An Examination of Sports Logos and Their Impact on Fan Bases and Society

This thesis will take a look into the perspective of graphic designers and the important factors that they feel make a good sports logo. The relationship between sporting logos, their respective fan bases and human society will also be addressed. On the surface, logos may seem like an unimportant aspect of sports and of a team. They have always been a part of the sporting world and can often be an afterthought. Interviews with two graphic designers were conducted for this paper, one who has worked in the sports logos industry for over 25 years creating the identities for close to 100 different teams and the other being the Director of Clubhouse Creative, the design team within the Arizona Diamondbacks organization. Through those two interviews, I have discovered that there is much more to logos than sitting in front of a computer trying to be artistic. Each logo has a story and reason for being designed the way that it is, and I hope to convey that to the reader. In addition to the interviews, I have presented various examples of controversy in sports logos. My research of these controversies will display a wide range of examples from issues involving racism in logos to fan base disapproval. The information presented in this thesis is designed to show the reader why sports logos are important and why they shouldn’t be an afterthought.