MY OWN FAVOURITE LOGOS
I always loved logo design long before I ever heard the word Logo or Logotype, back then they were just nameplates.
My first ever logo was for my college magazine. I was a student and boarder at Franciscan College, Gormanston, in Country Meath, Ireland, and in my final year, editor, layout artist, and cartoonist of the college magazine, called ‘Tally-Ho’.. yep, it’s shite so you won’t see it here ☺
By the age of 18 was working full-time as a visualizer in a tiny advertising agency and one day the boss came in and announced he needed a logotype for one of the clients so I volunteered my services, not even 100% sure I even knew what a logotype was but it all worked out in the end.
Over the next few years, I rapidly rose to the top of my then profession and became an art director and a Creative Group Head, earning the best money I ever earned for a young lad -and I loved the buzz, the excitement, and most of all, the competitiveness of the advertising world back then.
Every ad agency in Dublin was stuffed with the most wonderful talent, much of it foreign and European: artists, writers, and creatives of all kinds who, after the end of WW2, found the bleakness of a shattered Europe too difficult to deal with and sought work and peace in the more relaxed environment of a peaceful Ireland.
They and others like them including some superb Irish creatives became my mentors and I learned a massive amount in a relatively short few years
I was to put this all to good use later in life.
Designing logos is a buzz for me. What I really love is to do stuff I think no one else could do -like my Lizzy ‘steel mirror’ logo, the over ornate Celtworld logo, and a few others.
My logo and typographic design hero was the late Herb Lubalin and his influence on my design work was immense. He even produced a beautifully designed magazine called ‘AvantGarde’ and I still have every issue of its short run.
I was even lucky or unlucky enough to become an art director of a local publication titled Scene magazine and that helped refine my own skills as a designer-typographer, all at the same time as I was a full-time art director in my newly founded ad agency Wilson Hartnell so I rarely even had time to think, just time tom produce.
Number 1. Thin Lizzy. 1973 and 1981
The very first on my list has to be the Thin Lizzy logo from 1974. This fine logo was really inspired by my wonderful friend and collaborator Philip Lynott and since it was first produced it has gone through many iterations, but my own favourite variation is this one, the so-called mirror-metal version I produced in 1981.
The fact that it was never used or the fact that I was never paid despite weeks of hard work for this one still rankles but today so many years later `I can still look at it with pride and celebrate a wonderful time in my life, working and collaborating with the legend that was Philip Lynott -and his band, all of them fabulous, talented people and great fun. Lifetime mates too.
Number 2. Purple Peacock. 1967
It was 1967 and the hippie-dippie poster craze had reached Ireland all the way across from San Francisco and Hasbury Heights -and there was a young man, a school friend of mine, Brian Martin, who was right here at the epicentre of it all in Dublin.
Now we even had a few poster shops around Grafton Street and Brian had the foresight to start a business selling imported posters. I still have a load of those early Fillmore West cards and a few Apple (No, not that Apple, the Beatles Apple HQ in London) posters.
This was his letterhead and the peacock image was his logo. To write or type a message you wrote on the back ☺ makes sense too.
Number 3. Captain America’s Restaurant. 1981
I did the very first Captain America’s log way back in 1971 but when it was scheduled to reopen after a fire that damaged my two 1971 wall murals. Later, in 1981, I did a huge new interior mural for Captain America’s restaurant reopening and this elaborate new airbrushed logo. Again it took much longer than any normal logo design but I was having fun too and it shows
Number 4. The Coffee Dock. 1973
Any Dubliner like myself who enjoyed the nightlife in the dreary and deadly wartime-like 70s when a bomb could go off anytime and kill huge numbers, as they, the British army, actually did on Bloody Friday in Dublin.
The Coffee Dock in Jurys Hotel was one of only two all-night cafes in Dublin back then and when you arrived there at four in the morning you felt safe, the breakfast was brilliant and besides the people you had just been partying with were arriving as you left.
The restaurant had a nautical theme with a dozen sea and ship paintings by a certain Irish artist hanging over the walls and the logo reflected the theme with my rendition of the famous Cutty Shark sailing ship.
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Number 5. Rave Boutique. 1969
Many years ago when I was on the verge of going bust and losing everything quite a few friends -like Philip Lynott and his management, helped me out with work. One of these was Shay Pallas, a Dublin fashion entrepreneur, who commissioned many commercial artworks for his various fashion labels.
It was really interesting work and I even did a few large indoor shop murals in radical romance art but all are lost now and no record of them that I know of.
This logo incorporated a girl’s face and had that nascent hippie vibe about it too. For a while, it was everywhere even on the shop bags, and was fun to observe as a young artist.
NOTE: Yep the cat ate a bit out of the bag.
Number 6. The Dublin Arts Festival. 1971
This simple neo-Celtic swan symbol is one of my very best and it won a few design awards back in the day, even featuring in the 1972 edition of the bible of advertising and graphic design the annual ‘Modern Publicity’.
The Dublin Arts Festival was a short-run thing and it lasted just one year which I felt was a huge pity and the vision of its founder would only be appreciated much later. But that’s show business.
Number 7. CeltWorld 1991
Back in 1991, I was commissioned to supply artwork for a project titled ‘CeltWorld’, an ambitious attempt to create an immersive experience that told, in very colourful and three-dimensional displays, the story of the earliest Irish Myths and Legends.
Again a load of hard work but well worth it.
Can’t say the same about CeltWorld.
If you check out the cover of my book ÉrinSaga (1984) you will see this letterform which I designed for use on the cover and inner title pages. I used it here too, albeit in a more elaborate form.
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