No Age's Dean Spunt on How His Band's Rainbow Logo Became a New Punk-Rock Icon
"The idea was to have a visual identity before the band even started, before the music started. It kind of worked because people would be like, 'Dude, what is this? What is No Age?'"
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Radiohead's Colin Greenwood wearing the No Age "Classic" in January 2008
Dean Spunt's first band was a punk-rock outfit called the Gromits. He was 13 and he sang. His mom had just become a partner in a family silkscreening business, so for fun, he made Gromits' T-shirts with a photocopier and sold them at school. After years of messing around with that machine, piecing together fake show flyers and reprinting punk cassette covers, the drummer became something of a designer, despite having no formal education. ("Using PhotoShop is really kind of difficult for me, but with the photocopy machine, I'm like an Olympic swimmer.") So when he and guitarist Randy Randall formed No Age, Spunt's first order of business was to create a strong visual identity. What he came up with was vertical text, built with a font he can't remember exactly (though it's probably one of the Gothics), in a rainbow blend. That logo has since become something of a DIY meme, popping up everywhere from Colin Greenwood's torso to The New York Times Book Review.
In honor of No Age's excellent new Everything in Between released today, we spoke with Spunt about the band's visual identity and that now-iconic rainbow logo. "I never get to talk about this," he said, genuinely seeming pretty stoked. "No one really knows."
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