Great Design: MLB Logo
There’s a great story to the Major League Baseball logo.
It’s not often that you come across a piece of branding so effective that it is openly copied by a competitor. The MLB logo of 1968 has, and more than half a dozen times at that.
For added spice, it’s also a story of controversy, with some confusion over who designed it. That’s all been sussed out and everyone’s sure it was an illustrator called Jerry Dior from New York. While working at Sandgren & Murtha in 1968 he had a vision of a white silhouette of a batter hitting a ball on a division of solid red and blue. From there, the logo won the praises of the MLB selection committee and before long was on the uniforms of players for the 1969 season.
Dior’s attitude towards the design process at-the-time reflects its uniqueness. In an interview with ESPN, he claims he designed in one afternoon using Magic Markers.
“ I did the rough sketch and cleaned it up a bit, and that was that.”
An attitude like that tells me no one could have prepared or planed a concept to come up with what Jerry did. Dior certainly didn’t. He had an epiphany and simply ran with it.
Jerry Dior, years later, with his own slice of excellence
That noted, Dior wasn’t in the business of leaving his designs to the rare Hail Mary. His technical illustrative skills, according to Sari Victoria were second to none. Quite simply, this logo wouldn’t have happened without Dior’s drawing ability. In contrast to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, where Lin’s concept carried her design, there is something to be said about the suggestion the logo’s visual effect would have been lost without Dior’s technical skill.
The logo can also be rebranded for each team
Notice all three colours –red, white and blue — are completely separated, but they’re not evenly separated. Dior knew that ‘the rule of thirds‘ creates a naturally interesting visual arrangement and positioned the batter in the right third. The batter himself, unlike the NBA logo which features the outlines of Jerry West, Dior’s is ‘pure design’. Dior’s intention was for the batter to be faceless, viewable as carrying the bat in either hand. Add to that Dior’s awareness of a distinctively American style that runs deep through the design. The neatly chamfered edge around the logo and the Dick Tracy-like nose of the batter carry soft curves reminiscent of the Streamline Moderne movement: it truly is classic ‘Yankee’ design. But as if you didn’t know that when you saw the red, white and blue.
Such is the charisma of Dior’s design that other sports governing bodies use it — blantantly and without remorse — in their own logos.
With the exception of the NBA, copies just don't look as good
Alan Siegel, Dior’s colleague at Sandgren & Murtha was entrusted with the design of the National Basketball Association logo. Siegel said the commissioner of the NBA wanted the league to have a “visual alliance” with the MLB. Such is the strength of the brand, even a year after it was put into use. Since then, everyone from the WNBA, AHL, Indy Racing League, the PGA tour and even recently Major League Gaming have got in on the act.
Cliche, but it’s true; like a fine wine, Dior’s logo just gets better with age.
If you liked the history of the MLB logo, have a quick look at a controversial moment where a hilariously confident James Sherman, comic book artist, claims the design in this interview. He later backflipped claiming an honest mistake.
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