Post by John on Feb 20, 2006 12:28:30 GMT -4
From David Davis at FoxSports.Com... A history of the Logo.
For years, players, fans and journalists have assumed that the figure depicted within the familiar NBA logo is Jerry West, the Los Angeles Lakers' Hall of Fame guard and the current president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies.
Search the Internet and you'll find sentences like this one, from Sports Illustrated staff writer L. Jon Wertheim in 2003: "(West is) well respected — no, lionized — in his field: one of the top 50 NBA players of all time, one so iconic that his silhouette adorns the NBA's logo."
The man who designed the NBA logo acknowledges that Jerry West is, indeed, Logoman. But the NBA is apparently reluctant to attach West's name to the silouette. (Photo illustration / FOXSports.com)
"It's Jerry West," Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told me recently. "I'm familiar with the original photograph from back in the '70s."
"My impression is that it's Jerry West dribbling to the hole," said David Kohler, president of Laguna Hills, Ca.-based Sports Card Plus Auctions and owner of perhaps the largest private collection of Lakers memorabilia. "I know it's always been assumed that it's Jerry West."
And yet, in a league with a well-deserved reputation for hyping even the most mundane milestone, the NBA did not celebrate the recent 35th anniversary of the logo's unveiling. The league has also refused to acknowledge publicly that West is the player in the logo. A high-ranking NBA official who asked that his name not be used told me that the identification of West is an "urban myth" and that the league has "no definitive records" about who designed the logo.
Why does the NBA refuse to admit that the logo is a representation of West? Is their "urban myth" statement PR bunk, or do they know something the rest of us don't?
The answer may lie within the mojo of the logo.
To many observers, the logo is a slam-dunk success. Designed by Alan Siegel and first unveiled in 1969, the image of a silhouetted player dribbling to the hole against a groovy red-and-blue background is ubiquitous: it appears on every uniform of every player, on every backboard in every NBA arena and on every piece of league-licensed merchandise, which generates a very groovy $3 billion in annual revenues.
To others, the logo is an anachronism. Today's players don't wear tight shorts; most don ultra-baggy uniforms and a great many of them have tattoos. In a league whose players are predominantly African-American and where so many of the players (despite race) relate to hip-hop music and/or its cultural significance, "Mr. Clutch" no longer seems to personify the on-court or off-court stylings of the NBA.
The logo, it appears, is stuck in the middle. Is it the ultimate badge of basketball excellence, as represented by a white player who was a perennial All-Star back in the day? Is it a timeless graphic-design icon that, after 35 years, can still serve as the public symbol for the league's global marketing campaigns, from Baja to Beirut to Beijing? Or is it as dated as the set shot?
As the NBA gathers in Houston for its annual All-Star Weekend extravaganza, the debate is getting fierce. New York Times columnist Selena Roberts recently wrote that the logo is "ancient" and that "(NBA commissioner David) Stern should update the logo."
Lakers head coach Phil Jackson disagrees with Roberts. "I like the logo we've got," Jackson explained. "It works fine. It's a flowing style that makes sense, whether it's Jerry West or not."
Logonomics 101
The premise behind any logo, of course, is that it represents a company's identity (in today's parlance, its "brand"). Through the 1950s, none of the "Big Three" professional sports leagues required a logo; sports were more about the games and less about the marketing of the games.
In the 1960s, the sports-business landscape began to change — and rapidly. Network television, and the millions of dollars generated by rights fees and advertising revenue, exerted a powerful force on team owners. The NFL supplanted baseball in popularity thanks to the marketing prowess of its young commissioner, Pete Rozelle, who created an in-house organization, NFL Properties, to license its merchandise — complete with a unique shield-like logo.
The NFL's patriotic-themed emblem signaled a unified, American league — and was very much a sign of the times. "Back then, in advertising circles, every product had to have an image — something with a picture — whether it was Betty Crocker or Tony the Tiger," recalled sports historian Bert Randolph Sugar, former director of marketing at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.
The national pastime came next, with Major League Baseball unveiling its red-white-and-blue-silhouetted logo in 1968, just in time for the following year's celebration of the 100th anniversary of professional baseball.
Now, it was basketball's turn. Since its inception in 1946 (as, initially, the Basketball Association of America), the NBA had lagged behind the Big Two, a league in search of an identity. But in the 1960s, as integration opened up the doors of collegiate and professional sports, an influx of African-American talent, from Bill Russell to Wilt Chamberlain to Elgin Baylor to Oscar Robertson, energized the NBA.
Competition from the upstart ABA (in existence from 1967-1976) pushed the NBA; by the end of the 1960s and into the early '70s, with the title runs of the Knicks in New York's newly-opened Madison Square Garden, the three-martini lunch crowd along Madison Avenue's advertising row started to take notice.
With pro hoops poised to be the next big thing, Burbank, Ca.-based Licensing Corp. of America sold the NBA on the value of creating a recognizable trademark. The goal, remembers former Licensing Corp. president Joe Grant, was "to create an umbrella logo that tied together the merchandizing rights" for all of the NBA's teams.
Licensing Corp. hired Siegel, a New York City-based graphic designer who had previously directed the creation of the logo for Major League Baseball. Siegel has since become a well-known "branding and corporate identity" expert; his company, Siegel & Gale created the trademarks for, among many companies, MasterCard and 3M.
Siegel filled in the details in a recent telephone interview. Yes, he personally designed the NBA logo, for a fee of about $10,000, with help from a college buddy — renown sportswriter Dick Schaap.
"I found the original photograph in the archives of Sport Magazine (where Schaap later worked as editor in chief)," Siegel said. "It was an action shot of Jerry West dribbling down the court from one of the Lakers' games. I sketched it, cleaned it up a bit and stylized it. I streamlined the tracing I made — (and) slimmed it down a little bit — so it would work in all applications."
As for the color scheme, Siegel said, "We used red and blue against the white silhouette to create visual harmony with Major League Baseball's logo. I think I gave Licensing Corp. seven ideas, and (then-NBA commissioner) Walter Kennedy gravitated toward the direction that had the same look as Major League Baseball. I think he wanted to create the feeling that the NBA was part of the great American dream in sports — that the NBA was on the same footing as the national pastime."
Siegel credits illustrator Jerry Dior, who designed the Major League Baseball logo when the two men worked together at the Sandgren & Murtha agency, with creating the red-white-and-blue silhouetted motif. Today, Dior's design resonates beyond the NBA; the logos of the PGA Tour, U.S. Figure Skating and the National Lacrosse League, among others, emulate the design of the MLB logo.
The model player
Siegel said that he had no ulterior motive for selecting the photograph of West and that his main consideration was the image's aesthetics. Jerry West, however, was no ordinary player. The son of an electrician who labored for a West Virginia coal company, West joined the Lakers in 1960 after helping the U.S. win an Olympic gold medal at the Rome Olympics. With sidekick Baylor, West practically invented pro basketball on the West Coast. His all-around play earned him annual trips to the All-Star game (including MVP honors in 1972 on his home court, The Forum in Inglewood).
"He's one of the greatest players that's ever stepped on the court," said Abdul-Jabbar, who played against West when he entered the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks. "Clutch shooter, great heart, played the game at both ends of the floor."
Many consider West's competitiveness to be his greatest attribute. During the 1960s and early 1970s, the Lakers reached the NBA Finals an astounding seven times, and lost every time. West never gave up on winning a championship until, finally, the Lakers prevailed over the Knicks in 1972.
After his retirement, West served three seasons as the Lakers' coach before transitioning to the front office, eventually running the Lakers' basketball operations from 1982 to 2000, and winning praise for building four championship teams. He was hired to guide the Memphis Grizzlies' basketball fortunes in 2002.
"He's a class act," Sports Card's Kohler said. "For the NBA, he is a symbol of excellence."
His identity as the figure in the logo is perhaps the worst-kept secret in sports. In 2000, the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan wrote: "It is not exactly privileged information that the silhouette of a player comprising the official NBA logo is that of Jerry West, a man who resides in the inner sanctum where only the truly great players in NBA history can claim a spot."
On the Basketball Hall of Fame web site, the biography of West includes this sentence: "His image is silhouetted in the NBA logo."
For years, players, fans and journalists have assumed that the figure depicted within the familiar NBA logo is Jerry West, the Los Angeles Lakers' Hall of Fame guard and the current president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies.
Search the Internet and you'll find sentences like this one, from Sports Illustrated staff writer L. Jon Wertheim in 2003: "(West is) well respected — no, lionized — in his field: one of the top 50 NBA players of all time, one so iconic that his silhouette adorns the NBA's logo."
The man who designed the NBA logo acknowledges that Jerry West is, indeed, Logoman. But the NBA is apparently reluctant to attach West's name to the silouette. (Photo illustration / FOXSports.com)
"It's Jerry West," Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told me recently. "I'm familiar with the original photograph from back in the '70s."
"My impression is that it's Jerry West dribbling to the hole," said David Kohler, president of Laguna Hills, Ca.-based Sports Card Plus Auctions and owner of perhaps the largest private collection of Lakers memorabilia. "I know it's always been assumed that it's Jerry West."
And yet, in a league with a well-deserved reputation for hyping even the most mundane milestone, the NBA did not celebrate the recent 35th anniversary of the logo's unveiling. The league has also refused to acknowledge publicly that West is the player in the logo. A high-ranking NBA official who asked that his name not be used told me that the identification of West is an "urban myth" and that the league has "no definitive records" about who designed the logo.
Why does the NBA refuse to admit that the logo is a representation of West? Is their "urban myth" statement PR bunk, or do they know something the rest of us don't?
The answer may lie within the mojo of the logo.
To many observers, the logo is a slam-dunk success. Designed by Alan Siegel and first unveiled in 1969, the image of a silhouetted player dribbling to the hole against a groovy red-and-blue background is ubiquitous: it appears on every uniform of every player, on every backboard in every NBA arena and on every piece of league-licensed merchandise, which generates a very groovy $3 billion in annual revenues.
To others, the logo is an anachronism. Today's players don't wear tight shorts; most don ultra-baggy uniforms and a great many of them have tattoos. In a league whose players are predominantly African-American and where so many of the players (despite race) relate to hip-hop music and/or its cultural significance, "Mr. Clutch" no longer seems to personify the on-court or off-court stylings of the NBA.
The logo, it appears, is stuck in the middle. Is it the ultimate badge of basketball excellence, as represented by a white player who was a perennial All-Star back in the day? Is it a timeless graphic-design icon that, after 35 years, can still serve as the public symbol for the league's global marketing campaigns, from Baja to Beirut to Beijing? Or is it as dated as the set shot?
As the NBA gathers in Houston for its annual All-Star Weekend extravaganza, the debate is getting fierce. New York Times columnist Selena Roberts recently wrote that the logo is "ancient" and that "(NBA commissioner David) Stern should update the logo."
Lakers head coach Phil Jackson disagrees with Roberts. "I like the logo we've got," Jackson explained. "It works fine. It's a flowing style that makes sense, whether it's Jerry West or not."
Logonomics 101
The premise behind any logo, of course, is that it represents a company's identity (in today's parlance, its "brand"). Through the 1950s, none of the "Big Three" professional sports leagues required a logo; sports were more about the games and less about the marketing of the games.
In the 1960s, the sports-business landscape began to change — and rapidly. Network television, and the millions of dollars generated by rights fees and advertising revenue, exerted a powerful force on team owners. The NFL supplanted baseball in popularity thanks to the marketing prowess of its young commissioner, Pete Rozelle, who created an in-house organization, NFL Properties, to license its merchandise — complete with a unique shield-like logo.
The NFL's patriotic-themed emblem signaled a unified, American league — and was very much a sign of the times. "Back then, in advertising circles, every product had to have an image — something with a picture — whether it was Betty Crocker or Tony the Tiger," recalled sports historian Bert Randolph Sugar, former director of marketing at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency.
The national pastime came next, with Major League Baseball unveiling its red-white-and-blue-silhouetted logo in 1968, just in time for the following year's celebration of the 100th anniversary of professional baseball.
Now, it was basketball's turn. Since its inception in 1946 (as, initially, the Basketball Association of America), the NBA had lagged behind the Big Two, a league in search of an identity. But in the 1960s, as integration opened up the doors of collegiate and professional sports, an influx of African-American talent, from Bill Russell to Wilt Chamberlain to Elgin Baylor to Oscar Robertson, energized the NBA.
Competition from the upstart ABA (in existence from 1967-1976) pushed the NBA; by the end of the 1960s and into the early '70s, with the title runs of the Knicks in New York's newly-opened Madison Square Garden, the three-martini lunch crowd along Madison Avenue's advertising row started to take notice.
With pro hoops poised to be the next big thing, Burbank, Ca.-based Licensing Corp. of America sold the NBA on the value of creating a recognizable trademark. The goal, remembers former Licensing Corp. president Joe Grant, was "to create an umbrella logo that tied together the merchandizing rights" for all of the NBA's teams.
Licensing Corp. hired Siegel, a New York City-based graphic designer who had previously directed the creation of the logo for Major League Baseball. Siegel has since become a well-known "branding and corporate identity" expert; his company, Siegel & Gale created the trademarks for, among many companies, MasterCard and 3M.
Siegel filled in the details in a recent telephone interview. Yes, he personally designed the NBA logo, for a fee of about $10,000, with help from a college buddy — renown sportswriter Dick Schaap.
"I found the original photograph in the archives of Sport Magazine (where Schaap later worked as editor in chief)," Siegel said. "It was an action shot of Jerry West dribbling down the court from one of the Lakers' games. I sketched it, cleaned it up a bit and stylized it. I streamlined the tracing I made — (and) slimmed it down a little bit — so it would work in all applications."
As for the color scheme, Siegel said, "We used red and blue against the white silhouette to create visual harmony with Major League Baseball's logo. I think I gave Licensing Corp. seven ideas, and (then-NBA commissioner) Walter Kennedy gravitated toward the direction that had the same look as Major League Baseball. I think he wanted to create the feeling that the NBA was part of the great American dream in sports — that the NBA was on the same footing as the national pastime."
Siegel credits illustrator Jerry Dior, who designed the Major League Baseball logo when the two men worked together at the Sandgren & Murtha agency, with creating the red-white-and-blue silhouetted motif. Today, Dior's design resonates beyond the NBA; the logos of the PGA Tour, U.S. Figure Skating and the National Lacrosse League, among others, emulate the design of the MLB logo.
The model player
Siegel said that he had no ulterior motive for selecting the photograph of West and that his main consideration was the image's aesthetics. Jerry West, however, was no ordinary player. The son of an electrician who labored for a West Virginia coal company, West joined the Lakers in 1960 after helping the U.S. win an Olympic gold medal at the Rome Olympics. With sidekick Baylor, West practically invented pro basketball on the West Coast. His all-around play earned him annual trips to the All-Star game (including MVP honors in 1972 on his home court, The Forum in Inglewood).
"He's one of the greatest players that's ever stepped on the court," said Abdul-Jabbar, who played against West when he entered the NBA with the Milwaukee Bucks. "Clutch shooter, great heart, played the game at both ends of the floor."
Many consider West's competitiveness to be his greatest attribute. During the 1960s and early 1970s, the Lakers reached the NBA Finals an astounding seven times, and lost every time. West never gave up on winning a championship until, finally, the Lakers prevailed over the Knicks in 1972.
After his retirement, West served three seasons as the Lakers' coach before transitioning to the front office, eventually running the Lakers' basketball operations from 1982 to 2000, and winning praise for building four championship teams. He was hired to guide the Memphis Grizzlies' basketball fortunes in 2002.
"He's a class act," Sports Card's Kohler said. "For the NBA, he is a symbol of excellence."
His identity as the figure in the logo is perhaps the worst-kept secret in sports. In 2000, the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan wrote: "It is not exactly privileged information that the silhouette of a player comprising the official NBA logo is that of Jerry West, a man who resides in the inner sanctum where only the truly great players in NBA history can claim a spot."
On the Basketball Hall of Fame web site, the biography of West includes this sentence: "His image is silhouetted in the NBA logo."