Tundra Toucan — Gerrit Rijken
Unique extreme metal art since 2003
For the past twenty years or so, I've been doing intricate, hand-drawn logos and illustrations for numerous black and death metal bands. In 2021, I co-authored an academic paper on what makes these often illegible logos work. And, in 2026, I got a degree in visual communications, finally becoming an "official" illustrator. So, in short, you can trust me to know what you need.
Logos
Album art & merch
From sketch to stage backdrop
Planning and Preparing
Every design begins as a sketch or a few rough ideas: different letterforms and compositions are "thumbnailed" and assessed against each other.Unleashing the Potential
The best ones are fleshed out and refined and refined again until we agree on the final design.Reaping the Harvest
The linework is cleaned up for print and the files will be sent to you in various formats, which you can then use however you see fit.
Illegible on purpose
I co-authored Illegible Semantics: Exploring the Design Space of Metal Logos, accepted at the alt.VIS workshop at IEEE VIS 2021. It's about how metal logos tell a story, even when you can't read them.
The companion genre guide breaks down the visual codes of each metal genre, subgenre and microgenre - from funeral metal to war metal - through about 50 sample logos, each spelling out "VIS", after the name of the conference.