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 They have never replaced or updated their signage, so Noiseland's logo is a good 30+ years out of date.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It's a little sad to think that when The Simpsons premiered, this design would have only been about 10 years out of date; now it might as well be from Renaissance.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.

Kodos for President

I happened to catch a rerun of the Halloween Treehouse of Terror episode from 1996 yesterday, and was struck by the profound political commentary, and a bit disheartened that Groening & Co. were clearly shouting into the wind a dozen years ago.

When the Presidential candidates, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole are revealed to be the monstrous aliens Kang & Kodos (yeah, yeah, "spoilers." It's from 13 years ago. There has to be a statute of limitations on this stuff....), they explain that it doesn't make any difference; "it's a two-party system... you have to vote for one of us." When a spectator suggests voting for a third-party candidate, the aliens taunt, "go ahead, throw your vote away! MWUAHAHAHAHAHA!"

After Inauguration Day, when Kang has won the election and the aliens have enslaved the population and put them to work building massive installations, Homer explains "don't blame me; I voted for Kodos!" as if the result would have been at all different.

So I sat down and whipped out a bumper sticker....


The squid symbol is based on the elephant and donkey icons that get trotted out every four years. I reversed the colors to make it feel alien; usually the red is on the bottom part. This alien nature is further emphasized by putting the star off-center.

The text is set in Simian, a font family from House Industries. I've used it before on other designs because it's a nice and interesting sans serif gothic that comes in three weights: Orangutan (Light), Chimpanzee (Medium), and Gorilla (Bold). I added a 12° skew since the font doesn't come in an oblique.

My First Tattoo

This one goes past pretty quickly on the show, but I liked the sound of it.

In the episode "My Sister, My Sitter" (season 8), Marge and Homer go to the grand re-opening of the Springfield Squidport and leave Lisa in charge of Bart and Maggie, with dire consequences.

Meanwhile, at the Squidport, which is one of those formerly-skeevy industrial areas that's been gentrified into a yuppie retail/entertainment complex, Mr. & Mrs. Simpson survey the new shops and restaurants, one of which is a tattoo parlor where a bunch of the Springfield children are admiring one kid's new ink.

As usual, the signage in the episode is fairly perfunctory, plain block lettering with a passing effort at a graphic. In this case, the word "First" is emblazoned on a ribbon traversing a heart, in a classic tattoo motif. I decided to go in a different direction, playing up the idea that it's a parlor specializing in young customers (which is certainly illegal just about everywhere in the US).


I decided to use a childish handwriting font (Lemonade Bold) for "My First", with bright pastel coloring, and a spiky medieval font (Ironwood) for "Tattoo". The red-to-black gradient fill and multiple outlines add a little edge of menace in keeping with the usual tattoo aesthetic.

IBOJDPCNT Local No 643

Homer's union, the International Brotherhood of Jazz Dancers, Pastry Chefs and Nuclear Technicians, Local No. 643, is the latest Springfield entity to go under my mouse for an identity.

Nothing says "Union" like a gear, so that's where I started. I dropped in simple iconic graphics representing the three different fields the union represents, and finished off with some workmanlike typography.

The font in the gear is Garamond Bold Condensed. The typefaces in the title area are Franklin Gothic Condensed, Futura Light Condensed, and Franklin Gothic Heavy. Dull as dishwater, but all union logos are.

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.

Things Unnecessary

"Things Unnecessary" is the store where Homer bought himself a $500 astrolabe in the Season 15 Christmas episode. The store is intended to be a satire of outfits like Sharper Image and Brookstone, but the name is a play on a chain store called "Things Remembered." These are stores that specialize in items for people with more dollars than sense; personalized tchotchkes, the sort of thing you might receive as a gift if you were a bridesmaid. The merchandise is all the sort of thing I call "look, I got you a gift" gifts; somewhat impersonal (in that it doesn't reflect anything at all of the recipient's tastes or preferences), almost entirely useless, but too expensive-looking to dump at the Goodwill, and since it usually has the recipient's name or initials engraved on it, it's almost impossible to re-gift. Exactly the sort of place that would stock $500 astrolabes.

The name and type of business demands a logo that has a veneer of elegance, an upscale look, with a sleek but ornamental typeface, so I started with University Roman, a somewhat swashy font with big loopy letters, a strong vertical shape, long spiky serifs, and what I would describe as a "Disney" flavor. Elegant but superficial, with something of a soulless quality.

A veneer of reflective gloss with a slightly cold metallic color, and a completely extraneous ligature of the too-precious double-s and the g, and we have an upscale logo with a vaguely tacky feeling about it.