Susan Elizabeth "Suzy" Rice is a multi-talented individual who works as a screenwriter, an author, a painter, and a designer.
Rice is particularly known for creating the logo for the Star Wars movie franchise, in addition to designing numerous other film logos for promotional materials and some on-screen applications.
At the age of twenty-two, Suzy Rice began working as an art director at Seiniger Advertising, an advertising agency located in Los Angeles. In the latter part of 1976, the film distributor 20th Century Fox contacted the agency because they needed to promote a new space opera film, then in production, called Star Wars. Fox commissioned the creation of a brochure to be distributed to cinema owners, and Rice was tasked with its design.
Rice communicated with Lucasfilm Ltd. and during a visit to their visual effects company, Industrial Light & Magic in Van Nuys, she had a meeting with the director, George Lucas. Lucas instructed Rice to develop a logo that would instill a sense of intimidation in viewers, and he is said to have requested that the logo have a "very fascist" aesthetic. Rice, who had a strong interest in typography, was studying German font design at the time. Her response to the brief was a bold logotype using an outlined, modified Helvetica Black font. Following feedback from Lucas, Rice made the decision to connect the S and T in STAR and the R and S in WARS. In the version approved by Lucas, the letter W featured sharp, pointed ends. Lucas gave his approval for the brochure while taking breaks from second unit filming.
The logo designed by Rice was not the first one created; Dan Perri, a seasoned designer of Hollywood title sequences, had previously created a logotype consisting of block-capital letters filled with stars and angled towards a vanishing point. Perri's logo was originally intended to match the perspective of the film's now-iconic opening crawl, and although it did not appear on-screen, it saw widespread use in pre-release print advertisements and on cinema signs. Gary Kurtz, the producer of Star Wars, was very impressed with Rice's logo and chose it over Perri's for the film's opening titles, but not before modifying the letter W to flatten the pointed tips that Rice had originally designed. This finalized the design for one of the most recognizable logos in cinema history, although Rice's contribution went uncredited in the film.
In 1978, Rice designed a poster to promote a series of concerts featuring the Star Wars symphonic suite by John Williams. The poster incorporated Rice's logo and an illustration by John Alvin depicting C-3PO and R2-D2 carrying a one-man band kit of musical instruments. She also designed the logo for Black Falcon Ltd., a now defunct Lucasfilm licensing subsidiary.
- Visual Guide Chapter 2: A New Hope, Image 2 on StarWars.com (content obsolete and backup link not available)
- The Flight and Fall of Black Falcon on Hyperspace (content now obsolete; backup link)