a rip-off of an Argentine cartoonist named Quino (who is adored by millions of Spanish-speaking folk outside of the U.S.). In the cartoon - circa 1978 - a group of censors are cutting film with furrowed brows. One of the censors looks mortified as he imagines his scissors with babe legs. The Scissor Sisters' logo is the drawing in the censor's thought bubble."

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Logo #107: Missing Foundation

Infinitely simpler than Eddie is this "the party's over" logo for the band Missing Foundation, created by Pete Missing.  Missing: "I created the logo in 1982 when I was in a band called Drunk Driving.  Then, in 1984, it was attached to Missing Foundation and the logo is on the 5 albums released on Restless."  Missing currently runs a gallery in Hamburg called Nanometer.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Logo #65: This Heat

Painted by Pete Cobb in 1980 for This Heat's "Health and Efficiency" 12" on David Cunningham's Piano label in 1980. Cunningham, leader of The Flying Lizards (who had a huge hit with their deadpan deconstruction of "Money"), released one of the shining - if almost virtually ignored - examples of British pop in the '80s with this single. Its refrain, "Here's a song about the sunshine / dedicated to the sunshine," works on multiple levels and orbits eccentrically around the Brixton trio, composed of Charleses Bullen (guitar, reeds, strings, tapes, vocals) and Hayward (keys, percussion, tapes and vocals), and Gareth Williams (April 23, 1953 - December 24, 2001; bass, keyboards, tapes and voices). Here is the first part of a live action from 1982; "Out Of Cold Storage," the 6-CD retrospective of This Heat's work, was released on ReR earlier this year. While not necessarily an official logo for the band, it's as lovely and direct a type of shorthand as anything, and it carries with it some degree of the band's anger and beauty, resembling a chalk body outline with 16" NBC transcription LPs as bullets.