A Golding Institute Williams Street Connection

Sat Feb 09 2019 00:20:45 GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)

tags: greggturkington adultswim neilhamburger williamsstreet logos

I was digitizing some of my CDs and ran across this gem that I had forgotten about:

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It's a strange and fantastic recording that I won't get into here...but I guess I had never realized that Gregg Turkington was involved in this record! What a great surprise. A couple of quick searches later, and I learned that there were several Golding Institute releases and they are all basically just him.

When I opened the cover to take out the disc, I saw this logo on the inside of the insert:

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Huh!? What!?

That sure seems familiar. Isn't that the Williams Street logo from the end of all those Adult Swim shows?

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Well, no, it's not exactly the same. But it sure is close. I also learned from the internet that the Williams Street logo was originally shown on/after an episode of Space Ghost and is somehow a depiction of the fictional studio from which Space Ghost operates? There is some conflicting information, but the logo is now easily 20 years old, originating in 1999 or before.

So, what if I take the Golding Institute logo and flip it horizontally?

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And then remove the text and ground, and apply some digital photocopy effects and monkey with the brightness and contrast a few times:

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That's looking VERY close to the Williams Street logo to me! Let's go ahead and scale them the same and toggle between so that we can see just how similar they are:

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It's too close to be a coincidence...right? Sure, the Williams Street logo is way more washed out and has lost a bunch of detail...but everything else lines up. The perspective is the same, the window count, the number, shape, and position of the window shadows on the right side, the end of the building on both sides, the height.

So what's going on here? Did they each originate independently from some common clip art? I find it hard to believe, given the common element in Gregg Turkington (who produced the record and also appears on Adult Swim). It's odd to me: The record came out in 2006, and the Williams Street logo came out in the mid/late 90s. Is there an even more interesting story here? What is up with this?