Gerard Huerta - DESKTOP

Words by Mark Healy • Design by Martin Flores

HBO. Time Magazine. ACDC. Type designer Gerard Huerta has made a career designing some of the world's most recognizable letters.

Just My

Chicago XIV Chicago

"John Berg created the concept for all the Chicago covers. The logo would remain the same size but the art would change from album to album. Nick Fasciano created dimensional sculpture like the leather tooled art for Chicago VII and the chocolate bar for Chicago X. I was asked to design the fingerprint cover for Chicago XIV and we used the thumbprint of a gentleman who worked in the mechanical department for visual reference. The art is part of the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art."

Watch Dial Design Victorinox Swiss Army

"The watch's designer, Myron Polenberg, asked me to draw the numbers and hands for the Swiss Army line of watches. The line took off and I ended up working for them for 14 years. Legibility is obviously so important on a watch. If you look closely, in tiny type it says on the watch face that it contains Swiss-made T, which is Tritium. It’s actually radioactive material that they have to say is in there. But it’s tiny. I did dozens of watch faces for them…"

HBO Logo HBO

“I did HBO when I was at Columbia. There was one where the B was totally squished over the O. It was just badly drawn.”

Boston Boston

"Art Director Paula Scher (later a partner of Pentagram) and illustrator Roger Huyssen came up with the concept for the painting of a 'guitar-spaceship.' My job was to design the band’s name on the front of this spaceship in perspective and on a curve. It became their identity."

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On Your Feet or On Your Knees Blue Öyster Cult

"I did the lettering for Blue Öyster Cult’s live record On Your Feet or On Your Knees. John Berg, Columbia’s creative director, shot a photo of a church in New Canaan, Connecticut. There was a limousine in front of it and John put this retouched ominous sky behind it. Because of the religious nature of the image, I decided to use type from the Gutenberg Bible for the lettering and rendered it (with the help of Danny Wong) like a car marque—and this became the look of heavy metal. Even Spinal Tap parodied this style. It has that goth look but it's actually Bible lettering.“

Let There Be Rock AC/DC

"Bob Defrin of Atlantic Records called me in to put some hand-lettering on ACDC's first US release, High Voltage. They had a shot of Angus Young and they wanted the band's name and title in the corner. So I did some lettering for the album. And that record was successful so Bob asked me to do lettering on their second album Let There Be Rock. The ACDC logo was placed in the sky over a stage shot of the band. It became the graphic image of the group. I would not have known that a piece of lettering I did for an album cover would still be around 41 years later. It a testament to their longevity as a group more than any contribution I made. I mean, I drew an album cover. I like to say that it’s the only lettering I’ve ever designed that is made up of all straight lines, which isn’t a mark of a good lettering designer."

Newsweek Cover - January 19, 1981 Newsweek

Huerta's Employee ID

"The illustrator Roger Huyssen and I used to share a studio. And one time, in around 1979 or '80, we were both working on competing covers—though we didn’t know it at the time. I was doing the lettering for a Newsweek cover and he was illustrating one for Time, in the same small studio space. And the following Monday they both ran side-by-side."

erard Huerta was just 22 when he started doing lettering at Columbia Records. But because it was the '70s—when a hit rock album would sell millions—and he was designing album covers, Huerta’s work had a durability he never could have predicted. “I get described as the guy who did the ACDC logo probably more than I would like.” At the time, it was just another job: he drew it, his client signed off on the lettering, and it went into production. “No one would think that logo would still be around in 40 years,” he says. Three months after he created the iconic ACDC letters, he’d struck out on his own and was redrawing the logo for Time magazine. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been seeing Huerta’s work all your life, and not just in flea market vinyl bins. His hand-lettering has shown up on corporate logos, watch faces, Super Bowl promotionals, and failed financial firms. HBO, Swiss Army, Bear Stearns. He made Blue Öyster Cult look dark and dangerous and made the Boston logo literally fly. His skill and diligence may largely go unnoticed—our eyes tend to focus on logos and lettering only when they’re displeasing—but it’s everywhere, quietly making everything we see much easier to look at. Here’s a sample of his work from over the years.

Arista Logo Arista Records

“I drew four letters to go between the A's because they had that funny little A.”