Mysterious Skull Logo

October 17, 2012 10:32 PM

What is this logo, and what does it say?

Asking on behalf of a friend who saw this on a picture of a shirt and proceeded to baffle the lot of us with it. It's just on the far side of legible. It appears to be a golden skull with a crown, crossed bones (probably), a number 10 at the bottom, and words along the sides. I've tried various permutations of those words along with a Google similar-image search to no avail. Could someone help us answer this pesky question?

posted by wanderingmind to media & arts (10 answers total)

Where did your friend see said shirt and how big was this logo on it?
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 11:23 PM on October 17, 2012

Horrible picture. Maybe a Calavera?
posted by Packed Lunch at 12:07 AM on October 18, 2012

Context of any kind would be helpful. I think I'm seeing an "et" at 11 o'clock and "vitas" from 1 to 3ish, perhaps followed by "1732", but that seems unlikely if the big red 10 is meant to indicate a 10th anniversary. That there appears to be a W at 9 o'clock suggests that it's not Latin at all, which doesn't do much for the "...et vitas..." theory. Oy, my eyes hurt now.
posted by mumkin at 1:21 AM on October 18, 2012

I think the figure is not a skull and bones, but rather a little crown-wearing skull dude holding up his arms and making rock-and-roll signs of the beast \m/ . Ozzy Ozbourne and other metal bands like this type of imagery, so maybe a music festival or some such? Location of the photo would be nice.

I'm 90% confident the left word is "anniversary". If you asked me to type out the right word, I would key in VITARIUMP but that has no good analogue.

Here's some manipulated versions that might help someone else figure this out.
posted by maxwelton at 4:47 AM on October 18, 2012

I wonder if the right hand text says "HIGH SCHOOL"*, which would probably make the left hand text the name of the high school and the "10" representative of a 10 year reunion.
posted by MuffinMan at 6:18 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm going with Guitar Jam/Jump Anniversary.
posted by bfranklin at 6:49 AM on October 18, 2012

I can't see the pictures, but I guess this is from Glenn Beck's fashion line.

Yes, no shit.

Although real fashion designer Alexander McQueen has also several variations of the "crowned skull" theme.
posted by Skeptic at 7:02 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

First thing I thought of when I saw the image was a videogame achievement/trophy badge. I pulled it into Photoshop and started using the image transform tool to rotate it, which helped my eyes get past the blockiness of the image. As a result, I'm now pretty convinced that the right-hand text reads "METER JUMP". So my theory is that it's a videogame achievement badge commemorating a "10 METER JUMP" of some sort.

Google failed to help me nail it down any more than that, and when I think about the likelihood of someone wearing a T-shirt with such a minor videogame icon emblazoned on it, my confidence level goes down.
posted by Mothlight at 7:32 AM on October 18, 2012

The first word looks like "abominable" to me. The A, M/W, I combo that I think I see doesn't point to much else. Maybe "abominably" or "atomically"?

I'm trying out a crossword solving application, but can't come up with anything sensible for the second word. The last bit really does look like "jump", but it's not really coming together.
posted by bethnull at 2:13 PM on October 18, 2012

I tried running it though this program and didn't have much luck reading the words, but maybe someone else will have better eyes than I do.
posted by painquale at 9:51 PM on October 21, 2012