Throughout the years, the national football league (NFL) has gone from hand made designs to creating a brand for modernistic corporations. American football is one of the best examples for how design has transformed from a generic passing time to one of the most popular forms of entertainment, whether you a player or a fan.
Identity systems have been created within sports teams such as the . A team that has called numerous cities their home. Starting off with a vintage and simplistic logo, an “art-graduate-turned-professional-football-player”, Fred Gehrke began with creating the infamous Ram helmets. He was bored with the unfamiliar helmet that didn’t bring any source of excitement to the team. He designed a brilliant design on the helmet; the Rams horn. By putting this one element on the players helmets, he created a helmet their brand identity entirely.
A quote that stood out to me in this article spoke about the charm old designs had on sports teams back then.
The timelessness, honesty and soul the sport had back then is mostly due to the fact the entire industry was produced by hand.
Post-war came around and the production of uniforms and helmets went from wood to plastic. It was shortly after that most teams brand identity became more prominent due to the easy access of production. At this time, you saw an increase in clear, bold designs because it felt new and more connected to society. It was not so separated from other forms of entertainment.
When you look at teams logos today, you notice a sense of old school design.
The Golden Era of Graphic design included some of these classic logos, including the , Chicago Cubs, and Chicago Bulls. In today’s sports branding, we see a step back from modernist approaches and back to the old school ways of design.