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This post is going up a bit later than usual because Comcast can suck my balls.

Many of the headlines on this website are references to movies or songs. Today’s, however, is also the title of an incredible LucasArts computer game from the early 90s. Day of the Tentacle was an old school adventure game, which focused mainly on talking to weird characters and clicking every conceivable object in the frame in an attempt to solve puzzles that progress the storyline. Truthfully, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sick amount of time I spent trying to figure out the game’s puzzles as a child is to blame for my ongoing obsession with tentacles and tendrils of all kinds.

And look, it doesn’t make me a nerd because I played Day of the Tentacle when I was a kid. What makes me a nerd is the fact that I was born in 1985, when cool video games where you could dismember people and swear didn’t exist yet.

Despite how low resolution the graphics were, they were actually really well illustrated — full of humor, style, and detail. Which was nice of them, considering how long you could get stuck staring at a given screen, hopelessly trying to figure out one of the game’s puzzles.

Another big selling point? This shit had time travel. Time travel, tentacles, and uh… funny jokes. Who needs more than that, am I right? Sure, “funny jokes” doesn’t start with a “t,” so that kind of fucked up the thing I had going, but whatever.

And of course, the choices you made in the past could affect the future (i.e. your present)… you know, just like in real time travel. Unfortunately, it seems nostalgia is the closest I’ll ever come to traversing the temporal superhighway. And I know it must get annoying for me to always gripe about how things from our youths were better than things are today, but come on, it’s kind of true.

Big time Dedleg pirate booty coming soon. The oil spill t-shirt designs have been finalized, and should be arriving the week of the 26^th. Fortunately, it looks like BP hasn’t quite fixed the leak just yet, phew. I was getting worried there!

Have a peek at the finished designs — I’ll be offering both a solid asphalt shirt and, for my burgeoning hippie constituency¹, a black tie-dye version, which is a bit more reminiscent of the streaked, poisoned depths of the Gulf

¹ Dedleg LLC has no knowledge of any hippie constituency — the audience seems to skew more skater/stoner than stoner/stoner, but tie dye has two letters in common with irony, and that’s no coincidence.

Monkey see, monkey do.

Paul Rand’s logo for Westinghouse —

CREATURE-IZED —

Yeah, so this is a total bite. But if you’re going to bite somebody’s shit, you might as well bite from the best. Why would you want to put garbage in your mouth anyway?

I had to cheat, too. Boy, I really suck.

Also, I realize that while I’m being a literalist here, the term “shit” carries a rather foul connotation. Fortunately, in art/design/whatevs, not all shit stinks. Let’s just say, Paul Rand didn’t need to gas the bathroom with Oust when he was done with his doodoo.

Westinghouse ad designed by Paul Rand

This has been inconsistently available on the Internets up until now, but for the moment, Vimeo has chosen to be a gracious god. If you haven’t seen it yet, Logorama, an Oscar-winning animated short film by the French animation collective H5, is absolutely required viewing.

Go ahead, watch it… just do it, already. Or don’t… have it your way. Okay, I’m done.

Maybe it’s a statement about the gross excesses of capitalism, maybe it’s a dark portent of the near future, maybe it’s a celebration of iconic logo design, fuck, maybe it’s just a great, thoughtful cartoon! Either way, it definitely deserves the Academy Award, and your time, even if it isn’t on IMAX.

Thanks for the tip, Nathaniel.

So I had a pretty cool new drawing I was going to post up today, but it was going to take me well into the small hours of the night to finish it in time for today’s post. And considering none of the spam bots who regularly check my blog really give a shit, I decided I’d put it up some other time. I sure hope this doesn’t change your mind about leaving me 30 comments on how I can get Cialis over the Internet. Because, Lord knows, I need that shit.

Anyway, in light of yesterday’s post… I figured enough time had passed that I could get away with this parody without invoking any kind of ugly Tanya Harding insinuations.

Got a hell of an itch on the inner thigh there, and the whole area’s really starting to stink. Anybody wanna be a friend?

Lighthearted little rip-offs are a veritable staple in the world of skateboard graphics — as far as I’m concerned, this is step one to becoming a successful mega brand. I’m thinking snowboard goggles, I’m thinking reality show on MTV, I’m thinking giant, hazy sweatshop in one of those Asian jungle countries. Oh, and Tek Decks! Duh. All we need now are some actual skateboards! And, I guess, like, the respect of the community. And maybe some legs that aren’t totally fucked.

I’m willing to mix and match. Two out of three? One for the price of two? Anything?

This little doodle doesn’t really make any sense — a bird and the name “dedleg” paired together for no reason other than simple aesthetics. And that’s pretty much art snob B.S. anyway… in all honesty it was just the first thing that came to mind. I tried to turn the enlarged, distorted “D” and “G” into a hot dog bun with a weinerschnitzel in between, but it wasn’t very easily recognizable and was, frankly, getting too weird, even for me. And if you think this is all completely pointless, just wait til you see the one under it.

If I say “you’re not supposed to get it”, that’ll make it seem better, artwise, right? Sarcasticallywise.

Now, the following drawing, by comparison, might as well have a speech bubble with the words, “Keep it simple, stupid” tacked onto it (god knows I tacked on enough other purposeless shit in an effort to make something vaguely resembling “cool”). It could learn a few things from the doodle above it, to say the least. I think I’ll title the piece:

Q: What the fuck were you thinking?
A: Almost literally nothing.

This was one of those creative projects where you’re not really happy with your progress and just keep adding more shit on, hoping that it’ll somehow get incrementally better. This is almost never the case, most often resulting in the drawing only getting incrementally weirder. At the very least, weird is better than boring so… uh… high fives all around, gang!

Welcome to dedleg, folks. We don’t skim the fat, because that’s what people who get paid for this type of shit have to do.

Minor league baseball logos are far cooler than their grown-up counterparts — they usually employ cartoons, keeping things more playful and not as serious as the professionals who feel the need to turn themselves into unnaturally muscle-bound freaks in order to play. Which is refreshing in a culture that treats sports as less of a game and more of a religion or dangerous cult. I’ve actually seen someone beaten with a stick over a Red Sox game. One of those situations where you have to sit back with some popcorn and laugh, because otherwise you’d cry.

Various minor league baseball logos

Anyway, I was always more of a tee ball guy, but I understand that some people aren’t scared of projectiles being lobbed at them. So I present to you, The Dedleg Outfielders. However, try-outs were last Saturday. So… sorry champ, maybe next year.

Why not?

Well… still doesn’t look like a g, but whatever. It’s 140 characters or less, and that’s all the kids care about anyway.

In light of our one-sided discussion about coats of arms leading way to modern logo design earlier this week, this is the story of a logo, who cried a river and drowned the whole… uh… hm.

I guess making parodies of cheesy pop song lyrics doesn’t really work when you switch out an easily rhymed word like “girl” with “logo.” 

Originally the idea here was to take an element from the first “logo,” as it were, and carry it over to a new doodle, letting it evolve naturally (hey, weed is natural, prudes). Nonetheless, I lost the reigns here a little bit, in case that wasn’t obvious, and I think this ended up as more of a devolution than anything. For one thing, “DG” isn’t even a logical abbreviation for “dedleg”. But not like that matters, considering by the third iteration it was totally illegible anyway.

I often lament that what I love to do doesn’t pay the rent. But sometimes, I can really understand why.

Anybody need a male escort? Special talents include mediocre logo design.