Toxocara, v.5: How Many Logos?

Back in 2004, I was commissioned to design a logo for Toxocara, a Dutch death metal band (see logo below). It was one of the first major gigs I landed — “major” being relative here –, and the band members were enormously appreciative, handing over merchandise with every album release, which is why I hold the band in such high regard, even to this day. The band is now defunct, sadly — although their Facebook page recently showed some activity, so really, who knows?

Anyway. The logo was done entirely (save for one minor tweak) in an “old-school” fashion, i.e., with pen and paper, without too much thought behind it. This should be no surprise — it’s why it looks so rough.

Obviously some like it rough. The members of the band — and perhaps especially the driving force behind the band who had part of the logo tattooed on his arm — were clearly happy with how it turned out. Furthermore, an anecdote goes that Christophe Szpajdel, the “Lord of Logos” himself, once complimented the band on it. But me, I always felt I could do better.

Sadly though, my idea of better was far from what the members of the band thought of as better. Over the years this led to a series of uncommissioned redesigns (see below for an example), some of which were fine logos in their own right, others were blatant misfires. Eventually, I gave up on the idea of ever improving on my original design of the logo.

Fast forward to 2017. I’m now busy churning out logos for various projects and purposes; I recently got myself new drawing hardware; Toxocara’s Facebook page showing activity; one of the band’s key members had his birthday yesterday … The time seemed right for one more attempt. And this is what I came up with.

This time, I tried to stay as close to the original as possible, changing only those things that seemed “off” to me. Mind you, it’s still far from perfect. But at this point, it’s more of a proof of concept than anything else. Which brings me to the biggest change to the design, which is of course the skull in the top center of the logo. It’s not just a fun nod to Toxocara’s album AtmosFear, I was also curious to see if I could incorporate a painterly skull image in a logo design instead of “sporting” it too with figuratively drawn skull (see below for an example). I think it looks okay, good even. But what do I know?

So, uh, let me know which version you like best. Do you like the original logo or the redesign? And what kind of skull image do you think goes best with a logo design — a painterly one or one that is figuratively drawn? Or do you prefer your logos simple, clean and tight, without any graphics at all?

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Chorus of Torments: Behind the Design

Last night I finished designing this logo here. I don’t really have anything to tell about it, other than it’s portfolio piece. I just felt I needed another strong black metal logo before trying my hands on a new genre.

 

As for the name — Chorus of Torments, I remember coming across it in some book, I don’t know which one, and I figured it would make for a cool name for a band, real or imaginery. And I sketched something out on a piece of paper, which yielded the following result:

As you can see, I made some changes to the original design, hopefully for the better. The biggest change was the omission of the figures on top of the logo. Personally, I thought it would be nice to have an image of people suffering complement the logo (see the sketch below) …

But some people whose judgment I respect advised me to omit it because they felt it be too on the nose and harm the readability and printability of the design. Right now I’m inclined to agree.

 

Wergild: Logo Breakdown

There’s a new black metal band in town called Wergild and I was asked to design a logo for them — which is what I did. Below I’ll break down the process of designing it.

Full disclosure: At the time of writing, I’m not sure if any of the logos seen here will see actual use. But that’s not relevant for this breakdown.

First thing I did was establish a sense of symmetry. Why? Because black metallers usually have a hard-on for symmetrical logos.

I liked the logo’s silhouette, but something was amiss with the overall shape of the letters. The letter “W” in particular bothered me. As you can see above, it reads more like a “C” or an “N,” so I needed to remedy that.

Also, I decided on making things a bit more jaggy and messy-looking. Generally speaking, this is not a must per se. In fact, plenty of black metal logo designs are neat and tight in design. But one of the band members expressed a preference for something a bit more illegible.

The problem, however, with textured letters is that they don’t look as good when you invert the logo. (The reason, of course, that logos get inverted is because band shirts are usually black.)

So one simple solution is to simply keep the letters black, placed on a contrasting white background that follows the silhouette of the logo.

 

As you can see, I also added some goatheads and a screaming skull because — just because, really. No, that’s not entirely true. It’s part homage to Christophe Spzajdel, the self-proclaimed “Lord of Logos,” whose logo-designs for Horna and Tsjuder have been of inspiration to me, and part conscious design choice to help improve the silhouette.

Dauthuz (Alternative Logo)

One day you’re writing your first blog post in months, and the very next day you have something new to blog about again already…

I’m not one for blogging, alright.

Anyway. This logo is drawn, designed, or made, however you want to say it,  in my traditional style. I’m pretty pleased with it myself, especially with the skull-headed letter T in the centre of the logo.

Now, I myself am a sucker for graphical — symmetrical — logos; the guys from Dauthuz, however, thought the other one better, more fitting — arguably understandably since this one doesn’t ooze old school death metal like an ‘old English font’. Oh, and then, of course, there’s the fact that the band name is derived from old English, or so I am told. So uh, yeah…

But, let me know which one you like best.