The FredFilms Professional Library

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#9 The Art of MTV
The MTV: Music Television Logo
August 1- 1981-February 8, 2010

#10 The Big Book of MTV Art

The MTV: Music Television Logo
August 1- 1981-February 8, 2010

#11 The Art of Nickelodeon

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009

#12.1 The Art of Adventure Time: Volume 1

#12.2 The Art of Adventure Time: Volume 2
#12.3 The Art of Adventure Time: Volume 3
Merch, Collectibles, Comics, Posters, Fan Art &
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#14 The Art of Frederator

The Fredbot Variants & Descendents
 THE ART OF
NICKELODEON
THE NICKELODEON LOGO
1984 - 2009
EDITED BY FRED SEIBERT

THE FREDFILMS PROFESSIONAL LIBRARY #11

 The Art of Nickelodeon
The Nickelodeon Logo

©2025, FredFilms, Inc.

All rights reserved.

The Nickelodeon logo

is a registered trademark of
Paramount Skydance Corporation, New York.

Logo design & development by

Tom Corey and Scott Nash
Corey & Co., Boston

First edition
December 2025
To Jack and Joe
 Production notes

• The "official" color of the Corey/Nash logo design

is Pantone 021, a florescent, day-glo shade of orange.
The designers explained that it was a color "not
seen in nature" which, when slapped on any image,
would "pop" off the television screen, no matter the
images behind it. Which worked beautifully. Doubly
in the age of the internet.

However, most printed applications, like this book,

or for instance, on a toy package, were printed in a
mixture of 4-colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and
black), and only make an approximation of
Pantone 021.

Unfortunately, this book would cost 30-40%

more than it's already rich price if we were to
use florescent "spot" color.

• Several of the images, credited on the next

page, come from screen capture frames in standard
definition video transferred from the original
35mm of Nickelodeon's 10-second, animated,
network identifications.

The original artwork was unavailable, so the

images are not perfectly sharp. My sincerest apologies,
however, I felt the trade off was worth it to see even
more creative uses of the logo design.

–FS

6 The Art of Nickelodeon

Credits

The Nickelodeon logo was designed in 1984 by

Tom Corey & Scott Nash, Corey & Co., Boston,
sdeveloped for Fred/Alan, New York.

There were several hundred Nickelodeon logos creat-

ed between 1984 and the channel's redesign in 2009;
individual designer and illustrators were not tracked.
The primary creative supervisors at Nick were:

Betty Cohen
Scott Webb
Steve Thomas
David Vogler
Independent animation producer/directors were
commissioned by Fred/Alan and produced by Tom
Pomposello to create 10-second network identifications,
some of which are featured in this book:

AdamsMorioka: 281
Buzzco, New York, Candy Kugel: 122-123, 198-199
Camp Androscoggin campers, Wayne, Maine,
Howard Hoffman: 160-161, 162
Charlex, New York, Charlie Levi & Alex Weil:
90, 91, 97
Colossal Pictures, San Francisco: 68-69, 132-133,
260-261
Dave Wasson: 290
David Lubell: 196, 197, 254-255
Edward Bakst, New York: 82-83
Fred/Alan, New York: 170, 172. 173, 174
International Rocketship, Vancouver, Canada,
Marv Newland: 52, 216, 217, 218, 219, 264-265
Jerry Lieberman Productions, New York: 240-241
Joey Ahlbum, New York: 102-105,
154-155,170,180-181
Kim Deitch, New York: 240-241
Noyes & Laybourne, New York,
Eli Noyes and Kit Laybourne: 54-61, 96, 286-289

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 7

8
8 The
The Art
Art of
of Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon
Preface
By Fred Seibert

Alan Goodman and I left our cushy gigs at

MTV: Music Television and formed Fred/
Alan to make some TV shows and help new
media networks discover themselves. Little
did we know that when we got our first big
client, Nickelodeon, it would become one
of the great experiences of our work lives.
Where else could we have had a chance
to help bring happiness and joy into the
lives of kids across the world? And, at the
same time, help the network's staff fulfill
their dreams of doing something great for
children?

But, that big story is one for another time.

At Nickelodeon, we were able to power them

from worst to first. The lowest rated cable
network to the America's #1 channel. And
that journey was inspired by their new logo.

"Discover themselves" might seem a little bit

woo-woo from the perspective of almost 50
years of cable television being a bedrock of
the linear media mainstream. But back in
the early 1980's, the notion of having more
than a few TV channels was confusing to
most everyone. Even to the people who

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 9

 worked in cable TV.

Think about it. Local market television

provided the local news of crime, fires,
weather and the feel-goodness stories of
your community. Giant networks gave you
relatively high end comedies, dramas, movies,
international news, and, oh yeah, stuff for
the kids. What else did we need???

Well, as it turned out, a lot more. A lot.

Technology has made it possible for almost
everyone to have exactly what they liked
about TV... all the time! 24 hours a day of
news, 24 hours of music, 24 hours of sports,
movies, business news, whatever, whatever.
(Someone even pitched me a 24 hour cat
channel. The world wasn't ready for that
until the internet was invented.) No one
thought 24 hours a day for kids, but 14 or
so –kids had to sleep sometime– seven days
a week, not just Saturday mornings.

The problem was that no one really

understood exactly what to do. I mean,
really... Everyone in the business wondered,
did anyone really need 24 hours of news,
movies, and the rest? Programmers were
used to "dayparts" where certain hours were
reserved for various "blocks" for different
audiences. For instance, the assumption was

10 The Art of Nickelodeon

that only women were in the house during
the day, so talk shows and soap operas ruled.
News at dinner time, et cetera, et cetera.

And because TV was everything for

everybody, the channels had to present
themselves without too much personality.
The networks took on a "voice of God"
persona, an all-knowing, on-high image that
even their brand marks reflected. The NBC
network, the first, mass color television
presentation; their mark seemed downright
radical in comparison to the others.

When cable came along, and MTV: Music

Television with it, we –with an amazingly
innovative approach from Manhattan
Design– had put an end to most of the
traditional rules of logos. (MTV 's original,
staid advertising agency told us we broke 7 of
their 10 best practices!) There were the most
obvious visual elements, that is, that the
holding lines of the M and the TV lettering
stayed constant, and the illustrations inside
the lines were always completely different,
and often in motion.

Everything was aimed at capturing the

attention of our viewers, in a television
environment that was, for the times,
increasingly crowded and chaotic. But, there

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 11

 was a design strategy too. Especially with a
new and totally unproven venture, often a
new graphic designer’s first impulse is “We
need a new logo! That will fix everything!”
We needed to head that thinking off at
the pass. With a mark that each and every
designer could totally personalize and make
their own. Hopefully, that would keep their
creative impulses within the boundaries of
our brand aspirations.

So, when Fred/Alan got the assignment

to help Nickelodeon get out of the ratings
basement, we started on our mission to get
them to "discover themselves."

The thing is, Gerry Laybourne and her

team had already made their discoveries,
and they were all great. In fact, downright
groundbreaking for children's television.
They had picked ideal programs, but in
and of themselves, they didn't immediately
communicate anything to the audience. As a
result, their research told them that kids of
every age, whether they were six or 11 years
old, they all thought Nickelodeon was "for
babies." And for a kid, a "baby" was anyone
younger than they were. As a result, no one
watched Nick for more than a few minutes a
week. Most of their programming revelations

12 The Art of Nickelodeon

went unwatched. Ratings disaster!

Alan and I quickly came to the conclusion

that Nickelodeon could probably be a great
success, if only the kids of America got the
right message. With the programming team
we reworked the scheduling clocks to have
much more time for us to talk to the viewers
and developed a strategy for delivering the
belief system in a way that showed rather than
explained. A new creative team was given free
reign to believe in their instincts about what
great television could be. Scott Webb, the first
writer/producer –eventually the company's
Worldwide Creative Director– paved the
way for everyone else to be proud to share
Nickelodeon's story, over and above an
individual show's story.

Everything was in place. Except the beacon.

The logo mark. There needed to be a bright,
shining light at the top of the virtual hill to
let the kids know there were in the right
place. Their place.

Graphic designer Tom Corey had an upstart

shop in Boston with one of his former
students, an illustrator/designer, Scott
Nash. They'd done a lot of our work at MTV
and the two of them were jazzed by our

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 13

14 The Art of Nickelodeon
undermining of traditional logo concepts
and were itching to join the party.

Long story short –Scott Nash will tell the rest

of it a couple of essays after this one– they
presented us with an array of suggestions. I
was about to point to one of the "normal"
ones –it fit the traditional "rules" of good
brand marks– when Alan pulled me out
of my delusion. He reminded me that we
thought a television mark should move. To
be alive!

"That's the one." The malleable blob.

D'oh! Of course, Alan was right.

...
...
Don’t Forget Farts
By Alan Goodman

I don’t remember the conversations leading

up to the choice that the Nickelodeon logo
should be fluid. Fred tells me I had a lot to
do with it, but whether that’s historically
accurate or not I can’t confirm.

But I know precisely when the golden age

of Nickelodeon began and why that affected
our logo decisions.

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 15

 too. “Children should be seen and not
heard.” Really??? Sorry. On Nickelodeon,
that rule dissolved. We decided the kid
point of view would be seen AND heard,
and sometimes those sounds wouldn’t be
polite because kids aren’t always polite.

The rule that “logos need to be consistent”

was another rule we had disproved with
MTV and were about to disprove again. At
very least, a logo needs to identify the product
and be remembered. At its best, it triggers
an emotional response to the product that
floods us with good feelings for the way it
enhances our lives. The ever-changing, but
always identifiable, Nickelodeon logo was
that for its audience because it thumbed its
nose at the rules of channel identity just as
children like to disobey and misbehave.

Lots of networks tried to copy us, creating

fluid logos after our example. But it wasn’t
just about having a logo that changed. It was
about having a logo that spoke emotionally
to the audience’s needs. It was a logo that
was fun to watch. How could that miss with
kids?

It’s often said we broke all the rules. We

didn’t break all the rules. The Nick logo
was designed to fill the space it occupied.

16 The Art of Nickelodeon

It was in Gerry Laybourne’s living room with
Debby Beece, Scott Webb, Geoffrey Darby –
Nick's senior executive team– Fred and me.
We had been working half the day plotting
the network’s evolution, with whiteboards
full of useless musings strewn about, when
Gerry’s son Sam floated through the room
with some 11-year-old’s complaint. Gerry
listened patiently and told him she had
faith in his ability to solve his own problem.
He left grumbling. She watched him, and
quietly said “Boy it’s tough being a kid.” The
lightbulb went off simultaneously around
the room. Kids need respect more than they
need rescuing. They need a place of their
own where they can talk kid talk and be
kids, not where they are told what the right
kind of kid says and does. We’d be there for
kids. We’d respect kids. And any kid out
there would be kid enough for us.

That demanded embracing naughtiness and

anti-social behavior, because it’s the kid’s
job to test the boundaries and act out. Which
meant embracing a logo that acted out, too.

That radical choice –establishing that our

audience was at war with convention– had
helped galvanize the MTV generation, and we
believed it would work with Nickelodeon,
The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 17
 It always used the same logotype, if not
a constant shape. We used a similar if not
identical theme song (which, I’m happy to
say more than 40 years later, the network still
uses — as one of the composers of the Nick
theme, I can tell you the royalties ASCAP
collects on my behalf have been very, very
good to me).

And can we talk about color? Pantone 021

was the perfect choice because it went with
nothing (except, maybe, slime green). It was
chosen specifically because slapping it on the
screen obliterated whatever was behind it.
Kids are not reverent. They aren’t respectful.
We’d leave it to others to teach them those
lessons. Our job was to be a canvas for a
kid’s unbridled energy and delight.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what makes kids

tick. You just have to listen, and to listen
properly means getting down low WHERE
they physically are and loving them for
WHO they are. Years after we had all left
Nickelodeon behind, I was advising a start-
up eager to be a safe social site for kids
online. Along with the founder, I pitched it
to an investment group that included Gerry
Laybourne. They weren’t interested, and the
thing never took off, but as I was leaving
the room Gerry whispered some of the best
advice I’ve ever gotten. “Don’t forget farts,”
18 The Art of Nickelodeon
she told me.

Looking back, “don’t forget farts” could sum

up everything good about the Nickelodeon
and the way we identified it. We were
incredibly fortunate to have the team, the
resources, and the backing to build it.

As of this writing, Alan Goodman is a partner in a

South Florida software business focused on managing
sensitive personal data. For the past two years, he
has also worked as a professional actor in theater
and web series. His two new careers follow more
than 45 years behind the scenes in entertainment,
starting with writing ads and music video scenarios,
then helping invent, launch, promote, and consult
for television networks. With Fred Seibert, he was
a founding member of the MTV team and helped
relaunch and grow Nickelodeon. He oversaw all
MTV animation personally, and largely left that
task for Nickelodeon to Tom Pomposello, who was
flawless.
...
...
A Network for Kids?
This Is Going To Be Cool.
By Scott Webb

I was sitting across from Fred in his office at

Fred/Alan.

“We’ve been hired to relaunch Nickelodeon,

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 19

and we want you to be on the team to make
promos!”

I’d worked for him before and knew that

when Fred was energized like this, it was
bound to be fun.

He pulled out a 3-frame storyboard

reminiscent of a Roadrunner cartoon. It was
a line drawing of a baby crawling under one
of those 2-ton weights that were always about
to squash the Coyote, but here, the weight
was orange and had the word Nickelodeon
on it. It was funny, fresh, and completely
different from everything I held in my mind
about the old Nickelodeon. “The logo can be
anything,” Fred said excitedly, as if it had
superpowers. But I did not yet understand
the magnitude of what he was telling me.

I had always been that kid who did not want

to grow up and get a job and become an
adult. I still treasured my toys and comic
books I grew up with. My secret wish was
to work at Marvel or DC Comics. I loved
the power of storytelling, fantasy, play and
world-building, and this relaunch that Fred
was describing –this new Nickelodeon–
seemed like a place that valued these

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 21

 qualities of mine.

Suddenly, being child-like (and immature)

didn’t seem like such a liability!

There was a lot going on for me at this time

of my life. A year and half earlier I had been
diagnosed with an uncorrectable optic
nerve disorder and was no longer able to see
things the way I used to. I could no longer
drive or interact with the world as I always
had, and I secretly felt defective because of my
eye problem. How could I be a good promo
producer?

But Fred saw something in me that I didn’t

fully understand at the time: my child-like
sensibility and ability to love these kids’ TV
shows allowed me to envision how great a
network for kids could be.

The following week, I met with Tom

Corey, the co-designer of the new logo,
who showed me a magazine-style sales
brochure to sell cable operators on the new
Nickelodeon. The magazine was bold and
graphic like the comics I had loved as a kid,
but here everything was in black and white
except for the big orange logo plastered
over images from Nick programming like
"Mr. Wizard," "Lassie," "Danger Mouse," and

22 The Art of Nickelodeon

 "You Can’t Do That on Television." This
lively, spirited, irreverent logo made the
shows look fresh and filled with a world of
characters that could form the heroes of the
new network. I was starting to understand
the magic.

The promotion department made two types

of promos: Tune-in spots for shows and
marketing promos we called “Promise”
spots. (Nobody used the word ‘brand’ or
‘branding’ back then, but that’s what we
were doing.)

“We’re not selling," Fred and Alan said.

"We’re making and keeping promises to
create relationships and build loyalty.
Always keep your promises.”

Early on, there were few rules, lots of

encouragement to take risks, and big
expectations to swing for the fences. The
on-air producers had a lot of creative
freedom with Promise spots as long as the
spots featured the logo as much as possible
and delivered the promise message. The
first Promise spot I made was, of course,
inspired by my love of comic books and that
The first television use of the new magazine Tom showed me the week before.
Nickelodeon logo. Wrtten and
produced by Scott Webb.
The big orange Nickelodeon logo was the
cover of a video comic that opened up to

24 The Art of Nickelodeon

reveal a breakneck montage of Nickelodeon
shows. I wanted Nickelodeon to feel like a
world where all the characters knew each
other and Nick was their clubhouse. As the
first network for kids, this was something
only Nick could do.

Over time, we did have to erect more

guardrails, but that, too, was part of the fun
of working with a logo that could be or do
almost anything. I remember one meeting
where we were trying to communicate to
designers to what degree the logo shape
could tilt in one direction or another (it
could never be vertical). We would often use
metaphors to solve these kinds of problems.
Someone suggested the rule: “You’d have
to be able to ski down it.” We all shook our
heads in agreement about that degree of
angle. Then someone else said, “But what if
the designer is a really good skier?”

Tune-in promos were not inherently as

much fun as Promise spots. Tune-ins had
a lot of work to do in 10 or 30 seconds:
sell the show as well as communicate the
day and time the show aired. And back in
those days we had to do it for four time
zones! Part of our job as promo producers
was to differentiate our network and one
big way we did that was to poke fun at the

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 25

 conventional ways TV Networks talked to
the audience. So, at the end of every promo,
we had the obnoxiously large Nick logo
slam onto the screen, completely covering
the tune-in information. On paper, this may
not have seemed like “good marketing,” but
kids seemed to love it. It made the network
itself feel like it identified with the silly, wacky
sensibilities of kids.

This completely aligned with Gerry

Laybourne’s vision of the network. She’d say
that Nickelodeon was always more than a
TV Network and that we were championing
a movement –a cause– which was to make
the world better for kids. She wanted Nick
to be not in just the TV business, but in the
kids business.

As Nickelodeon grew, Tom Corey’s and

Scott Nash's Nick logo evolved into a
dynamic system that could retain its unique
attitude and become a family of coherent
trademarks that came to include movies,
consumer products, licensing, international
syndication, location-based entertainment,
online entertainment as well as other
audience segments like Nick Jr., Nick-at-
Nite, Nickelodeon Studios, Nick Online,
Nick Magazine, etc.

26 The Art of Nickelodeon

Together, these crazy orange shapes
became the kid’s business's world-famous
trademark.

This was, in part, because of what we all did

to “take care of” our beloved logo, making
sure that even in its many permutations,
it was readable, recognizable, and always
shown in its best light. This kind of
caretaking was something I’d never expected
to develop as a promo-guy, but it came so
naturally and fostered such a commitment
to the network that it truly changed me as a
creative person. It helped me see problems,
and maybe the world itself, in completely
different ways.

In 1998, 17 years into my Nickelodeon

career, then-president Herb Scannell asked
me to write the Nick Manifesto. I had made
other guides for the business before, but
this one was a simple declaration of the big
ideas that made the brand what it was. By
that time, Tom Corey had passed away, but
the Manifesto was designed by his company.
It was clean and sparse, black and white text
with the big, orange Nick logo, just like
Tom’s early pitch piece.

It felt like a full circle moment for me. I had

become intimately involved in the evolution

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 29

30 The Art of Nickelodeon
of a logo that defined a generation. I
love what we did with it, and that, as
Gerry envisioned, we were able to make
the Nickelodeon logo really stand for
something important.

Scott Webb started at Nickelodeon as a writer/

producer in the promotion department,
eventually becoming Nickelodeon's first ever
worldwide Creative Director.
...
...

The Fred/Alan
School of Creative
Argument
By Scott Nash

As we all know, the best teachers aren’t

necessarily found in the classroom.
Sometimes they’re found in the well worn,
very former headquarters of Jackie Gleason
Productions at The Park Sheraton Hotel in
Manhattan. When I first met Fred Seibert
and Alan Goodman I was a confident,
critical and slightly obnoxious pup. I was
fresh out of grad school and working with
my former professor and mentor Tom
Corey, one of the most thoughtful designers
I’ve ever met. The occasion was to talk

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 31

 about a new logo for a dusty and indistinct
kids network called Nickelodeon that had
existed in some form since 1978. I’ll admit
that my first impression of Fred and Alan
was that they seemed like posers. They were
wearing matching outfits of white business
shirts, thin ties and sneakers, squatting in
offices that were clearly not theirs. What
was worse, we seemed to share no cultural
commonality.

In one of our first meetings, Fred asked me

who I thought was the greatest rock band.
I offered The Talking Heads. Fred scoffed
at my choice and proclaimed that the best
band was undeniably Sam The Sham and
The Pharaohs. He and Alan seemed to love
television, I didn’t. I believed my design
sensibilities were esoteric and refined,
theirs was vernacular and emotional. In that
meeting, I advocated that if the network
wanted to attract contemporary kids they
would have to change their name because
“nickelodeon”, a historical reference to
an early 20th-century coin-operated
movie theater named for the typical five-
cent (nickel) admission, conjured a very
nostalgic, arcane view of childhood. My
argument was rejected . Either Fred or Alan
said “Nobody knows what a nickelodeon
is these days. To kids it will be a nonsense

32 The Art of Nickelodeon

word that will eventually come to mean
what we want it to mean.” This made no
sense to me at the time, but obviously, they
were right!.

All this said, I consider my time working

with Fred Alan to be a vital part of my
education as a designer - full of creative
argumentation and ideas. I loved every
minute of it. I’m also here to declare to
the world that while Tom & I created the
Nickelodeon logo, the idea would not have
been advanced or realized if it weren’t for
Fred and Alan, because not only were they
skilled at forming a convincing argument,
they were also fearless advocates of a great
creative idea that had legs.

When Tom and I presented our concepts

for the Nickelodeon logo, it was clear
that the ever-changing logo won the day
because what followed felt like an uptempo
improvisation of ideas on top of ideas.
These guys were virtuosos in expanding
thoughts and were as fast as they were
good.

We left that meeting with much more than

an idea, we left with a vision and a clear
understanding of what to do next. The

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 33

 rest was easy, a simple matter of executing
a concept that everybody loved because the
Nickelodeon logo was inclusive, allowing
everyone to play.
Over the years since then, I worked more
with Fred than Alan. I always considered
myself lucky even when Fred didn’t like an
idea. He would say something like “You
know... you’re wrong and I’m gonna tell you
why.” Sometimes he was right. Sometimes
I would argue with him to a draw. This
sort of candor in a creative conversation is
invaluable. If done right , it’s not destructive
but constructive; the discourse adds flesh to
the bone, voice to a whisper and comrades
to the cause.

Without Fred Seibert and Alan Goodman

not only would there not have been a
Nickelodeon logo, there may not have
been the Nickelodeon that shook up and
rejiggered kids television.

Scott Nash is Executive Director of Illustration

Institute, a non-profit arts organization that
promotes appreciation of illustration and other
narrative arts. Scott is also a creative director,
graphic designer, author and illustrator of over 50
children's books including: 'Flat Stanley,' 'Saturday
Night At The Dinosaur Stomp,' 'The Bugliest Bug,'
'Tuff Fluff: The Case Of Duckies Missing Brain'
and 'The High Sky Adventures Of Blue Jay The

34 The Art of Nickelodeon

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 35
36 The Art of Nickelodeon
 Pirate.' '

As a founding partner of NASHBOX, BIG BLUE

DOT, Corey McPherson Nash, Scott developed an
expertise in the creative development of media
brands such as PBS, Disney, Comedy Central and
Nickelodeon.
...
...
THE SHAPE OF FUN
By David Vogler

When I think back to my time at

Nickelodeon, I’m still amazed by the power
our simple logo held. Except it was never
really simple.

That orange wordmark didn’t just sit still. It

had ants in the pants. It bounced, it flipped,
it flew. A rocket, a frog, a kangaroo. A toaster,
a blimp, a shark, and a cat. A robot, a fish, a
burger — the splat!

It was as limitless as a kid’s imagination. It

refused to behave, and that was the point.
The only guidelines? Always orange.
Different shape.

The Nick logo encouraged experimentation

and spoke directly to the audience. But here’s
the truth: the logo never really belonged to
Nickelodeon. It belonged to the kids who

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 37

 doodled it in their notebooks, wore it on
their shirts, and watched it bounce across
their screens.

I’m grateful to have been part of

Nickelodeon at its creative peak. Although
I didn't invent the logo, I served as its
biggest evangelist. The real heroes of this
book are my colleagues, who deserve all the
credit. And yeah, at the risk of sounding a
little cringey, before I go any further I want
to give them a proper shout-out:

Tom Corey, the prescient Nick

visionary who, back in 1999, foresaw
“The logo never really streaming, mobile
media, and AI long
belonged to Nickelodeon..."
before they disrupted
the entertainment biz. (He also told me
to buy Amazon stock. I didn’t listen.
Schmuck!)

Scott Nash, the gifted illustrator who

designed the logo. (Full disclosure:
Nash and I went to high school together.
But that’s a tale for another book.)

Scott Webb, the creative North Star of

the entire company. Webb taught me
everything I know. (His mentorship,

38 The Art of Nickelodeon

 support and good cheer became the
foundation of my career.)

And of course, the legends Fred

Seibert and Alan Goodman. There’s
a saying that lightning never strikes
the same place twice. But Fred and
Alan proved ‘em wrong. They not only
put Tom and Scott in place to birth
the Nickelodeon logo, but they also
created the groundbreaking identity of
MTV, arguably the two most important
entertainment logos
in American pop “...it belonged to the kids
culture. who doodled it in their
notebooks, wore it on
To give this all some their shirts, and watched
context, I spent my it bounce across their
childhood reading Mad
Magazine, watching
screens.”
Bullwinkle and questioning authority. So
when I saw the Nickelodeon logo for the
first time, I knew it was the brand for me!

Now here’s where I came in. I was hired

by Nickelodeon to be the Art Director
of their newly burgeoning consumer
products division. Essentially, it was my
job to translate the insanity of what was
happening on-air to off-air. Yep. I was the

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 39

 guy who made stuff kids would blow their
allowance money on.

We promised to make products that upheld

the essence of the Nickelodeon brand. Our
mandate was to avoid being thoughtless
“logo slappers” on generic junk. We had no
desire to sell a cheap action figure bearing
our logo as an afterthought.

So, we zigged when the toy business zagged.

We did the very opposite of what the bean
counters demanded. We took creative risks.
Unlike our competition, our products were
bespoke; appealed to both boys AND girls;
had no rules; harnessed a kid’s creativity;
and gave them the tools to empower their
own imaginations.

Up to that point, the Nick logo had mostly

appeared in print and on television. My
team’s job was to bring it to life across
a wide range of materials each with its
own production challenges and legibility
concerns. That meant not just on the
products, but on the packaging too.

In a single week, we might shift from

hard plastics made through injection
molding, to plush toys sewn and stuffed
by hand, to compound toys like Gak, or

40 The Art of Nickelodeon

sports products made of Nerf foam. Each
one of these toys had its own logo that felt
like a sibling to their on-air counterparts.
Everything we produced was subject to
strict IP approval, orange color matching
and branding compliance. If the logo didn’t
live up to Nickelodeon’s values, it didn’t
ship.

After years of designing Nick products for

the physical world, I soon moved into the
digital world. We launched Nick web sites,
interactive video, digital toys and mobile
apps. Adapting the Nick logo into emerging
new media allowed us to serve kids better
than ever. It was an honor to bring that
orange logo to life on new screens for a new
generation.

Lesson learned: The Nickelodeon logo

worked anywhere, on any screen, in any
form for any generation. Built on a simple,
brilliant idea, it connected with kids
instantly. In all its orange, shape-shifting
glory, it became more than a versatile
graphic mark. It became the shape of fun.

David Vogler is a Creative Director with a career

spanning entertainment, streaming, and emerging
media. He began in Nickelodeon’s consumer
products division before joining NBCUniversal’s
team that launched Hulu.

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 41

42 The Art of Nickelodeon
At Hearst, he led early subscription streaming
initiatives, later serving as VP Creative for WWE’s
Advanced Media Group. Most recently, he was
Head of Design for the BBC’s BritBox streaming
service.
...
...

The Filmmakers
There were two teams of filmmakers
that really turned Nickelodeon into the
iconic place that it became. The on-air
promotion group, creatively led by Scott
Webb, cemented the vocabulary, the
attitude, the excitement in the hearts of
our loyal viewers. They deserve a story all
their own, for another book.

But, it was the animated filmmakers

who shined the light on our logo, that
signaled to children that they could
expect Nickelodeon to be a place that
not only entertained in a language the
kids understood, but somewhere that
respected them like no other.

Our work at MTV: Music Television

convinced us that trademarks for
television, a motion picture medium,

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 43

 needed a different approach than static
print design. Not just a mark, but a
North Star, a beacon, a flag... More like
a lighthouse, giving guidance amidst the
noise and chaos of a medium that had
basically ignored kids for too long.

Tom Corey and Scott Nash delivered

the basic, the design, that could be the
vessel. But, it was the animation pioneers
who brought the logo to its stuttering,
playful and creative life. Along with the
brilliant a cappella singing of Eugene
Pitt’s Jive Five and the sound design of
Tom Clack and Fred/Alan producer Tom
Pomposello, the filmmakers let everyone
watching know that kids had a safe,
fabulous, boisterous club to which they
could belong. By themselves, no parental
supervision required.

Eli Noyes was an award winning

experimental filmmaker who had been
part of our MTV logo crew. He joined
up with Kit Laybourne, and Kit and Eli
were the first ones to set the Nickelodeon
network identification template for all
others who followed in their path. They
immediately understood, and reveled
in, the possibilities that Tom and Scott

44 The Art of Nickelodeon

provided to them. Their very first pieces
of magic utilized several orange shapes
in one 10-second strip of film, always
imaginatively conceived. They rode
the ride with us across all our years at
Nickelodeon, eventually creating hit
series for the network.

Buzzco and Colossal Pictures, a couple

of our other MTV companions, came
along, But, we also had plenty of room for
dozens of different approaches to the new
shapes of kiddom from Charlie Levi’s and
Alex Weil’s video innovations at Charlex,
Bill Jarcho’s and Mark D'Oliveira’s stop
motion Olive Jar, Marv Newland’s almost
avant-garde International Rocketship,
and unique, early CG by Edward Bakst,
and traditional, vintage styled animations
from Dave Lubell. And maybe most
memorable, the totally individual Joey
Ahlbum.

Together, these intrepid souls turned

a logo into a signal. A beckoning that
told kids they were seen, welcomed, and
already in charge. They didn’t ask kids to
watch Nickelodeon... they invited them
in.
...

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 45

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Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick-Nick-

NICK-EL-O-DEON!
Soundtrack composed by
Alan Goodman, Eugene Pitt and Tom Pomposello.
Originally recorded with
The Jive Five:
led by
Eugene Pitt, with
Frank Pitt, Herbert Pitt, Casey Spenser, Beatrice Best

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 53

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Hon de laud hup
Hivvel up
NICK

Hon de rikki tikki

Lo Y livin'
Number 1
NICKELODEON!
...
Soundtrack composed by
Alan Goodman,
Eugene Pitt and
Tom Pomposello,
and sung by
The Jive Five:
led by
Eugene Pitt, with
Frank Pitt,
Herbert Pitt,
Casey Spenser,
Beatrice Best

68 The Art of Nickelodeon

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The design origins
of the 1984
Nickelodeon logo
An interview with designer Scott Nash

By the editors of NickAlive.com

Tom Corey and Scott Nash designed a

new Nickelodeon logo (Nick's third of
four, so far) for the channel's consultants
Fred/Alan in 1984. Here's an excerpt of an
interview with Scott from NickAlive.com,
published in September 2023.

In the early 1980s, Scott Nash, just out of

design school, found himself on a flight to
meet with executives from the nascent cable
channel for kids, Nickelodeon. He and a
former professor, Tom Corey, had been
tasked with developing some logos.

"We had these, in retrospect, some really bad

ideas," Nash told Yahoo Entertainment. "One
of which was...because they were owned by
MTV, we would come up with something
that was the equivalent of MTV. And instead
of having the ever-changing M, we thought
we'd turn the 'N' into a door, which would...
sort of greet kids and allow us to come into
the world of Nickelodeon. But it was a really

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 279

 short-sighted idea, and one that I wasn't
comfortable with."

"I don't know!"

Although they had very little time to spare,

they decided to toss out what they had and
start over.

"So Tom and I, on the flight down to meet

with Fred [Seibert] and Alan [Goodman],"
who were in charge of rebranding
Nickelodweon in 1984, five years after its
launch, "sketched on anything we could,"
Nash says. "We were sketching away. Tom
said, 'Well, what do you really want to do
on this?' I said, 'I think that a kids' network
shouldn't have one particular shape. I think
it should constantly change."

One iteration of this evolving logo would

be the splat, which was already part of
Nickelodeon lore, thanks to one of its
earliest programs, "You Can't Do That on
Television," on which the kid stars were
regularly slimed with green goo dumped
from above anytime they said, "I don't
know." So the splat was a no-brainer, and
they quickly came up with others.

"And we presented those rough sketches,

280 The Art of Nickelodeon

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 281
 one of which was on a coffee cup that we
were given, because I had run out of paper,"
Nash says. "And we actually presented the
sketches we did on the plane... We basically
threw away the proposal that we were
going to present to Fred and Alan, and
showed them a bunch of sketches done with
Sharpies. It was a revelation for me because,
again, I was nervous, as a young designer, to
show something that unpolished. But [they]
absolutely embraced the idea, especially.
[They] were very enthusiastic about it."

The so-called 'splat' logo was born.

And though there were eventually hundreds

of other Nick logo designs used –the
zeppelin, which Nash drew and became the
shape of the trophies at the Kids' Choice
Awards; a cow; and a dog bone, for example
– the paint splatter became a favorite. Nash
recalls that the product division particularly
loved the splat. For the people responsible
for making T-shirts, toys and other brand
merch, the logo needed to be consistent;
They were trying to build brand identity.

Nash says his team initially debated whether

the color of the splat should be slime green
or orange.

282 The Art of Nickelodeon

"We somehow got some information as to
what colors adults least liked at the time.
And lime green was one color. The other
color was orange, and we went with orange
because green is a keyable color," Nash says.

They settled on Pantone 021, the

vibrant orange that just screams "FUN!"

Nash notes that everyone involved had a

creative energy that comes with working on
something fresh and new and vibrant. It was
exciting times. He describes some of what
they created back then as "groundbreaking,"
a word that he believes is over-used but
appropriate here.

The splat remained part of the network's

identity as hits such as "The Ren & Stimpy
Show," "Rugrats" and "Hey Dude" cycled
through.

"And so, for years," Nash says, "we were very

proud of the Nickelodeon logo. We thought
it was a new type of graphic identity. We
referred to the logo as a flexi-logo. It's not
one logo. It's a logo that is imbued with
creativity, because it can change and morph.
And the various iterations that we saw
throughout the years through the creative
services department and everyone who

The Nickelodeon Logo 1984-2009 283

 worked with it, it was really gratifying to
see what people would do with this idea
that Tom and I basically hatched on a plane
heading down to New York."

In Mathew Klickstein's 2013 book Slimed!

An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden
Age, Scott Webb, Nick's first creative
director, went as far as citing Nash's late
professor-turned-business partner as
one of the people most responsible for the
network's eventual success. The splat had
been everything.

The guys who had made the Nickelodeon

logo were suddenly in demand, and they
went on to create imagery for Comedy
Central, Cartoon Network, FX and more.
Nick continued to use the splat until the
late aughts, when, according to Variety, its
parent company decided to connect all of
the Nickelodeon brands –Nick at Nite,
Nicktoons, Nick Jr. and TeenNick– by using
matching lower-case logos for all of them.

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 About the editor

Fred Seibert, with partner Alan Goodman founded

Fred/Alan, Inc. in 1983 as the world's first media
branding consultancy, and an advertising agency
specializes in audiences under 35 years old.

He was the first creative director, and a co-founder

of MTV: Music Television, the last president of
Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. As an independent
cartoon producer and early proponent of
streaming video, his work has been recognized
by the Annies, the Oscars and the Animation
Magazine Hall of Fame. Fred's been honored with
a Lifetime Metal from the American Institute of
Graphic Arts (AIGA) and has been inducted into
the Emmys' Golden Circle.

290 The Art of Nickelodeon