Sports. No need to explain the social importance of sports in any part of the world. We all know that people live and die by their favorite teams’ wins or losses. A night at the bar can start as a joyful experience and end as a terribly depressing night.
It is of big importance for teams to have a strong identity that fans can relate to. That includes not only the logo, but uniforms, stadium signage, colors and even the mascot. Lately a lot of teams have been redeveloping their logos mainly to attract new fans and increase the lacking revenue of today.
But is sports branding more than swooshes, shadowy lettering and stylized illustrations of every member of the animal kingdom?
Sports branding is a specialty offering within the Graphic Design field, and few firms offer these services. I was able to find only a couple. One is called SME Power Branding which apparently has done every major sports logo, but they don’t have a web site. Then there is this other small place, there are no big names in there but it’s a good representation of what sports logos should look like.
There also is an interesting article about the NBA’s branding strategies on the AIGA’s Gain Journal.
And as a bonus: old school logos (with a few new ones in between).
Do ALL the sports team logos created in the last 10 years look like they were created and or illustrated by the same person. I mean enough with the sharp, jagged edges. And the color selection... every new team in the majorleagues recently has some version of 'teal' and black. I can just here the presentation pitch, "It's energetic and the colors are hot."
To me, and again it's just me, I love the classics. San Francisco Giants, the Yankees, The Celtics, Penn State(just a blue stripe on the helmet), Notre Dame, Alabama with player numbers on the helmet.
I have often thought that the marketing executives for these sports leagues would take a look at the youth fashion industry(Abercrombie, Gap, Polo, FuBu, etc...) and see that all this simple, old school athletic look and translate that to a new team.
The rest of this comment is an interesting article about the origins of football helmet graphics.
Los Angeles Ram halfback Fred Gehrke, elusively roamed NFL gridirons for six years and left his mark for all to see whenever the Rams take the field.
In 1939 Gehrke was an art major and a grid speedster at the University of Utah. He joined the Rams in 1940 and the following off-season became associated with Northrop Aircraft in Los Angeles and became an integral part of that firm's design department throughout the war.
At the close of the 1947 season, Coach Bob Snyder asked Gehrke to designing a new Ram uniform.
Gehrke's imaginative helmet design, however, created a momentary monster. Unable to find a mass method of stenciling, Snyder delivered 70 leather helmets to him with instructions to hand paint them. Throughout the summer, Gehrke worked every available moment at night and on weekends on the project, and throughout the year, as solid blows chipped and cracked the paint, "Gehrke's helmet paint repair department" became a season- long and active part of the Ram scene.
Before the 1949 season, Coach Clark Shaughnessy introduced the Riddell plastic helmet and Gehrke envisioned the same job all over again. But the manufacturer agreed to include the design and the paint was baked on from the inside, showing through the transparent plastic. Since then, there have been changes in the design of the helmet itself, but the famous Ram horns remain a basic part of every "hat" received from the manufacturer ... the most distinctive helmet in football.
On Nov.11.2002 at 10:41 AM