Noiseland Arcade

One of the interesting difficulties of the Simpsons is that after 20 years on the air, some of the cultural landmarks change. For example, the arcade where Bart used to fritter away a lot of his time; arcades are thin on the ground these days, now that everybody has a Playstation or XBox or whatever.

But anyway, I like the name, so here it is, the Noiseland Arcade...


My idea for this is that Noiseland is a place that opened up in the early days of videogames, shortly after the advent of the ubiquitous Pac-Man. They have never replaced or updated their signage, so Noiseland's logo is a good 30+ years out of date.

For the name "Noiseland", I hand-built my own lettering, based heavily on fonts from the Bauhaus School, particularly Blippo and Pump, with a tri-line design. The "Arcade" part is set in Braggadocio, which is a knock-of of Futura Black, another one of the Bauhaus designs.

The colors are pure '70s cheese, intended to contrast with the completely unauthorized Pac-Man logo that helps to further date the design as a relic.

It's a little sad to think that when The Simpsons premiered, this design would have only been about 10 years out of date; now it might as well be from Renaissance. Sigh. I'm old.

Malibu Stacy

I had some down-time today while waiting for files to transfer, so I went ahead and did another Springfield logo treatment. This time it's Lisa's favorite fashion doll, Malibu Stacy.

As always, I started by looking at the real-world inspiration, in this case the marketing monster known as Barbie. Of course I had a vague idea of what the logo ought to look like, but I was surprised to see how often the good folks at Mattel refresh their brand identity. There are a lot of variations on the basic pink script logo. Sometimes it's been swirly and girly, other times it looks like hand-drawn lettering, and still other times it's a rounded-serif italic. The only thing that remains consistent is the garish trademark pink color.

With that in mind, I decided that "Malibu" should contrast with "Stacy" in every possible way; it's geometric and angular, all caps, widely-spaced, smaller, and bright blue. (The blue is intended to remind one of the ocean, as in Malibu Beach.) The font is ITC Serif Gothic, a popular font from the '70s that remains interesting and not too dated.

For "Stacy" I started with one of the marvelous sign-making fonts from A&S, in this case A&S Signwriter, which I then converted to outlines, threw a stroke on and tortured within an inch of its life, fattening the letters, fattening them even more at the bottom, extending the crossbar on the t and elongating the tail on the y. Then I tipped the whole thing (except the crossbar on the t) to a slight angle and laid "Malibu" over it with a white stroke placed behind it. I chose a lavender color for the logo since pink is claimed by the competition.

Try 'N' Save

Try 'N' Save is the Springfield version of what used to be Pic 'N' Save, a chain of cheapo discount retailers that is today called Big Lots. Pic 'N' Save was the west coast version; in other areas, it was called "MacFrugal's" (how come nobody ever complains about the insulting ethnic stereotyping of the Scots? I bet if it were called "Frugalberg's" somebody would make a little noise...). Eventually, MacFrugal's/Pic 'N' Save merged with Odd Lots/Big Lots and now there's only one major bargain/close-out store chain. (By the way, the parent company also owns Kay-Bee Toys, so if you wait long enough, everything that goes through the toy store eventually ends up at the bargain shop. Just an FYI.)

Anyway, back to the design...

The last Pic 'N' Save logo was one of those vaguely western-looking ones, sort of like the font I used for Moe's, tall and thin with big fat slab serifs. For Try 'N' Save I went with something a little more informal and looser feeling. The Las Vegas font collection from House Industries is based on signage from classic Vegas casinos; I used Nugget, which is based on the Golden Nugget. It's a very narrow font, so I once again stretched it horizontally 250% (I really hate doing that, but sometimes it's necessary). The color is Pantone 199, a bright red that leans a little toward magenta, with a thin black keyline added to give it a little solidity.

As with Moe's, the goal is to create a slightly outdated logo, something that looks like it was done by a low-budget design outfit about 20 years ago and hasn't been freshened up in a while.

Moe's Tavern

Moe's is another of the long-time Springfield landmarks that never really had any kind of a logo; the establishing shot of the exterior shows a purple building with green-and-orange diamond-cut stained glass windows, and (again) plain red block letters spelling out the name, "MOE'S" over the door. The words "Moe's Tavern" appear in black lettering on the side wall.

I decided that Moe's sign should probably look like it hadn't been updated in a few decades; in the mid-1970s there was an 1890s revival (along with a '20s revival and a '50s one, almost simultaneously, as nostalgia is prone to do), with a lot of businesses adopting the late-Victorian-to-Edwardian letterforms and decorative devices. In my old neighborhood there was an entire mall decorated in that style, and some people may remember Farrell's, a chain of "gay '90s" ice cream parlors. In Southern California at least, the turn of the century design also included an Old West flavor (same time period, different culture), with "western" fonts popping up here and there.

I've opted to use one of those western fonts, in this case Ponderosa, but I've tortured it. Ponderosa is an astonishingly narrow font with gigantic serifs, so I scaled it horizontally to 300% of its original proportion for enhanced legibility. Then I rotated it 10° counterclockwise (or as I prefer to think of it, widdershins) and stacked layers of keylines on it and dropped it in front of a circular element.

Colors are derived from the interior of the bar; brown from the wood, green and orange from the windows, and yellow from the customers' skin tone.