Looking at the famous Deadpool logo, one can hardly believe that it appeared as a result of a mere mistake made by the artist.
Deadpool was created not as an independent character but as a parody of the DC character Deathstroke. No wonder the original design was devoid of details. In the debut story, which appeared in “New Mutants” #98 published in February, 1991, the hero did not have any emblem on the buckle of his belt. The same approach was used in several following appearances, as well as the first two miniseries.
The Deadpool logo, designed in 1991, has never been changed, as even today it looks extremely actual and progressive, due to its minimalistic style and strongly contrasting color palette. The badge only contains simple geometric elements with no small details: a solid black roundel in a thick red frame, with the vertical red stripe cutting it into two halves, and two white triangular cut-outs for the eyes. The red elements of the logo resemble the slanted for 90 digress “Stop” road sign, which makes sense since Deadpool is not a joke.
However, in the course of time, Deadpool became much more than just a parody. A new artist, Mark Brooks, was assigned to work on the following stories.
Before Brooks started his work, he checked the way past designers drew the character. Yet, some of the details slipped his mind. For instance, he could not remember correctly what the belt looked like, so he just drew what he remembered. That was how the circular buckle with two “eyes” appeared. Later, Brooks mentioned that was a mistake he was pretty happy to have made.
The Deadpool logo does not include any inscriptions, so there is no need for a specific typeface.
In addition to the iconic combination of red and black, the white color is used for the eyes.