SPORTS
DESIGN 10 Innovators Who Changed the Visual Culture of Sports
BILL BRIDGEFORTH
500 BC
Introduction
GREEK BLACK-FIGURE POTTERY
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Re-enter with me the dawn of time, where survival is the thing, the only thing. Survival is food, water, clothing and shelter. Survival is having children. Life expectancy is more common to end at 30 than 80. Still, there can be leisure time. Time for stories at night, time for recounting the hunt of the day, how many were teaming to make the kill, but how one beat all the others to it, and that one got the prize, the best cut of meat, like the competitiveness of playing a game. Then time allowed for skill developments to become events themselves – running for speed and distance, jumping for height, the ability to throw spears and other objects. The games had begun and with them came awards. As millennium passed the awards improved. By 500 BC olive oil was being processed as a multi-purposed liquid, and earthenware had progressed from basic storage urn to an art form. The award for victory at games was a large vessel of oil with purposeful depictions of gods, especially Athena, and symbolic animals. Later, the vessels depicted the athletic events themselves, adorned
with iconic black figures frozen in motion. As many as 1,450 pieces were created every four years – one for every event. I submit that here is the birth of graphic design in sports. The region’s finest artisans were commissioned by Greece to give graphic representation to a series of athletic contests. Many of these vessels survived and now reside in history museums across the globe, serving to enlighten and enrich our
understanding of sports history. From earthenware to ESPN, design has been crucial to communicating and marketing sport. Sport engages sight more than any of the five senses. This booklet simply attempts to trace the evolution of “sports design” through some of its most innovative characters. As a graphic designer and lifelong sports fan, this is a topic that fascinates me – I hope you enjoy it.
1 1877
Louis C. Tiffany
NEW YORK YANKEES LOGO
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Arguably, the most recognizable brand in professional sports is the interlocking NY and pinstripes of the New York Yankees. The mark was originally conceived by Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1877 to commemorate the first police officer shot in the line of duty in New York. The design was eventually adopted by the team. Tiffany was the son of Charles Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company. The younger Louis started out as a painter but later concentrated on hand-made stained-glass windows, and eventually became the art director for Tiffany and Company after his father’s death. Some of his glass work is available to view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Tiffany was a multi-dimensional and talented artist & crastman, producing quality work in architecture, painting, design, interior design, landscaping, and all of the decorative arts such as the aforementioned glasswork, masonry, metalwork, woodcarving and pottery. He held to a philosophy of design continuity, using artistic elements to express a single idea – this, no doubt, would have served him well in a 21st-century logo career. The longevity of the Yankees logo is no accident. It was forged by a truly wellrounded artist.
Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of the founder of Tiffany and Company, believed in design continuity: using artistic elements to express a single idea.
2 1890s
Jules Chéret
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French painter Jules Chéret established a successful formula for poster design that is used in sports advertising today: bright color, contrast, simplicity and dramatic type.
THE MODERN SPORTS POSTER
French painter Jules Chéret is considered the father of the poster advertisement. In the 1890s, Chéret perfected and popularized the lithographic printing process and made a successful living producing posters. The 1890s were a boom in bicycling, and some of Chéret’s most recognizable work were posters for Peugeot Bicycles, depicting stylized women cycling in an organic, colorful Art Nouveau style. The bicycling movement impacted the way women dressed, their fitness, and their role in society. Baseball also came to prominence in the 1890s, and later, bull-fighting and auto racing. Chéret was a pioneer who created some of the most beautiful and lasting commercial symbols of this era in sport. The lithographic technique was invented in the late 1700s, but it was Chéret’s innovative design sense that changed the medium and established the principles of effective modern poster design. His formula included large, striking typography, bright colors, and the use of contrast to draw the eye’s attention to one important figure. Although styles have changed, the philosophical principles have not. Bright color, contrast, simplicity and dramatic type have been keys to successful sports ad design since the 1890s.
3 1894
Pierre De Coubertin
THE OLYMPIC RINGS
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The Olympic rings weren’t conceived by a graphic designer, but by the man who founded the modern day Olympics. Pierre De Coubertin was a french historian who made it a lifelong ambition to improve the education of young people through organized sport. He organized an international conference on physical education in 1889 and helped form the International Olympic Committee in 1894. The emblem, according to Coubertin, “represents the five parts of the world which now are won over to Olympism and willing to accept healthy competition.” Rings were chosen because they represent continuity, and the idea was borrowed from the USFSA, a former French sporting federation that used two interlocking rings as its symbol. The logo is simple in form, memorable, and understated. Paul Rand, who designed company logos for IBM, UPS, ABC and others, once said, “Ultimately, the only mandate in the design of logos, it seems, is that they be distinctive, memorable, and clear.” The logo certainly has those traits, and because of its long history, it evokes an emotional response.
Pierre De Coubertin founded the modern-day Olympics and created the most recognizable logo in the world. The idea for the logo was borrowed from a French sporting federation and represents the five continents.
4 1936
Leni Riefenstahl
OLYMPIA
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The 1930s film Olympia is often cited as the main influence on modern sports photography. In 1932, the International Olympic Committee directed all host countries to document the Olympic Games on film. Hitler chose film director Leni Riefenstahl, who created Nazi propaganda pieces, to lead the German effort in 1936. Despite the controversial nature of her life and work, Riefenstahl created a film that would forever impact modern sports media. No expense was spared to produce Olympia. Riefenstahl employed 45 cameramen and had a total staff of more than 300. At Olympic stadium in Berlin, workers assembled steel towers, dug ditches, and constructed camera tracks for motion shots. Zeppelins were ordered for aerial shots. When the games were over, Riefenstahl had 250 hours of footage to sift through, and the editing process took almost two years. For the 1930s, this was unprecedented. Leni Riefenstahl, With every tool at her disposal, Riefenstahl decided Nazi propagandist and groundbreaking to focus on the aesthetic beauty of sport and the human film director. body with dramatic angles, slow motion, and montage
– techniques that were groundbreaking at the time. “I set about seeking a thread, a theme, a style, in the realm of legend,” Riefenstahl said. “Something that might allow me to give free rein to my juvenile sense of romanticism and the beautiful image.”
5 1954
Sports Illustrated
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SPORTS PUBLISHING
Sports Illustrated, which first published in 1954, was innovative in a number of obvious ways. It was the first viable sports magazine, so everything it did was a first. As early as the 1960s the magazine’s photographers placed cameras inside hockey goals and above the basketball rim. Readers could visualize what it was like to stand in goal or dunk a basketball, a technique that was in turn applied to television and video games. Two of the innovative photographers who popularized these techniques were Neil Leifer and Walter Iooss. Bringing the excitement of ingame sports action to the viewer is a challenge all sports designers relish. Line, texture and perspective are a few design tools we can borrow from these innovative photographers.
Sports Illustrated featured the first photographs from inside hockey goals and above basketball rims, putting readers in the middle of the action.
6 1980
Dan Wieden
NIKE - “JUST DO IT” AD CAMPAIGN
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Dan Wieden, who coined the phrase “Just Do It” for Nike, has built one of the most successful and innovate independent ad agencies in history. Wieden launched his agency in 1980 with one partner (David Kennedy) and one client (Nike). Legend is that Nike founder Phil Knight, upon first meeting Wieden and Kennedy, told them, “I hate advertising.” A healthy distaste for the status quo spurred Wieden & Kennedy to develop innovate branding strategies that mark Nike to this day. They include: • irreverent humor (Bo Knows) • cinematic storytelling (King James) • hip culture (Just Do It) The running and fitness boom of the 1980s spurred tremendous growth in the shoe and sports equipment business, and Nike’s successful “Just Do It” campaign resonated and became the essence of cool. Wieden’s philosophy has never been a concern with advertising, but with communication, “honest, startling, refreshing communication with someone we’re talking to in whatever medium,” he told Advertising Age in 1990. “This is not about one brand or style. It’s about a basic respect you have for the people you’re talking to.”
Wieden-Kennedy insists that honest communication and respect are keys to a successful ad campaign.
7 1992
HOK Sport
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CAMDEN YARDS
HOK Sport of Kansas City designed Camden Yards, the ballpark for the Baltimore Orioles, which opened in 1992. Prior to Camden Yards, the design trend of stadiums was bland, utilitarian and symmetrical, often referred to as the “concrete donut.” Camden Yards changed everything. For what now seems a meager sum of $110 million, a ballpark was designed and built in a retro yet innovative style that blended into its downtown location. The Baltimore skyline is visible from inside the stadium, a feature that has been implemented in almost every new ballpark. In fact, half of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams have constructed new ballparks since Camden Yards opened, and every single one has followed the old-school, retro-style philosophy. Brick veneers, stone engravings, grand archways, muted colors and an open-
air, downtown setting have appealed to fans by eliciting two passions: a felt connection to the history of the game and a connection with the city & community that fans are a part of. “Retro” style design has become a bit cliché in the baseball world but still seems to connect with fans. Half of Major League Baseball’s 30 teams have constructed new ballparks since Camden Yards opened – every one has followed suit with a retro style.
8 1998
F. Darrin Perry
ESPN: THE MAGAZINE
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No sports publication has ever been quite as innovative as ESPN: The Magazine. ESPN: The Magazine launched in 1998, eliciting a passionate response from sports fans. Either you loved it or hated it. F. Darrin Perry, the original design director, is credited with many of the innovations that made ESPN: The Magazine unique. The publication’s largerthan-life format was communicated physically (oversize page dimensions), photographically (ominous, full-bleed, rock-star-like images) and typographically (massive headlines that bled, blurred, and overlapped). Critics pointed to illegibility, weirdness and over-experimentation as their main problems with the magazine, similar to complaints about legendary designer David Carson during the same decade. Carson’s influence on the title was obvious, with it’s kinetic, emotional and often disrupting tone. Carson would often respond to cries of illegibility with the statement, “You cannot not communicate.” Even chaos says something. As seemingly chaotic as the design of ESPN: The Magazine could be, all the elements worked together to communicate a central theme: the biggest, most fearless sports media voice there is. No one thinks of ESPN otherwise, so the branding concept absolutely worked.
ESPN: The Magazine communicated a “larger-than-life” theme through its page size, cinematic photography, and massive typography.
9 2003
Robert Festino
RUNNER’S WORLD / ESPN
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Robert Festino picked up where F. Darrin Perry left off at ESPN after instituting a dramatic and successful redesign at Runner’s World. The new look increased circulation 8.3 percent and AdWeek Magazine named Runner’s World Creative Team of the Year. The old magazine, while it had a niché following and good content, looked generic and drab. For the new magazine, Festino hired cinematic photographers from the entertainment industry, redesigned the logo, and created an architecture that varied the book with full-bleed photo spreads, illustrated maps of great running cities, and diagrams of stretches and exercises. The content came alive. Festino’s inspiration came from running shoes themselves. “I was fascinated by the graphic vocabulary of running shoes,” Festino said. “Shoe designs were electrifying in color and pattern. I was blown away by this. I just collected the shoes around the office and studied them. I picked up details that were inherent in garment manufacturing and translated them into graphic design.” Festino said his approach to successful design is to “pay attention and observe.” He studied the culture and trends
Arguably the most talented magazine designer of the 2000s, Robert Festino left his mark at Runner’s World, ESPN: The Magazine and Entertainment Weekly – setting standards for good design and inspiring plenty of imitation.
that were embraced by the running community, allowing him to consciously and subconsciously connect with his readers through design.
10 2004
Troika Design Group
ESPN SPORTSCENTER
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One of the most familiar sights in sports is the metallic, cylindrical turbine that spins with the open of every ESPN Sportscenter. The theme was developed in 2004 by Hollywood-based Troika Design Group. Creative Director/Designer Gil Haslam explained the idea: “The turbine’s revolution symbolizes 360-degree sports coverage and the exciting range of action seen on the show.” The concept left a decided mark on ESPN and has served as the underpinning for the tone of the rest of the network. What’s hard to believe is that the graphic went virtually unchanged until 2009, when Troika developed an evolutionary graphics package to update the Sportscenter look. It’s hard to pinpoint the reason for the turbine’s longevity, but it had an amazing amount of detail for a television graphic from 2004 and was one of the first packages to be conceived in high-definition. The use of bright, metallic, engine-like colors and objects is a motif that is often used to communicate the strength and vitality of sport, and it was popularized by Troika.
Troika Design Group has developed the most dramatic and powerful television graphics in the sports world. Their work is seen on ESPN, NBC Sports, The NFL Network, Fox Sports, The Golf Channel and more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bill Bridgeforth
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Bill Bridgeforth is a Dallas-based graphic designer who has worked in the sports industry for more than 12 years. Bill grew up in St. Louis and graduated from the nation’s top journalism school, The University of Missouri. He moved to Dallas to become the art director for Beckett Baseball and eventually started his own business, serving clients like USA Baseball, Conference USA, Duke University and others. When he’s not working, Bill is usually running, cycling, making granola, and enjoying time with his wife and three kids.
www.bridgeforthdesign.com CONTACT: bridgeforth@gmail.com
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