It’s been a while since I’ve been to the east coast; specifically Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York City (or in this case Hoboken, NJ just across the river). In the past, my visits occurred while on tour with whichever band I was playing in at the time. As with those past visits, my latest was also to play 3 shows in 3 nights with a band that I used to play in back in the early-mid 1990s called Gauge, that recently reunited for a series of shows this past March. After those March shows we had an opportunity to play even more shows in this July in the aforementioned cities. Even though we are not a full-time band, like we were back in the ’90s, we decided to take it on.

While traveling to Washington, DC on I-70 I noticed something happening at a high frequency – the abundance of FedEx trucks on the highway. Every few minutes I would see one pass by heading west bound or we would pass one in the left lane heading east bound toward our destination. This got me thinking about the FedEx logo and how I recently discovered the arrow in the negative space between the “E” and “x”. Yeah, I’m sure most people see this right away. But, for some reason it always alluded me.

I remember when I first saw it and thought – how did I not see this before? Now, every time I see the logo I think: “Look, there goes another FedEx package/truck/airplane and the arrow is pointing it/them in the direction to where it’s going” And then I think about the coincidence of placing the the lowercase “x” immediately after the uppercase “E” to create an arrow shape; and then the coincidence of the word “Express” which is where the “Ex” in FedEx comes from.

When the English alphabet and language were taking shape, is it possible that certain words would create shapes and patterns with the letters to help define such words? Like in this case – the word “express”? I’m guessing no. I’m sure that its a happy accident the designer of the FedEx logo noticed. But sorta fun to think about… well.. possibly, maybe just for me.

Since this negative space discovery, every time I see the FedEx logo I gravitate directly to the arrow with the positive space fading to where I barely notice it at all. With the abundance of FedEx trucks on the highway and the frequency of this happening to me, its reminiscent of the second half of the Slint song “Nosferatu Man” that looped in my head roughly from spring of 1993 to the spring of 1995 (starts at 2:50 in the link below).

But, much like I got over that, I’m sure I’ll get over this arrow thing in the FedEx logo… it just might take a while.

Enjoy “Nosferatu Man” by Slint

Check out trailer for  “Gauge : 153″ – a retrospective film about the band Gauge; by Chicago filmmaker Matt Golin.