Because Designers Can Not Leave Well Enough Alone…

Sporting events always give designers a chance to screw around a little. An event design is only used once so its ok to make it blingy and dated. There are also tons of them every year so you don’t have to treat it like such a precious specimen. Lastly, sports design is typically pretty ugly. So if you happen to make a dog no one will really notice.

…well, almost no one. The New York Times—in all it’s New-York-ness—decided to do a little design navel-​gazing. They asked design heavy­weights to wax poetic for a bit about the Super­bowl icons and what they have meant as a reflec­tion of Amer­i­can con­sumerist por­trait over… (I’m boring myself )

Anyway, halfway though the arti­cle I fig­ured the Times had missed the point, but then I saw their Pièce de résistance: a design con­test! Sure you can ask hot shots what they think and listen to them sip wine from the side­line. But its better just to let them duke it out in a public arena. Lets see how they did:

We lead things off with a fine effort by gruge-​a-​licious Seat­tle design­ers at Modern Dog. This is a tough and graphic take on the tra­di­tional Super­bowl style:

Armin Vit, who I love, obvi­ously forgot The Super­bowl is a cham­pi­onship game for MENS foot­ball:

I’ve seen Felix Sock­well speak and though he was pretty wild, but this logo proves when its all theory and no prac­ti­cal­ity, he can go bat-​ass crazy:

If some­one asked my who should do the Super­bowl logo, I’d have told them Draplin. Good old fash­ion mid-​western design for the common man. Yes, it looks like an Atari game, but is that such a bad thing:

OK, so Julia Hoff­man decided the Super­bowl was all about food and decided to be cute. I’m sure Julia is a lovely designer. But I’m also pretty sure she’s never watched a Super­bowl and lives on tofu:

There can only be one winner… and its Pen­ta­gram by a mile. The red and blue hel­mets rep­re­sent the two con­fer­ences com­pet­ing for the Lom­bardi Trophy which is depicted in the neg­a­tive space. It makes since, its beau­ti­ful, its cool, and its tough:

I’ve got to admit, as much as I love the Pen­ta­gram con­cept, I still prefer the cur­rent logo. I know its a little “Bank of Amerrica” (and who wants to look like them right now), but it’s a nice bal­anced logo. Not too over the top, but still blingy enough to be painted on the side of a Hummer. A per­fect state­ment for the modern NFL.