Ironically for a time-travel movie mainly set in the 1950s, Back to the Future remains one of the best-loved films of the 1980s today. While its sequel's depiction of 2015 never came true – we don't have flying cars powered by nuclear fusion – it's such a brilliantly scripted and energetically acted tale, who cares? Not to mention its terrific art direction (read my interview with John Bellfor more on that). The film was released in 1985, a year in which there was stiff competition from the likes of The Goonies, Rocky IV, Beverly Hills Cop, Police Academy 2, Rambo, Cocoon and other popular movies. So branding was everything, and thankfully the logo got everything right. The lettering was suitably sci-fi, the colours were fiery and exciting, and the linear gradient evoked the sense of forward motion that was crucial to a fast-moving action comedy. "Back to the Future is the place I got to when thinking about the 80s, and this also holds true of the film's logo," says David Nathan Davies, design director at Design by Structure. "Consisting of a tightly stacked set of words, it's skewed both backwards and forwards, instantly conjuring up the feeling of time warping. This so perfectly captures the central theme of the film; the more you look at it, the more you feel you’re being dragged back in time with it!" It might seem odd to a modern audience to feature a movie logo as one of the best of the decade. But as Ross Clugston, CCO of Design Bridge and Partners, explains, big screen entertainment was hugely dominant at a time before the internet, and when videogames were still a niche pursuit.
