Two Designers Walk Into A Bar

Episode 08: Ghostbusters, The Rocketeer and Logos Made for Adventure

Released December 23, 2020
© 2020 Two Designers Media, LLC

Welcome to Two Designers Walk Into A Bar, a place where pop culture creatives, discover design icons, that make us tick. And we share a few cocktails in the process.

In a world…the conversation is all about movies. There have been many, many iconic movies whose logos are firmly imprinted on pop culture. And we’re excited to be discussing a couple of our favorites. So grab that bucket of popcorn, throw a bit more vodka in that extra large ICEE and settle in for another conversation with us as we stroll back into the bar.

Elliot. Do you like movies about gladiators? What about, what about logos of movies about gladiators?

Um, Todd, uh, are you asking me about that? Narrows it down in my opinion to three movies in no particular order, of course, there’s “Gladiator” then there’s uh, “Ben Hur.” And then of course, there’s “Airplane.” That’s the gold standard of movies about both humor and gladiators. I guess it’s the movie of which all movies are judged against from now on.

That’s right. From this day forward.

You know what’s interesting, Elliot is what we have is the kind of marketing stuff that comes ahead of movies. Posters, logos…That helps to drive the big box office opening weekend. And then, you know, maybe the movie lives up to it. Maybe it doesn’t.

But you got to admit there’s some great movie logos out there that have really driven people to watch the movie.

Okay. You’ve piqued my curiosity. It sounds like you have something in mind.

I have a movie logo. Well, I went down a big old rabbit hole. So I have a movie logo – an actual quote from a New York Times review said “..the film didn’t fulfill the promise of the promotional material.” But I absolutely loved this movie and I love all things about Old Hollywood. Like Hollywood lore, and this movie fits right in.

And you’re never going to guess what the movie is. I’m just going to put that out there.

Ouch. So it sounds like you’re saying I would never guess it because you assume I have never seen it. You may have, but it’s not a very popular movie, but let me describe a little bit about what I’m thinking here.

So it’s a period piece. It is around the late thirties. The logo as well as the poster, as well as the movie design has a cool sort of Art Deco feel. And, and it is totally tied up in Art Deco. You cannot get away from it.

So is the movie…wait, hold on a second…So it was the movie made in the thirties? Or was it when you said it’s a period piece, do you mean it was…

The movie was made in the nineties.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. And, okay. I’ll give you some…I’ll give you a couple clues here.

All right. Let’s play a round of questions for this.

All right. The movie was made in the early nineties and it was a release by Disney.

It wasn’t an animated movie and it was about a superhero that wasn’t a Marvel character.

Yeah. This was way before.

Yeah. And it wasn’t Superman of course, no.

Nope. Takes place in sort of Art Deco period. Late thirties. It involved Nazis.

Well, it wasn’t Captain America because that was made later. Okay.

It takes place in Hollywood.

In Hollywood. Hold on, hold on. I might be zeroing in on this.

I think you and I saw this movie together, actually.

Okay. So was Howard Hughes in this movie?

Not the real Howard Hughes…

Like a Howard Hughes character. Not, not the corpse of Howard Hughes.

No. Cause he was gone by them, but a character yes.

So, so yeah. So, so you’re saying it wasn’t Weekend At Bernie’s.

No, not Weekend At Bernie’s and I’m not crazy about that logo in particular, a classic movie in its own right, nonetheless.

That’s right. Well, let’s see. So Art Deco set in the thirties. Nazis. In Hollywood.

Oh, in Hollywood?

That’s right. That’s right.

Okay. Well, and it’s Disney and it’s…okay I think you said it was based on a comic book, right…Because a super hero So it was like, wasn’t a superhero Disney invented. It existed prior to that.

Right. Based on a comic book.  Okay. I’ll just tell you – The Rocketeer. Remember the movie?

I love The Rocketeer. I love it. Love this movie.

Yes. I loved this movie. So, I dug into a little bit of the history of the marketing of it…the logo…which I liked. It’s just…it just reeks of Art Deco cleanliness, and the poster design.

And then you know, I went back and really dug into the movie itself and, found out some interesting bits about it. And I was kind of going down a whole bunch of rabbit holes.

What about my movie or about The Rocketeer?

No. About the rabbit holes, dumb ass. No. No.

Tell me, I want to know, I want to hear about a movie that you might’ve brought to the table.

Okay. Well, mine is less about the poster. I don’t think the poster was like in terms of famous movie posters, there’s nothing to write home about. Well, that’s not entirely true.

You know, one of the things that’s tough about movie posters at times, especially today, they’ll come out with posters sort of after the fact. And it’s almost like when stuff gets rereleased on video and things like this, but as far as I know, the original poster was very simple. In fact, it was so simple it was only three colors – black, white, and red.

All right.

Now I’m going to give you a couple of hints. And my guess is…

The Shining.

No, but. You know…you know what? You’re not too far off and I’ll tell you why, because there definitely was some, uh, extra sensory, some spectral activity maybe from another dimension or that sort of thing. But let me give you another couple of hints.

Okay.

Released in 1984.

Okay.

Like Spring, Summer ’84. I think it was June of ’84 maybe. And the poster really just had a two-color logo on it.

Hmmm. Okay. Poster was just a logo?

Yes. I think it might’ve had the name of the movie. Yeah. But it was basically just a logo – only two colors. And that was basically it, but I guarantee not only have you seen this movie multiple times, you could probably from memory, draw the logo for it, or at least come pretty darn close.

Oh, okay. Okay. Was it a hit movie?

Oh, hell yeah.

Okay. All right. So will someone today still know it.

A hundred percent, unlike The Rocketeer.

Okay. Red and black only. Jeez. Um, was it a horror movie?

It was sort of a horror-comedy-science fiction movie. It sounds horrible on paper, but it’s a brilliant, brilliant movie.

Okay. Wait, wait, wait. Oh, wait. Oh, wait.

Oh, sports fans.

Okay. Was there a giant marshmallow man?

You know what? I think you may have just figured out Ghostbusters.

Yes. Yes. What a great movie. What a great logo. Yeah. You’re right. Many people would recognize that. And many people are wearing clothing with the logo on it today.

Well, let’s jump in and talk about The Rocketeer. ’Cause I brought a hip movie to the table. You brought sort of a cult favorite, sleeper movie to the table, but a beautiful, beautiful movie. a very well done and under appreciated movie. So let’s jump in and let’s hear all about The Rocketeer.

I love Hollywood lore. I love stuff that happened in the 20th century that made history and this movie – The Rocketeer, which is based on some characters by an artist named Dave Stevens who created the comic book of the same name – is definitely it. And it seems that Dave had this fascination with Bettie Page – the pinup queen.

Now, The Rocketeer comic book was made in 1981. And it was like true to style. Kind of the pulp style of movies, serials, and adventures and things like that. And it was meant as kind of homage to Bettie Page. The story in the movie takes place in 1938 Los Angeles. And, uh, if you haven’t seen the movie, we’re not going to give you too many spoilers, but come on. It’s a 30-year old movie anyway. So you know, good on ya.

It’s the story of a stunt pilot named Cliff Secord. He happens to stumble upon a jet pack…which come on. I mean…that’s the name of the movie?

So you kind of figured it. And then there’s a whole lot of cool shit that happens and he flies around and ultimately he uses this jet pack and this new power that he has to battle the Nazis.

Huh. And I think a former James Bond plays the head Nazi in Hollywood. If I’m not mistaken.

Yes. Timothy Dalton. Actually, Timothy Dalton was playing James Bond at the time he did this movie. So there’s a Coda to the story that if we have time, I’ll tell you a little bit more about. But we’re talking about the marketing stuff for movies. We’re not reviewing movies today, although we’ve already decided we both love both of these movies.

Now, the thing about The Rocketeer though, is it has since become a cult classic and it just drips of Art Deco nostalgia. And I, as well as you Elliot, we both love this movie. But unfortunately, not a lot of people saw it.

Well, so this begs just one question that’s kind of hanging around in the back of my head. Even 30 years ago – pre-streaming pre-internet and all this stuff, Disney was a marketing juggernaut. You know, they got their amusement parks. Every animated film they released was a smash hit. It seemed like…So what happened? I mean, if Disney made this – it’s based on…now granted…not a mainstream comic book.

Right.

You know, as you mentioned, it’s a little bit more of a cult following comic book. In your research, why did it fail so badly?

Yeah.

Why did Disney not market it?

Well, did people think it was one thing and they saw it and it was something else? How did this break down?

There’re two things there. So let me just give you the numbers real quick. So you have context of how badly it did do. It only made $47 million at the box office after costing $40 million to make.

You know, that $7 million profit for Disney was like, what a coffee break for everybody? And that’s global. Right?

That’s not. So, okay. That’s a great question.

What happened? Because clearly the movie is a good movie and it’s very well done. And of course the poster and the logo is great too.

So unfortunately it happened to open for the big summer blockbuster weekend that also saw a couple other movies. One being Terminator 2 released at the same time. Another: Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. I know one of your all time favorite movies also was released at that same weekend. Now I think it’s probably a race to the bottom to see which movie did worse – Robin Hood or The Rocketeer, but nonetheless Terminator 2 dominated. (ed. note: As mentioned, The Rocketeer made $47 million. Robin Hood made a respectable $390.5 million, While Terminator 2 hauled in $520.9 million)

And if you remember Terminator 2, this was when they had the morphing technology that was really new and fresh and big. So it had the molten-looking terminators. Yeah. You know, made a bazillion dollars.

So anyway, it didn’t fly and partially due to what I love about it, which is the poster.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s a painting. An airbrush painting. It certainly looks Art Deco. It’s faceted. It is the Rocketeer zooming diagonally across the poster. It’s just beautiful. Just gorgeous. Unfortunately, the Rocketeer is wearing a helmet, so you don’t know who it is. It didn’t matter. The guy starring as Cliff Secord anyway, was kind of a newbie.

He was sort of the Brendan Frazier of his day. If I remember it was kind of his breakout role, like Brendan Frazier in The Mummy.

Yeah. Yeah. But as you said, the movie had Timothy Dalton in, it had a couple other stars in it, so they actually redid the poster later to see if that would draw a little bit more attention to put the characters in there. That particular poster just falls apart.

But anyhow, that’s part of it. And as I said, in the opening part, the marketing was so good and the film flopped so much a review in the New York Times said actually the film didn’t fulfill the promise of the marketing materials.

You know, the other thing I wonder is when you’re talking about Terminator 2, versus The Rockeeter.

You sort of have this idea…if you’re high school kids, do you want to see a movie about future-based technology? That’s awesome. And on the cutting edge. To your point, the liquid terminator made from mercury or chrome or whatever.

Or do you want to see this throwback homage to 50 years ago during an era that – as far as you were concerned as like a high school kid, which I was at the time – couldn’t have been like more uncool, right.

That was when your grandparents were alive. Those were the good old days. Right?

And there’s even another little wrinkle that might be one of the biggest wrinkles that led to not many people seeing The Rocketeer. The original comic book – the Dave Stevens comic book – as I said, was kind of an homage to Bettie Page and pinup girls.

Well, when Disney decided that it was going to be released under the Disney brand and not the Touchstone brand, there goes all that stuff. So the thing that made the comic book popular was gone. The director – whose name is Joe Johnston – fought Disney tooth and nail to keep all of this stuff. This magic that was in the comic book. And they said, “Nope, Nope, Nope, Nope.” Again, love the movie, but you end up with this kind of sweet, almost milquetoast picture. It was not really the taste of the time and I thought is what made it really cool. And it stood out.

It felt very of its time in the sense of, Timothy Dalton’s character was sort of this like Errol Flynn-style villain.

I felt like if I were to watch it today…I think I did see it in the theater. And I certainly have seen it subsequently many times since and it certainly has Golden Age of Hollywood charm, as you mentioned. And I think at the end of the day, probably the screenwriters and the director and stuff like that kind of said, “Okay. Well you know, in the Golden Age of Hollywood, there was basically like a standards group or board.”

I forget what it was called. And something was like standards and practices.

Yes. And so basically it was this thing where like, ostensibly Communism, you know – and making sure there weren’t Communist themes or overtures in movies.

Right. Because they were so influential at the time. But also you know, it was kind of a precursor to the MPAA.

Right. Because movies at the time didn’t really have ratings.

Right. So I think what these guys were doing is “Okay, you have to cut out the Bettie Page pinup stuff. Kind of the outlier, not reverent.”

Exactly. But maybe for Disney. It was unsavory or kind of the underbelly of Hollywood during that time.

Right. You know I think they kind of said, “Okay, if we’re going to make a family friendly movie, if it’s going to have – to your point, the Disney name played on it – then let’s go for that. So even though Timothy Dalton shows up, I just remember he was sort of the cad, right? Very similar to Billy Zane’s character in Titanic.

He was the guy who gets the girl at some point. If I remember…falls for him and then she finds out he really is not the person that she thought he was. And you know, it's just a very…sorry, sorry, sorry everybody again.

Hey, aren’t you the one who said it’s a 30-year old movie if we hadn’t seen it?

Geez. Step off.

I want to say one more thing about the creation of the logos and posters and stuff that went along with this. And then I want to hear about what you found with Ghostbusters?

Sure.

Here’s the thing. I started doing research on all of the players. Obviously it was a Disney movie. There’s plenty of talent in the Disney stable to create the marketing materials. As you said, they are a marketing juggernaut. The logo itself – which I love again – because it’s just straight up Art Deco. It’s based on this typeface Plaza, which everybody knows it was designed by a British type designer. Alan Meeks. We’ll put a link on the site.

Meeks has done a number of other very cool, recognizable display type. So it’s really spaced out and there are lightening bolts on the leg of the R and the cross bars of the Es. Now the illustration was done by a guy named John Mattos who did a lot of Hollywood illustrations and is great. IMDB says the art director – who I would guess may have done the logo – is a guy named John Alvin, which is a name I hadn’t heard before, but since I love Hollywood lore so much, I dug into it.

And this guy is the O.G. poster maker. Elliot. Do you know the name, John Alvin?

I don’t.

Okay. Let me name a few of the movies and see if you’ve ever seen some of these. Uh, Blazing Saddles.

Oh, yes.

Yeah. Okay. Young Frankenstein. The Lion King.

Yeah. I’ve heard something about those two.

Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Lost Boys, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Blade Runner.

This dude has got the cred again. Now I only saw this on IMDB. Um, and I couldn’t verify it so that very well may be wrong.

But do you know what I love about this though? Knowing you knowing Wikipedia and your love for one another, you will verify this for us.

I will, I will verify. And there’s a link to John Alvin’s site, so you can see all of his great work out there.

[Break]

Hey Todd, where did all this popcorn come from? Why is the floor so sticky?

And why are they selling hot dogs behind the bar for $10 a piece?

Yeah. It's like a movie theater in here.

Tell you what Todd, let’s make sure our Netflix accounts are all paid up and meet back here at the bar in just a few minutes.

Sounds good. Starting back soon.

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[Part 2]

All right. Enough about the logo for The Rocketeer. There’s another interesting thing that I came across, but I’ll bring that back up later. If we have time. Tell me about the logo for Ghostbusters.

Okay. So much like you, when I started to dig into this logo, I realized I hit, paydirt not just typical Hollywood fodder, but…

 Joe Dirt?!

No, no, no. I don’t think this guy, if this guy was smart, he had nothing to do with Joe Dirt. Although I know that’s one of your favorite movies.

I do love Joe Dirt. Yeah.

Okay. But please. So I’m sure everyone knows which Ghostbusters we’re talking about. Not the compromised 1989 Ghostbusters part two.

I’m not talking about the 2016 reboot. I’m not talking about the 2020, now 2021 Paul Rudd vehicle that will at some point come out. I am talking about the O.G. Ghost.

Yes!

The 1984 original. I was 11-years old, but managed to get people to take me to the movie theater three different times that summer to see it.

Ghostbusters. I loved Ghostbusters. Loved it, loved it. I still love it today. I love it so much. I bought the DVD twice forgetting I already owned it.

You got so excited the second time?

I did. So maybe if you’re nice to me, I’ll mail one out.

Nice. Thanks.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I love the Ghostbusters logo. I remember seeing the trailer for it on TV, at the movie theater and of course the logo just made it great. You know, prior to that there were posters, like you were talking about that certainly were famous. Like the Jaws poster, arguably is one of the most famous posters, right? Then you kind of had – you know – some of the Star Wars posters, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, of course. Things like that you know, Raiders of the Lost Ark with its cool sort of receding in space gradient. Hand lettered type – you know.

Yeah. Such amazing illustrative posters and logos that you could stare at for a long time and see little things into them. That was kind of classic Hollywood style. Lots of the star’s faces were on the posters designed with illustration. And that’s not what Ghostbusters was?

No, I think it probably did what it did for a couple of reasons. So I want to talk about the poster real quick, and then I want to get into the logo and a little bit, then about the movie itself. Cause this is one of the cool things where it’s very meta in the sense that the logo appears several times in the movie.

Like, like the Ghostbusters it’s the logo for the movie, but it’s the logo for the business. Marketing genius! But it wasn’t…it didn’t feel forced. You know what I mean? It had a place in the movie.

Yeah. Yeah, totally worked.

So it was a marketing vehicle, but it was also a prop, a little bit of background on the movie.

So I think probably the reason why the poster was so simple – like I said earlier – it was simple. Black background, red and white logo. The logo is of course, a circle with a slash through it in a cartoon ghost. Kind of with both his hands and his head looking in one direction and kind of protruding out of it.

Right. So he’s scared. The slash is going from – if you think of a clock face – two o’clock to eight o’clock and it’s just brilliantly simple. And I remember this was in the days you didn’t really buy video cassettes, start to rent them in the mid eighties. I know this is going to be hard for some younger listeners to understand, but if you wanted to buy a video cassette at that time, it was still considered really the property of the studio.

I remember – just to provide some context – my family loved and still loves the movie, A Christmas Story. And we decided after renting it a bunch of times from a local video store, we wanted to buy it. The store was stumped. They didn’t know exactly how they would do that. How they would sell a copy to us. So they called up the studio or the distributor or whatever, ordered a copy for us.

And this is keep in mind. This isn’t like the early to mid eighties. We paid something. My family paid like over a hundred dollars for it.

Could Ralphie come to your house and deliver it?  

We lived in Cleveland and it was filmed in Cleveland East. For that amount of money, we should have at least gotten it with a free leg lamp or something, but anyway, we were already getting it.

We’re off track here. So the movie itself, uh, as I mentioned earlier, it’s sort of this comedy, action, horror mashup film. Sounds horrible on paper but, it was Dan Aykroyd’s baby. The plot – of course – a trio of psychologists get kicked out of some anonymous college in New York City and they decide they want to form a business to capture ghosts.

So this was the first comedic movie to use complex special effects. Up until this point – you know, going back to for example, Jaws or Star Wars – it was always these adventure movies. You know, comedies were kind of like, The Jerk, Revenge Of The Nerds or something. Or Animal House… Caddyshack.

Yeah, this used an early stage of computer graphics, which kind of blew people away because these ghost things used a lot of puppets and puppetry and all these other sorts of things. And, it was a lot of in-camera stuff, some on-set stuff, complex matte paintings.

When you think about the scenes at the top of the apartment building and the temple, getting zapped with the Proton Packs and you know, all of that stuff that was very, very complex for a comedy. So this was originally developed by Dan Aykroyd for he and John Belushi before John Belushi passed away. Then Winston Zeddmore was originally supposed to be played by Eddie Murphy. So Bill Murray steps in, after John Belushi passed away and then the original script was crazy. They were supposed to be almost like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They were going to travel through time and they were going to battle ghosts across time and do all this stuff. Apparently Dan Aykroyd had this fixation with the paranormal and, I guess he comes by it honest. His parents and his grandparents or something were also known for having, these fixations.

So for his buddy, he decided to kind of turn this into a movie.

And then later he had to Drive Miss Daisy.

That’s right. She was a ghost.

Yeah. I don’t know Todd, you need to have more respect today.

Okay. I know, I know. Sorry. That was a dead-end joke.

I see what you do.

Okay. Basically he rewrote the script, so it could be turned into a real movie production. Even with the special effects that were used in the final movie, there were still far less complex, I guess, than what he originally wanted to do.

So basically, you know, Bill Murray coming in for John Belushi – again, I love Animal House. I love The Blues Brothers – but I cannot imagine. Ghostbusters without Pete being played by Bill Murray.

Yeah. Right? He is that guy.

So an effects-laden movie. As a result of this, I think that they didn’t really know what the final art or what these effects would look like.

Later, they kind of named the green ghost Slimer because there’s the scene where, you know, he slimed Pete. That kind of thing in the hotel that was later for a cartoon and all this kind of stuff. The ghost didn’t have names or anything like this. So there wasn’t any sort of signature character or anything like this.

And I think they were still trying figure it out. So it’s sort of like, “Well, what can we put out there that will be noticeable and kind of cut through the clutter and give people something to remember?” So, boom! Big simple logo. That was just a very, very quick read and it works. And like I said, it then later appears in the movie. It appears on the side of their, Cadillac ambulance, the Ecto-1.

Right, right, right. It appears on the patches, on the shoulders of their uniforms. It appears on a beautiful sign. And I wanted to know where the two-sided illuminated sign is because I absolutely love it. That was hanging over the fire station door in the original movie. It was very meta in the sense it was both on the poster, in real life for the people seeing it, but then it also existed in the universe of Ghostbusters itself.

Right. So who did this logo? That was one thing that I wondered because I’ve been drawing it for 30 years. We will post on our website. There are YouTube tutorials about how to draw the Ghostbusters logo.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it’s really cool.

Who did this thing?

So I want to read an excerpt from the obit of the artist who drew it because he passed away a few years ago. I want to read this great description in the New York Times about the logo, and then we can get into the sort of creation story of the logo itself.

Okay.

So the logo was designed by a guy named Michael C. Gross. He was an artist and a movie producer. Here’s from the obit: The Ghostbusters logo, a blobby white figure bursting from a red universal no symbol came about when the films, producers wanted to print a teaser poster at a time when the studio had not yet secured the rights to the name. Mr. Gross, an art director and associate producer on the film, worked with one of his artists, Brent Boates, to generate an image. We get the idea of the film across without actually using a title.

So not only did they not have the visuals, but they didn’t even know if they’re going to be able to call it Ghostbusters?

Right. So let’s get into Michael C. Gross a little bit.

Yeah. I don’t know the name. Tell me, was he known as a producer or was he known as an art director or…?

Yes.

Wow. Okay. I guess we’re done with him.

Yeah. So let me just tell you a little bit about this guy and we will post a link to the obit on our webpage for this episode because this guy, he’s definitely an unsung hero. Both of the design world and the movie world.

Okay. So just to give you a little bit Todd, have you ever heard of, uh, a little magazine called National Lampoon?

Yeah. So he was the art director for National Lampoon.

No way.

Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever heard of a couple of little magazines called Cosmopolitan and Esquire?

Uh, yeah, yeah. Right up in line with National Lampoon almost.

Yep. Not quite as funny, but he worked as a designer of both of those as well.

Okay. All right. How did he get from magazine design to movies?

He went to Pratt in Brooklyn and then graduated with a degree in commercial. art, started to bounce around and among the other things he did – in addition to working for some of these well-known magazines – he actually, with a friend from Pratt who was working for the Mexico city Olympics, the 68 Olympics was asked to design a poster for a cultural event. So few years out of school, right? This guy’s working at some noteworthy magazines. He worked for the Olympics, but really, really started to hit a stride with National Lampoon. He helped them figure out that the best parodies work when the design looks like legitimate versions of what’s being parodied.

So think about what you and I both love… The Onion, Mad Magazine, Spy Magazine, all of these things think about fake postage stamps, goofy menus, um, you know, yearbooks, right. You know, the famous yearbooks, which they’re part of the reason National Lampoon’s Animal House is National Lampoon’s Animal House.

It’s sort of these memories that these guys – the writers – had from them, they were at Harvard or wherever, right? Because it was the Harvard Lampoon. When they left and it became National Lampoon. After he left National Lampoon, he started a firm in New York in 1974. Some of his clients were of course National Lampoon magazine, but also Mobile Oil, Jim Henson of Muppets and Sesame Street fame, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Oh man. So you never see that group of people hanging out together.

Well, I’m not sure they were all there at the same time.

Well, Okay. Okay. So he got the bug and he wanted to go to Hollywood, you know. I’m sure he knew some people out there and met some people, with some of the work he did. So he hit the west coast, produced several movies and more interestingly designed – are you ready? Wait for it…

Okay. All right.

National Lampoon’s Vacation. You ready?

Yeah.

He designed the deluxe family truckster. And the Wally World moose for National Lampoon.

Oh, cool. So his logos have probably been on more clothing than a lot of other designers. Cause you know, they’re selling Wally World apparel out there too.

Yeah. I mean just how incredible is this? You know, this guy, he designed all of these different logos, these sort of faux logos that subsequently got out there into the real world.

Now what’s great about this though is – I think, and this is just me talking, but going back to his National Lampoon experience and some of the parody things that we were just talking about, I think that served his logos well when he was designing them as movie props, because they come from a place of believability, right? He already knew what worked. And so you could sort of reverse engineer it. And then in the sense of the snake eating its own tail, these logos for these made up things that were patterned after real things, then became real things in their own right and went back out into the the real world.

Right. Right. Interesting. Interesting.

Yeah. Very cool. Okay. I’m hopeful. Do we have enough time to get into your back pocket story?

Let’s do this. We’ve never done this before. Let’s finish this episode now and then we’ll pick back up with a part B later.

Hmm. So what you’re saying is basically is that we’re getting kicked out of another place together?

Once again. I didn’t even hear our last call.

Okay. We don’t have to go home, but we can’t stay here.

Yep. Hey not the first time I’ve heard that. Look, I’m grabbing a handful of peanuts for the road. When we get back together, let's revisit what makes these logos work and we’ll get into some more Hollywood lore.

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