Hüsker Dü

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Name
Hüsker Dü
Designer
Grant Hart
Date
1979
Disciplines
  • Branding
  • Graphic Design

Grant Hart, a band member of Hüsker Dü, designed the logotype for the acclaimed band that helped define the Twin Cities’ punk music scene. Hart studied the graphic arts of printing and metal typesetting at St. Paul High School. The band’s moniker is a reference to a board game of the same name that translates from the Norwegian as “Do you remember?” In his creation of this iconic logo, Hart set the group’s name in Helvetica and used umlauts to replace the macrons—or the long bar marks over the vowels—to avoid potential conflict with the makers of the game. Next, he carefully tore through the words of his printed proof, adding another distinctive element. His typeset sample had been printed in orange, however, a color which would have shown up poorly in the “insty” print process common at the time. To solve this problem, Hart traced over the letterforms with a blunt, felt-tip black marker, which softened the edges and corners of the original font, giving the logo its distinctive hand-drawn quality.