Ghosts in the Valley
Sam Pinola, a longtime friend and multiple project collaborator, recently approached me with a sketch request, in this case, a collaboration about his band brand for “Ghosts in the Valley”:
“Hey could you help me work up a ghosts logo that looked like this?”
with an attachment as follows:
International Centrifuge (Sam Pinola)
and so, I went and found, downloaded and installed about 20 fonts, opened Inkscape, placed the band name in both all caps and mixed case in several fonts and configurations, and finally came down to six that I felt spoke to the direction that Sam gave. So, Sam, what should we do next? Do these go in the right direction? What will we do for the oval emblem? Will we introduce a color palette? Will we manufacture a chrome effect? What’s next?
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Despite having no knowledge of the band and what might fit their personality, I have one opinion and one question:
Opinion: I like top left and top right better than the other four. I dislike mid-left because the lower case and scriptiness of the “ghost” provide insufficient contrast to the script of “in the Valley.” I dislike the the next three, because “Ghost” is rendered in ways that seem most un-ghostly.
Question: Is there a technical term for the specific kind of radical juxtaposition found in the International Centrifuge logotype. I think I’ve seen something quite similar used frequently in the 50s on various appliances and automobiles, etc. Has any designer ever given that technique a specific name that others have accepted and used?
In this particular sketch, I was setting aside my own aesthetic choices to meet those parameters that Sam set forth. I actually chose quite a few more fonts that I thought worked better than these as a representative wordmark, but that did not follow his suggestion at all in regards to the picture. I do not know of a term for the effect that we’re talking about, but I found a cool typography glossary at