Key Metallica

The jagged M and the flared A have been on denim, ticket stubs and speaker stacks since the early eighties, and this keyring reduces the whole band to that single piece of lettering. It is a fan badge before it is a functional object — the sort of thing that ends up on a car key or a gig-bag zip because the owner wants the logo visible without wearing the shirt. Thrash typography lends itself to this treatment: heavy strokes, sharp terminals, no delicate flourishes to get lost. The wordmark stays readable at keyring size and recognisable from across a room, which is the entire job a band logo has ever had. A single-file design, and an obvious one to run in multiples when several birthdays are coming up in the same crowd.