Editor’s Note: You can’t drive around Albuquerque for very long without seeing a job site sign or a work truck adorned with the Jaynes logo. I have always liked the stark simplicity of this logo. The crane hook knocking out of a bold red rectangle resting on a foundation of a bold wordmark makes a perfect icon for a construction company. So it is a special treat to learn the history of this mark directly from the designer who created […]
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Note: Alphaquerque is pleased to publish another Guest Post courtesy of Albuquerque’s own Julie James-Griego. – The Mayor “Hey Doll!” That’s what you’d hear every time anyone walked into a great little New Mexican food restaurant in the Northeast Heights. Growing up near this great place I always thought the sign to be festive and nostalgic. And over 50 years later it still is! Owners Felix and Cecelia Gabaldon opened their first restaurant in Truth or Consequences, NM right after […]
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In the mid-1980s, I worked for a printing company that produced the highly unpopular Door Store Shopper. The Shopper was a weekly publication comprised of ads and coupons that was left on your doorstep whether you wanted it or not. Did I say “publication?” I meant “litter.” We kept an odd schedule. Ad sales were done during the day, so ad production took place at night. We’d work 4:00pm to midnight all week, except Saturdays, when we had to report […]
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Although I was born in Albuquerque, my military family moved around quite a bit for the first few years of my life. We returned to Albuquerque for good when I was five, and that’s probably when I started forming lasting memories of my hometown. On a sergeant’s pay, we didn’t go out to dinner much, so when we did it was kind of a big deal. I can count on one hand the number of times we went to a […]
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Note: Alphaquerque is pleased to publish our first Guest Post courtesy of Albuquerque’s own Julie James-Griego. – The Mayor So… I am driving back from lunch east on Central Avenue from the Old Town area and I’m thinking about all the great Route 66 signage that is still around. And then I see it.… an obscure Albuquerque gem right there on Central, the Dog House. I’m thinking this is a great piece of Albuquerque’s history. Then I look at the […]
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Before the days of iPads and in-car DVD players, kids riding in the back seat of the family car had to entertain themselves by looking out the window. Riding around Albuquerque in my parents’ 1964 Oldsmobile Cutlass, my imagination sometimes ran wild. One day I spied a huge candy cane, 15 or 20 feet high, leaning against a building. I imagined that some Brobdingnagian toddler had been gleefully tromping down Lomas Boulevard, crushing Cadillacs and Karmann Ghias underfoot, but had […]
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I grew up in the shadow of the Hiland theater. Because it was the only theater within walking distance of my house, I probably saw more movies there in my youth than at any other movie house in town. I have a particularly weird memory of my older brother taking me there to see The Exorcist. The couple sitting in the row behind us were high, and when the head-spinning in front of us began, the mind-blowing behind us immediately […]
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When the beloved Albuquerque Dukes pulled up stakes and moved to Oregon in 2000, a bereft baseball-loving populace had to wait until 2003 for a new team to take the (new) field. After a name-the-team contest, the new moniker of Albuquerque Isotopes was decided upon. The name came from from an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer leads an effort to stop his beloved Springfield Isotopes from relocating to – of all places – Albuquerque. (The irony is suffocating.) […]
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There’s a lot to consider when you pick a typeface to represent your company. In addition to the visual elements like line, weight and shape, you might also want to consider contextual elements like historical or cultural references. Then again, sometimes just the name of the typeface is enough to get the gig, as I suspect is what happened in the case of The Cooperage and its choice of Cooper Black for its wordmark. Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper The Cooperage […]
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In 1987, Albuquerque experienced a rare weather phenomenon for this area: a tornado. This was no over-hyped dust devil, but real honest-to-goodness twister, complete with uprooted trees and damaged buildings but (fortunately) no loss of life. Now we have Twisters all over the place. Not the cyclone kind, but the burrito kind. (My weekend is not complete without the No. 4 with red chile.) Holy Ad Lib!!! The typeface in the Twisters logo is a perfect analogy of the 1987 […]
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