Here's another reminder that "Robby Reed" is currently posting a history of the great letterer and designer of comic book title logos, Ira Schnapp. The handiwork of the late Mr. Schnapp is well known to a couple generations of comic book readers and his influence has bled into advertising design. Whenever anyone does an ad or a magazine graphic that's supposed to look like an old DC Comic, it's likely that they'll emulate the artwork of someone like Curt Swan or Russ Heath…but they'll almost certainly be mimicking Ira Schnapp.
One of the interesting things that happened to DC Comics in the late sixties and early seventies was that the covers got much, much better in terms of artwork and the design of the scenes in them. Carmine Infantino, who may have been the best "designer" of cover scenes that comics have ever had, became Cover Editor — a job he retained throughout his subsequent promotions to Publisher. Previously, DC's covers had been primarily supervised by editors who weren't artists and didn't draw. They could come up with an interesting situation but often, not an interesting, punchy visual. Infantino changed that, aided by the arrival of Neal Adams as DC's most prominent cover artist.
But at the same time, DC was losing the services of Ira Schnapp, who had done all the lettering on those covers for years. And though DC had other excellent letterers, especially Gaspar Saladino, the lettering and logos on those covers took a drastic downturn. They were trying to get away from Schnapp's "old-fashioned" look and that may have been a good idea…but there was no one comparable to invent a new graphic style. The logos of the seventies are pretty undistinguished and I can't think of one that had the enduring power of Schnapp's. In fact, some of the best ones since then have come about because someone took a Schnapp logo and fiddled with it instead of trying to bake from scratch. His lettering styles really became an essential part of some classic characters — the logo for The Flash, for example.
"Robby Reed" has dug up some wonderful info on Mr. Schnapp. Wish we knew more…but you can read what Robby has uncovered over at Dial B for Blog. Here's a direct link to Part One in the series.