Logo Big or Go Home

We've got logos on the brain this week at SUS HQ. Over at Grantland, king of the basketball nerds Zach Lowe ranked all thirty NBA teams by their current primary insignia, with a few tangents on favorite secondary looks and blasts from the past.

And the work of graphic artist Mark Avery-Kenny, who mashes up popular professional sports logos with pop culture characters from Han Solo to Bart Simpson to Donkey Kong, came to our attention and reminded us about all the possibilities of what a logo can do, and just how evocative and allusive they can be. We're big fans of his work.

Like anything, what's popular and in style in logo land changes over the years.Take a look at this pair for Cincinnati based teams from the days before cable. The Royals, who would later become Sacramento's Kings, and the Red-legs, 

who would later become simply the Reds, both feature impish smiles plastered over the faces of game balls.These days, as Lowe points out, the default NBA logo is a basketball with the team name inside of it. Some take a straightforward approach. Other get busy with it.

Lowe gives his top spot to the boys from Chicago. It's a strong look, with a delightfully intimidating expression on the cartoon bovine's face and just the right hint of menace from those presumably blood soaked horns. This blogger may or may not have rocked a different T shirt with the Bulls logo every day of the week in 8th grade during the height of the Jordan dynasty. It was the next best thing, since I couldn't wear a basketball uniform to school everyday. So no disagreement on that one here. 

Then again, he also calls this Jazz logo worn from 1979 to 1996, "one of the greatest pieces of art in sports history." It ain't half bad, but we think maybe Mr. Lowe has a case of that most insidious and delicious affliction, '90s nostalgia.

Who can blame him? Now if you'll excuse me, I need to sort through my Bulls T-shirts and burn a Counting Crows CD.