I’ve been pretty hugely inspired by your work, specifically the logos and stuff, to the point I’ve wanted to start making my own (I haven’t really been posting it anywhere).
I’m so sorry if this is rude in any way, I was wondering if you have a specific place you look to really capture the vibe of those classic ads/logos. Sorry if this is worded weird, it’s been a long day lol
Thanks, I'm always happy to hear I've inspired people! Questions like this are fun to answer, and this one is timely since I've spent a lot of this year focusing on getting better at logo design. People ask this from time to time so I'll try to cover this in a bit more detail, although the answer will be pretty long and tumblr might break some of these links.
The short answer:
To catch the vibe of a specific area, the advertisements in retro magazines are a really good place to start since you can see the trends of an era well. Luckily there are tons of scans of those magazines online. This works for most pre-internet design eras.
The long answer:
References for logos:
Google books has a pretty big archive of a lot of old magazines. Pick one that fits your niche (for much of my work, something more tech focused like Popular Mechanics issues from the late 70s/early 80s could fit well);
https://books.google.com/books/about/Popular_Mechanics.html?id=gtkDAAAAMBAJ
Archive.org is a great resource as well. For example; this link shows branding for a ton of companies from the 80s;
https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_unitedTechngineersMasterVol2_242068752/page/n389/mode/2up?view=theater
There are also books that compile logos of an era (I've been meaning to skim through some of these);
https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Kuwayama%2C+Yasaburo%CC%84%22
This site has an amazing archive of designs, sorted by the typefaces used so you can really see the variety of ways you can use a font;
https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/1847/microgramma
This tumblr has a ton of scans of VHS cover packaging;
https://vaultofvhs.tumblr.com/
Similar to the above, there are sites and archives for most any niche and era. This site focuses on retro product packaging;
https://soft-electronics.com/home/
Youtube:
Youtube is a good resource for seeing how designers make retro-inspired logos. There are tons of designers making videos, just pick an era and look for 'retro 70s/80s/90s/00s logo design' and it'll show you how they work. Other than their thought process in logo design (which is a huge area in and of itself), seeing how they apply grunge and glitch effects helps as well.
There are tons of channels that do this but this is one of my favorites;
https://www.youtube.com/@Texturelabs/videos
Just keep in mind that for all of this, some youtube designers will try to sell you classes, texture packs or plugins. You don't NEED any of them. Plenty of free assets and information exists. Personally I have never used any of it, although I might switch to using some in the future to speed things up.
Pinterest:
Within the last year I've started using pinterest for research more. I've found it helpful to create very very specific boards such as 'retro 70s/80s tv show title screen logos' and fill it with only the best, hit the 'More ideas' button and it'll usually help me find reference quicker and a few I've never seen before. Sometimes I'll get really lucky and it'll find visually similar ideas, but from a niche I never thought overlapped with it before.
Other places:
This is just the basics, although you can go much much deeper on all of this. I find it's easy for me to get carried away with doing too much research, and not enough actually making art.
Also, please keep in mind that I'm not a logo designer, or much of a graphic designer. Most of what I make fails (be it logos, or art itself). I spent a lot of time this year working on 40 logos to use in art this year. Of those 40 designs I'm hoping that I'll end up using 10-15 of them regularly. Each year I make over 100 designs, of them I only really like a dozen of those designs, and only a few of those succeed as merch.
The bases on this post are all JPEGs for some reason. That makes them hard to use properly. I will link to the originals and provide some additional ones, along with a tutorial on how to actually make them into a GIF.
I couldn't find the caramelldansen base in this post, but here is a version that should work just as well.
Here is the original lick icon base.
To save these and have them be usable, you have to click the "free download" button underneath the image.
Some other good bases:
Dance Icon
Caipirinha
Run Run Run
You can find many other bases like these through DeviantArt.
How to make them into a GIF:
Step 1. Edit the base however you like (I used MSPaint)
Step 2: Crop and save each frame individually as PNGs (Note for the lick base: It's best to crop them to include the black boarder. This makes the GIF 50x50, which is the standard DeviantArt icon size and can easily scale larger if need be.)
Step 3: Go to ezgif.com/maker and upload all your frames
Step 4: Set "delay time" to 10, then click "Make a GIF!"
Step 5: Right-click the result and save it. Congrats! You used a GIF base!
ID: 1. A collection of early 2000s animation meme gifs and their still images.
2. screenshots of instructions to edit animation meme templates in ms paint and ezgif.com to result in a licking gif.
End ID.
For the following info dump, MINORS DO NOT INTERACT. If you are epileptic, also DNI
The following rabbit hole contains: rapid flashing lights, nudity, sometimes straight up p.rn, political conspiracies, a ton of other conspiracies, lewd pictures of trees, AI generated images, a bigger eye sore than yyyyyyy.info, etc…
There’s probably more but basically if you’re a minor, "a good Christian boy", or unreality and you don’t mix, this isn’t for you and is your last chance to back away.
If you haven’t guessed already, this’ll be covering lhohq.info. It’s one hell of a rabbit hole, and notably a dangerous one at that. So far the site seems to be a giant art project but no one can say for certain. Some have speculated it could be an ARG as well.
To navigate safely, you’ll for sure need antivirus software. More importantly Don’t Download Anything. There is a suspected Trojan that may or may not be somewhere in the site, based off of digging into the site’s IP address and finding lhohq being connected to a google drive with malware in said drive. ((source) smoking tw)
A few have claimed (without supporting evidence) that there had been CP and snuff related images, yet nothing of the sort has yet to be found. This entire thing has been around since 2007, and I’m confident that everything would’ve been taken down by now if this were true. Not even something like WorldCorp lasted that long, so this also goes against such claims. Either way, be cautious.
It also goes without saying, Don’t be the idiot that tries to use any of the emails, phone numbers, contacts, etc. If you want to be extra safe, some usually use a different browser than google
With that out of the way let’s dig in.
-------
There’s the lhohq domain, and a connected domain acdca. They stand for Laughing Horse’s Orifice Headquarters, and Applied Chaos Dynamics Controls Association respectively. The list of all the subdomains so far can be found on reddit. If a subdomain doesn’t work, it can still be accessed through the wayback machine
Speaking of the wayback machine, past versions of the site, especially the main page, can be accessed through the machine as well. This is particularly important as there is text hidden in the sites that can be found through either viewing the page source or inspecting the page. It is also noted that some parts of the website still work, even when no longer linked to by anything (For example lhohq.info/terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.html even though it could only be found Dec 28, 2021 through the main page) Much hasn’t been explored yet
In terms of less ‘techy stuff’ there’s still plenty more to find. If you like reading crackhead theories like psycops, pizzagate, aliens, etc. there’s tons upon tons of articles that have been archived. To make things easier, here is a site map for the archived articles. All of the pages listed in the map are sfw, but again, don’t download anything incase of the Trojan.
Speaking of sfw and generally safe places to go, here’s a list of links I’ve checked out myself so far. As long as you don’t download anything, you should be fine:
If you want to get ballsy and feel like downloading stuff anyway, regardless of my warning, you might find something with the mp3s in the acdca subdomain, octagon - justin-bieber.html, or octagon - francais_institut_octroyer.html . No one’s seemed to do a scan to find any hidden images or messages yet if you’re willing to give it a shot
Also, make sure that if you’re typing in something after lhohq.info/ that you’re spelling it correctly. Otherwise you’ll get an AI generated page. In fact if you type something like http://lhohq.info/sussus you’ll get a random page. Even a keysmash works. The background will be either a flashing snake cross, lesbian bird, or some eagle circle symbol, and sometimes it will flash rapidly without warning. Hence you’re better off trying to find something through the links than by trying to type up stuff and hope you find something interesting. There’s more about the AI here
Btw, if you use the site map for lhohq, it won’t show all of the pages. This is partially due to the fact that 1) it won’t list connections to sub domains 2) there’s technically a near infinite amount of pages thanks to the AI, and 3) if pageX doesn’t link to pageY anymore, pageY won’t show up on the map even if it still exists. The same goes for that one subdomain with the archived articles. This is why you won’t find octagon.lhohq.info/justin-bieber.html even though it exists.
It is noted that when it comes to hidden pages, if you wait 30 seconds on octagon.lhohq.info, you’ll be automatically redirected to the page with the dancing girl. It is unknown if there are other pages that will do the same if you wait long enough
Small little thing I’ve found out, there was a site called synt.us that used to be related to LHOHQ, however, the current site isn’t. If you use the way back machine, and go to date June 27, 2017 through October 6, 2016, you can find the original pages that used to be there
That’s all the information I’ve managed to collect through youtube, reddit, and of course the site itself. I’m currently making a site map on popplet that shows every single page on the sites and when said link could be accessed, but it’s going to take a couple of months due to the size + college to get it somewhat finished. When it is, I’ll be sure to reblog this with the finished site map.
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
theartofmadeline
janainaart
germansingergirl
