The Best and Worst Sports logos: Why the good ones are good and why the bad ones are not
Logos are very interesting things; they are a visual representation of what you want your business, team or even yourself to stand for. In this regard the logo of a sports team has to tell its fans, other teams and the world what
it stands for and what it represents. All good logos have several elements which will be discussed later, but they should encapsulate the overall brand image of a company or sports team. The best logos are simple and clever and use the colour scheme and the
name of the team to good effect. Over the years, many great sports logos have been seen as well as some horrendous ones.
The history of logos is very interesting. The word logo comes from Greek and it literally means ‘word’. The earliest versions of logos are stated by historians to be cave drawings and ancient pictures because they represented words
that ancient civilisations used to communicate with. The earliest modern day logo seems to be a picture of the Rock of Gibraltar which was used by Prudential Insurance as early as 1896. Then in 1910, came the picture of a dog sitting beside a gramophone that
was the famous logo for the Victor Talking Machine Company. When the company was bought by RCA in 1920, they kept the logo and it is still around to this day.
Sports logos started to appear around the beginning of the 20th
century to try and give an image to a sports team to help people remember it better. They were mainly for sales and advertising purposes. It is interesting because before they were around, people did remember their favourite sports teams; they did not
need a special image that conveyed it to them. It seems that with the massive commercialisation of sports and the huge amounts of money that started to pour into the industry, people needed a way for their consumers, in this case fans, to remember the teams
and buy their merchandise.
There are several elements to a good logo design that a lot of sports teams adhere to and others do not, but maybe should. The first is the fact that a logo should be timeless: it should work just as well in 2010 as in 2050 and
should have worked in 1950 as well. All good logos are also simple, they should be able to convey a message or a word or an emotion in one single image. Logos should also be unique and consistent. They should stand out and the same logo should be used in all
communication. They should also be appealing, make a lasting impression, show the proper image of a team and finally be comprehensible and logical. For example, if the Bengal Tigers team had a picture of a dog as their logo; it would be unique and simple but
very confusing to the fans.
Some of the best sports logos are those that feature the name of the team in an eye-catching and unique way. The New Jersey Devils logo is a simple circle with the letters N and the J made to look like the devil. The tail extends
from the N and the horns are above the J. It is very simple and resonates with fans. An old logo of the baseball team, the Milwaukee Brewers was great; it was the M and the B of the team’s name made to look like a baseball glove and the round part of the B
became a baseball. On the other hand, the Dallas Mavericks have a pretty bad logo which has circles, triangles and a star all merged together with a horse and a basketball in the middle. There is simply too much going on in the logo and it could confuse fans
and the team as well.
The problem with looking at logos is that how good or how bad they are is simply up to the interpretation of the person judging them. Sports teams spend a lot of money on logos and they hire some very capable people to make them
for the team. It is all about a person’s own choice and personal bias at the end of the day that makes a logo good or bad. If it is a horrible logo according to the elements of proper design, but the team likes it, the investors like it, the fans like it and
the team can use it to sell a lot of merchandise, who are we to say it is bad?
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