Origin of our love for logos

[mattb6]

i was about 8 and started drawing logos for a team called the Michigan Cyclones (Yah, not sure why cyclones are in Michigan....) and i would keep tweaking and tweaking. In the 5th grade i had a science notebook that was 50% science and 50% logos from real and imaginary teams. I always loved drawing logos and still do. (By the way, found this site in about 2007 looking for the history of the Indians logo for a friend and i started to get hooked in about 2009)

[CS85]

I think the earliest origins for me would be the wwf logo, and always drawing it (drawing the neon version was always fun) I remember in grade school drawing the wrestlemania x logo cause I thought (and still think) it was so cool looking.

Sports logos I always marveled at too I remember mellon psfs banks having phillies hologram stickers, some would be of the older 80s city hall logo, also seeing all the mlb teams logos on the outfield wall was cool too and made me interested.

Holy Crap!!! I drew the WMX logo too. My aunt and uncle always recorded WrestleMania for me. When I saw that logo I thought it was so awesome, that I drew it on paper and slapped it on the generic VHS cover that came with it. I did the same on the stickers that you would adhere to the cassette itself. I'll have to find that, snap a pic and post it here, and add to my story of why I grew to love logos and design.

This one?

Ironically I got into wrestling the Monday Night Raw after Royal Rumble '94.

[TorinK29]

When I was really young, I was seriously into airplanes (heck, I still am) I would grab a piece of paper and pencil and draw a plane and create my own liveries. I would do it often and try to be as creative as I could.

That soon carried into sports and I've been into logos and jerseys ever since. I just recently began to sketch real and concept logos, and I'm not particularly bad at it.

[DaytonBlue]

Two things I can remember:

-I've always enjoyed creating imaginary leagues. I have a whole spreadsheet of reel-line-mints. I think that naturally progressed to logos.

-I remember arriving at college at the University of Dayton. I was quite dissapointed when I found out that this was the only logo they had outside of the mascot which is only used for kids stuff...

[BlueSky]

Two things for me too. First, riding one of these home from Okinawa at age 5 got me interested in airline liveries:

Then a couple of years later they had these small iron-on MLB logos that came in bubble gum or something. I collected most of them.

But that's more of what I did with my interest. Where it comes from I have no idea.

[monkeypower]

I don't know where my fascination with logos came from, maybe it was from a comforter I had as child (the big quilt/duvet like thing you put over your bedsheets to sleep under for those who don't know) which had all 26 (at the time) teams goalie masks with the wordmarks underneath.

This one.

My parents have told me I could name all the NHL teams when I was two. No biggie. Even as a kid I would get excited over teams changing logos and jerseys.

As for designing, my first was a Halloween themed football team in Grade 4, it may or may not have been for an art project, can't remember. After that I started to design Riverdale Bulldogs hockey, baseball, and football jerseys and logos from the Archie Comics in a notebook I hid in my room.

[rainmaker17]

Gumball helmets at IHOP were a huge deal too. I used to piss my parents off for quarters, so I could complete my set.

[Mr. Aware Eagle]

My parents have had Auburn football season tickets my whole life, so the interlocking AU logo was the first thing I ever recognized as a sports logo. I remember, at about age 4, pointing at the AU on the field and asking my mom, "What letter is that?" She told me, "That's an AU. It stands for Auburn."

After that I realized that every team had their own logo. During every game I would flip through the program and literally take note (I used a small memo pad) of every visiting team's logo, colors, and nickname.

Eventually, I started paying attention to the games, but my interest in sports aesthetics never diminished.

EDIT

Another early memory of my sports logos interest-- When I was in third grade, I collected those NFL team pencils. Did anyone else have those?

[Derek]

I have always drawn and colored as far back as I remember, but the one moment that made me realize I wanted to be a designer when I "grew up" was after a trip to the grocery store and putting stickers in my Panini baseball sticker book. I got the classic Brewers logo sticker, and realized the mitt was made out of an m and b. I was hooked after that.

[El Scorcho]

My love for logos and uniforms came from sports games. I grew up playing the late 90s FIFA games where you could customise your team and players, and in every sports game I played I wanted to make teams of myself and my friends. This led to a lot of time mucking around with uniform designs in various sports games, which led me to the graphic design forum on BigFooty, which led me here.

[AlexWilson]

I was a jersey obsessed little kid. My uncle used to get me a new jersey almost every time I went to a game with him. I would look at the uniforms and get which ones I liked the most. My taste has changed quite a bit over the years, as I own the 2000-07 Sens alt, the Preds mustard jersey, a Picasso Yotes jersey and a Thrashers home jersey.

[mattb6]

My parents have had Auburn football season tickets my whole life, so the interlocking AU logo was the first thing I ever recognized as a sports logo. I remember, at about age 4, pointing at the AU on the field and asking my mom, "What letter is that?" She told me, "That's an AU. It stands for Auburn."

After that I realized that every team had their own logo. During every game I would flip through the program and literally take note (I used a small memo pad) of every visiting team's logo, colors, and nickname.

Eventually, I started paying attention to the games, but my interest in sports aesthetics never diminished.

EDIT

Another early memory of my sports logos interest-- When I was in third grade, I collected those NFL team pencils. Did anyone else have those?

ya i think i had some of those pencils

[OnWis97]

I remember reading the paper as a kid and getting really excited about a "new look" team, only to find out that the term invariably referred to a changed roster.

That still bugs me today.

[MojoRoberts]

I can't pinpoint an exact moment or thing that caused me to become interested in logos/design/history/statistics. I can say that there are a few things that I remember from very young. When I was a small child in the early 80s my doctor's office exam room had a wallpaper border around the whole room of all the NFL teams. The art was kind of like mascots for each team (the Jets was a jet looking guy and so on). I would never get upset about having to go to visit the doctor because I got to look at all the mascots on that wallpaper. Another thing I remember is getting a set of wooden coins with all the NHL team logos on them. I even developed a game I played with them where I would basically simulate an entire season and playoffs. I would genuinely get excited when my Sabres or Rangers would make it deep into the playoffs. Man I was a lonely kid haha.

[Cellar Dweller]

I don't think I gave all that much thought to logos as a kid. Sure, I noticed differences in past and redesigned versions of logos, casually observing as they slowly got better or worse, but I never thought about how much a good logo truly matters until I became an Anaheim Ducks fan.

I know I talk about it a lot on these boards, probably more than I should, but I really, really like that duck mask logo. It looks great to me, and since I grew up more with cartoons and videogames and less with sports, I found it easy to identify with. But I think my fascination with logos came about after they announced they were rebranding, and then after months of excitement and anticipation, it happened; I had mixed feelings about the wordmark then, and I have mixed, mostly negative feelings about it today. Having the soul sucked out of my favourite team's identity in favour of a half-arsed text based logo bugs me to no end. In fact I'd say I felt alienated after the rebrand, and I still sorta do today. Since then I've been hoping for either something better or the return of the duck mask as the primary logo.

As I've observed and contributed to the Concepts board here and as my own design skills have improved over time, I've been turning my passion for logos into both a hobby and a profession. Now, I can look at my favourite team's soulless text logo and say "I can do better than that."

Sports logos first got my attention.

I feel the exact, same way about the Vikings. In an attempt to take away the attention focused on off-field issues ( Love boat, Randy Moss, the whizzinator, etc.) the front office tried to fix something that wasn't broken. Yes. They thought it was time to get a new look. And they :censored:ed it up, royally. Actually, I'm surprised it took seven years for someone to put the breaks on, and change it. I think the new look is alright. But let's face it. The helmet should never have been messed with. That helmet is an institution (mostly for us long-timer fans). That would be like putting a differerent "C" on the Bears helmet, or substituting a slice of cheese for the Packer's "G". It was sacrilege. But, it was those types of changes that prompted me to reinforce my belief that good logos usually don't need fixing, no matter how old they are. We grew up with these logos. We loved them. They are iconic now. When they make some of the changes that they have, I think to myself..." I could have done better than that."

[BadSeed84]

Crazy thing is I still love the WWF logo even 20 years later!

I even photoshopped wwe.com today to see how it would look like if they stayed the wwf and reverted back to the classic logo.

[lightning25]

Back when I was younger, I would create my own sports leagues. It started when I was around 7 or 8, when I took the cardboard lid from a box (that I think originally had paper into it) and turned it into a hockey rink. I took a checker and used it as a puck, then would play a game by flicking the makeshift puck back and forth and kept score until one "team" reached three goals. I created a league out of this, and even made an olympic-style rink, with country flags made out of toothpicks and small, cut-out flags that I would also draw by hand (country flag designs were also something I really got into at a young age and still like now). I would later extend this into creating my own leagues in other sports, as well as my own sports (none of which probably would have worked, but hey, I was 8). I would always put a team in my hometown and call it the "Lightning", just because I thought the name was really cool - it's also where my username comes from. At one point, I even took another lid and made it into a field for paper football - the field was painted on and I made goalposts out of drinking straws that I painted yellow. It was one of my favorite things to do as a kid and it's what got me into sports logos.

[Lacrosse__Sucks]

Ever since I was little, I was fascinated with uniforms and logos. I would always be on the lookout for new uniforms or logos, and to see if a team was wearing an alternate type of getup. I started reading this site every once in a while in 2009, became a hardcore reader in 2012, and finally signed up now. Uniforms just always fascinated me because I always loved colors and variety when I was little.

[ADW77]

Digging back into the deep dark places in my memory...

I remember when I was little, between a year old and three years old, somewhere around there. Sitting in my high chair with my mother watching the Monday Night Football intro with the helmets as the view speeds down the hallway, all the helmet graphics along the walls.

In kindergarten, I remember an art project where I drew four football helmets and the teams logos. I only remember two of them, being the Broncos and Packers.

Also, the cool display in the gumball helmet machines when I was a kid. The first I remember had a picture of each and every helmet, showing the teams logos and I thought that was really cool. That also ties into my love for gumball helmets.

As I grew up and got older, I started noticing when teams would change their logos and/or helmets. Every year I would get note cards and draw each teams' logo on the back, and then color it in with marker.

I also took this car windshield visor, found HERE, and traced the helmet into a blank template. I then either traced (existing logo) or drew a new changed logo onto one of the helmet templates. I colored them, cut them out and glued them over each teams' helmet. I also did the same for the logotypes below the helmets.

[Korkie]

My earliest memory of being interested in logos were two sets of bedsheets that I had as a kid. I would just study the logos endlessly.

One set:

The others were these (or something similar):

Another memory I posted in the "Why Do Kroger Gas Stations Use a Different Logo?" thread, but I'll repost here:

"These signs (and the stores themselves) are an essential part of my childhood experience. Turkey Hills were my minimarts growing up and received a bulk of my allowance in exchange for Icees (the baseball logo cups which included the team jackets, which I kick myself for ever getting rid of), Slim Jims, and candy. Thanks for the nostalgia trip, Shumway.

Edit: One more note about those cups. They are the genesis of my "logo nerdness" and I can link those cups to my membership of this forum. Damnit, thanks to Google and Ebay, my day is completely shot, lol."

Here's a good example: http://www.etsy.com/listing/102456501/rare-1990-milwaukee-brewers-icee-promo