When the novelty wore off we got back to basics

November 18, 2012 1:15 PM

A Conversation with Michael Manoogian, whose hand-drawn logos helped define album covers from a time period before computers.
posted by Potomac Avenue (13 comments total)

Man, he does the same thing Herb Lubalin used to do with the O in a logo: Can't leave it alone, have to decorate it, exaggerate it, turn it into embedded artwork, just anything to keep it from fitting into the line of text. Why didn't the interviewer ask him why he needed to mess with the O so much?
posted by ardgedee at 1:32 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

OMG, that's some impressive calligraphy.
posted by Foam Pants at 1:33 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Very cool!
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 1:40 PM on November 18, 2012

Man, he does the same thing Herb Lubalin used to do with the O in a logo: Can't leave it alone, have to decorate it, exaggerate it, turn it into embedded artwork, just anything to keep it from fitting into the line of text. Why didn't the interviewer ask him why he needed to mess with the O so much?

I see far more examples of him not doing that than doing that.
posted by billyfleetwood at 2:41 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

There is something about seventies graphics and style that makes me feel the simultaneous and conflicting emotions of "God, that was a terrible, ugly decade" and "My youth, oh, my lost youth, I weep for you."
posted by Decani at 3:06 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

What font is he using?
posted by Aquaman at 3:09 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

OMG. Back in the 1970s, I had to constantly talk people out of using Busorama and Peignot Bold (I used to call it Pigsnot). If a font was available on Letraset rub-off lettering, it was certain to be overused.
posted by charlie don't surf at 3:12 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

As I scroll down the second link it starts to become reminiscent of what my classmates binders would look like near the end of the school year.
posted by sourwookie at 3:37 PM on November 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Thanks for posting. That's a good wrist, there.
posted by Bron at 3:57 PM on November 18, 2012

Never thought I'd contemplate that many Eddie Rabbitt logos.
posted by bendybendy at 5:02 PM on November 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

I skipped over this post several times thinking, at a glance, it said 'hand-drawn legos.'

I just pictured this older man in a basement carefully painting faces on little lego men.
posted by Malice at 2:15 AM on November 19, 2012

One thing that strikes me is how well he avoids clichéd themes. His logos for country musicians don't have any "country" flourishes. USA For Africa (musicians raising money for famine relief) combines an eighth-note (in the USA) with a wheat sheaf (in the Africa) but none of his proposed logos uses stereotypical "African" imagery. The first few iterations of Rio Vegas have a bit of that palm-trees-and-beaches thing going on, but he quickly drops them. In the end, he gets his feeling across using lettering almost as nonrepresentational art.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:12 AM on November 19, 2012 [1 favorite]

Peignot Bold

Obligatory.
posted by gimonca at 6:35 AM on November 19, 2012