Millar Gough Ink

Contents

1st Logo (October 12, 1999-November 10, 2011)	2nd Logo (November 15, 2015-)

Background

Millar Gough Ink is a production company founded in 1997 by Miles Millar and Alfred Gough best known for co-producing television series such as Smallville.

1st Logo (October 12, 1999-November 10, 2011)

Logo: In an office, at the forefront, we see a bottle filled with scarlet ink in it labeled the stacked words reading with the company name in an Impact font colored in a gold-white gradient. After one of the music variants are heard, a hammer (which, if you look very, very closely, you can see a hammer falling down, as seen in the reflection on the bottle) swings down and breaks the bottle, causing the ink in it to spread everywhere, covering up the whole screen.

Variant: There exists an full screen version of the logo. This can be seen on 2003 DVD releases and Channel 4 and The WB and E4 airings of season 1 and 4:3 prints of all episodes of Smallville and the short-lived series The Strip.

FX/SFX: All entirely live-action.

Music/Sounds:

October 12, 1999-July 7, 2000: The closing theme of the short-lived series, along with the splattering sound.
October 16, 2001-February 12, 2002: Just the sound of a bottle breaking.
2001, February 26,-May 21, 2002: An odd, 3-note Korg M1 internal patch "Piano8" tune, accompanied by an eerie noise.
September 24, 2002-November 10, 2011: An 13-note Roland D-50 internal patch "Cathedral Organ" tune, followed by a last note.

Music/Sounds Variants:

There is a silent variant of the logo where the bottle breaking sound is absent. This can be seen on episodes "X-Ray" and "Hug" of season 1 of Smallville.
On early episodes of the 2nd season of Smallville, the pleasant ditty is somewhat slightly quieter.
Original airings use a generic theme and a voice over.
On the Smallville season 5 episode "Arrival", the bottle breaking sound is in sync with the last note of the music.

Availability: Common. It is first seen on the short-lived series The Strip. Also later seen on Smallville, the 2006 television pilot of Aquaman and the 2011 remake of Charlie's Angels on ABC, Sony Crackle and the CTV Throwback in Canada.

Legacy: While the sound of the bottle breaking can be startling for some people (especially the variant without music where it breaks with no warning, which could be jarring to many people), mostly, the piano tune is creepy, and however, it is slightly less scary in the music variant, some people may find this logo funny, and it may be favored for fans of Smallville.

2nd Logo (November 15, 2015-)

Logo: On a black background, we see the stacked dark red words "MILLAR GOUGH" in a Helvetica Neue font. To the right of it is a dark red beaker with a black waterdrop and the dark red word "INK" inside.

FX/SFX: None.

Music/Sounds: None, or the ending theme of the show.

Availability: Currently seen on the 2015 AMC series Into the Badlands and the 2016 MTV series The Shannara Chronicles. This logo is expected to appear on the upcoming Netflix series Wednesday.