The NFL hit a home run in the year of the 50th Super Bowl with the simple but effective decision to transform the shield to all gold. For the league’s 100th season, the official logo is a swing and a miss.
The league unveiled the logo for the 2019 season on Thursday night. It looks like a quick and easy twist on the “Play Football” logo, with not nearly enough creativity or knowledge imagination to justify whatever someone was paid to design it.
It would be interesting to see the other options, and it would be interesting to know whether there was much of an internal debate on the final choice. The best logos are the ones that instantly resonate, that seem natural and obvious. But that also have a hint of fresh and new. This logo doesn’t resonate, it seems more sanitized than natural, and there’s nothing about it that it is any way obvious, fresh, or new.
In 1994, the NFL created a diamond-shaped logo with a 75 inside, which became a fixture on every team’s jersey. The 100th-season logo presumably will be plastered on the jerseys as well, and that may not be a good thing.