Lionel Hutz's "I Can't Believe It's a Law Firm!"

It's actually easier to design some of these things than you might think, because the Simpsons writers come up with stuff that's so iconic it practically designs itself. As soon as you hear the name of the law office where Lionel Hutz works, you pretty much know what it ought to look like. Or at least I do.

By combining the idea of a law firm with a reference to a brand of margarine, they tell us exactly what kind of lawyer Hutz is: he's what we used to call "a mall lawyer." The most immediately familiar of those outfits is of course Jacoby & Meyers, a chain of discount lawyer franchises that sprang up in the '70s and advertised heavily on local television. So that's where I started.

As I recall, the Jacoby & Meyers logo used to be a boring arrangement set in Souvenir, which is one of those fonts you don't see too often anymore, mostly because you saw it everywhere 30 years ago. It was one of the few fonts that came standard in all the pre-computer typesetting machines, so it got used a lot. It practically smells of the '70s. They've since changed the J&M logo to the generic-but-timeless Centennial.

I've used Souvenir Demi and Bold italics, and set it on an angle to vaguely emulate the typography on the margarine label. The green and gold colors are evocative of both food packaging and '70s logo design, but completely inappropriate for a respectable law office, and the double drop-shadow is there entirely for the cheese factor.