A Rebuttal to my FC Edmonton Reveals Logo Rant
On Tuesday, I posted a rant concerning FC Edmonton’s new logo. While I’ll stick by what I said, and I still loathe the black and white soccer ball in a team or club logo as much as I did 2 days ago. However, I am making room for a rebuttal by friend in soccer, Scott Kerssen. The Thunder historian who now lives in Milwaukee but still makes trips back to the Twin Cities to watch the new NSC Minnesota Stars, posted this in the comments. However, I thought it was too good to just let go. So here is Scott’s counter in its entirety.
By Scott Kerssen
First, let’s clean up a bunch of these gross generalizations.
On this continent, it is not unusual at all for a pro sports team to incorporate pieces of the sport’s equipment in its logo. If you go HERE and check the logos for the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, you’ll find that many incorporate balls, bats, helmets, sticks, pucks, etc. And for those that currently don’t, like the Cleveland Browns, click on their logo to look at past logos. You’ll find that the vast majority of pro sports teams on this continent have, at one time or another, incorporated their sport’s equipment into their logos. So, it’s not just a soccer thing here. Nor is it only used with unfamiliar sports or teams. Everybody knows who the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Lakers are and what they play.
As for having the black and white soccer ball (to be referred to as the “Buckyball” for reasons that will be illuminated later) in the logo being “more or less a North American ‘thing’”, I’m going to say less. It’s a world thing. Check the logos here (The videos are collections of crests and last from about two to seven minutes each.)
While the site doesn’t show every crest from every country, it does show a fairly wide spread of crests from the countries it does list. The teams range from the top divisions to the fourth or fifth level. I checked out about two thirds of the countries they list including all the major ones (Italy, France, Germany, England, Brazil and others) and countries from all the confederations (AFC, CONCACAF, UEFA, OFC and COMNEBOL). EVERY country I checked had at least one club sporting the Buckyball on its crest. In some countries, especially eastern European, the MAJORITY of clubs incorporated the Buckyball into its club logo design. All totaled, in the twenty-five countries I searched, I found over 150 clubs using the Buckyball. And again, this was not an exhaustive search, by any means. This is a common thing, world-wide.
By the by, Brian, that tasteful brown ball that Barca uses in their logo? Very common in Spain. I found about thirty clubs there using the same ball in their crests. I suspect that if you lived in, say, Mallorca, you’d have written about how tired you were of that little brown sucker.
Finally, comes the question of “Why the Buckyball?”
A confluence of factors, most easily gleaned from these two sites:
http://www.soccerballworld.com/History.htm
http://internationalsoccer.suite101.com/article.cfm/world-cup-history–the-tv-revolution-1970-1990
Or for those who like their info to be pre-gleaned…
Soccer had been using 12 or 18 panel brown or orange leather balls for most of the first six decades of the 20th Century. But in 1970, FIFA chose the Adidas Telstar ball, which was based on geodesic design concepts created by world renowned American architect, designer, inventor and author Buckminster Fuller. The Buckyball was a huge step forward in ball design, creating a truer spherical shape.
The main historical significance of the 1970 World Cup to soccer is that it was the first World Cup broadcast around the world in color using satellite technology and scheduled with television in mind. In a sense, it was the point where soccer truly became the world’s game.
So, if you take a deeper look at it, it makes perfect sense that the Buckyball is so common in soccer logos and crests, here and around the world.
Has it become repetitious? Well, that is an individual preference kind of question. Personally, I don’t care what the ball looks like as long as NSC Stars players regularly display it in the back of the opponent’s net.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inside Minnesota Soccer.
Comments are closed.
I agree with BQ. I don’t like a ball in the logo…especially the bucky ball.
I seem to recall reading somewhere (though I don’t have a link right now and Scott’s links don’t seem to address the question) that in addition to being a step forward in ball design, one part of the black-and-white buckyball’s appeal was that it was significantly easier for television viewers to see than the brown leather models. Kinda tying together the two points regarding ball selection and the ’70 World Cup.
Good add, fuggle.
There were actually a few design advancements involved with the ball I left out due to space considerations. [Commenter's Note: It's hard to believe, I know, but I do make a bit of an effort to edit my posts.]
The geodesic design also reduces the strain on the seams, distributing the force of impact through more of the surface of the ball. This made for a longer lasting ball with less seam splitting.
It also being one of the early synthetics-coated balls, it repelled water better than most leather models, meaning it didn’t increase very much in weight when wet. This helped insure a more consistent performance from the ball in all types of weather. And with the decrease of weight when wet, it didn’t hurt so much to kick or head it.
Finally, besides being easier for the general public to see the ball, the black spots on the white ball made it easier for players to judge the amount of spin on the ball which, in turn, made it easier for players to anticipate the path of the ball when passed or shot.
Finally, there is the aesthetic appeal. Humans, being mentally hardwired through evolution to detect patterns in whatever they experience, tend to have an affinity for symmetrical shapes and designs. The buckyball, being very similar to a truncated icosahedron:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truncated_icosahedron
is rife with all sorts of symmetrical geometric patterns, if a little amount of imagination is used. This, in turn, makes it an easy starting point for a graphic designer to work from when constructing a logo.
Which brings me to a bit of a correction of Brian’s kind introduction to his reposting of my comment. (By the way, I consider it a great compliment for him to have done so and my “thank yous” to him are profuse.)
My posting wasn’t intended to be a rebuttal so much as a correction of some of the premises being implied or outright stated by Brian and some of the other commenters. As I say in my last paragraph, “Has it become repetitious? Well, that is an individual preference kind of question.” [Note: Thanks for the grammar clean-up of the original, Brian.
]
To a significant degree, it’s a matter of taste. In my own personal opinion, there still is some life in the ol’ buckyball as a design element. But a lot of designers don’t really do anything creative with it and tend to just plunk it in there somewhere. And because of that laziness, I can understand why some people would think of it as a visual cliche.
If I were going to complain about a common design element in soccer logos (which I would do with little passion; for me personally, the logo is a tertiary concern to me, at most) I would go with, “What’s the deal with the escutcheons?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_(heraldry)
Why do most soccer logos have to be surrounded by a shield? It might be an important graphic element for European history, but what does that have to do with any other part of the world? Or with soccer, for that matter?
I don’t mind shapes 3, 4 and 5 from the wiki examples of escutcheons, but every other shape has been used ad nauseum. How come nobody gripes about that , huh? Huh? Where are the concave polygons? The obtuse triangles? The isosceles trapezoids, for cryin’ out loud?!
But, again, not a real concern of mine. If the NSC Stars play great soccer, I don’t care if their logo is a Jackson Pollock painting. My recommendation? Convergence.
http://www.allposters.com/gallery.asp?aid=85097&apnum=825728&LinkTypeID=1&PosterTypeID=1&DestType=7&Referrer%20=http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/pollock_jackson.html
I’m with you, Scott, on the shields thing. That’s why I liked the Rapid’s original round logo (despite the soccer ball).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ColoradoRapidsOld.png
…and, of course, the original Galaxy logo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LosAngelesGalaxyTwoStar.png
Sorry ERic, but there’s a reason those logs have been replaced. I especially hate the Crapids logo with the B&W soccer ball.
So, what do you all think of Irelands shield. Here’s a case of a soccer ball being used but modernism is injected. Its colorful, its catching, its not an exact representation of a ball and yet you know exactly what it is.
http://www.sourcedesign.ie/corporate_imaging7.html
First time I saw that, I thought it was pretty striking. And it’s a shield without being quite so blatant. Pretty cool. For now. Give it another 20 years and it’ll look stupid. Which is why it annoys me when people redo their logos, because if you just wait another 20 years after that, and it’ll be really, really (and eternally) cool.
i loved the old Galaxy logo, and think the new one is stunningly generic, kinda like our Stars logo