From the World Cup logo to new club crests, football conceptions lose an advantage | Soccer

Lance Wyman is among the greatest American graphic designers, and its fingerprints are everywhere in a number of American cities.

Wyman’s style is instantly recognizable – simple, daring and intelligent. Wyman often works in Wayfaring, and its signs and instructions for viewers often use simple geometric shapes to do the work, often incorporating a playful also. His approach made his work timeless. In 2011, when the government of the Columbia district wanted their metro card updated, they returned to Wyman, which designed the original design of the system about 40 years earlier.

His most notable work, however, came very early in his career. At the end of the 1960s, Wyman, as well as a handful of others, were responsible for creating the visual identity of the next summer Olympic games in Mexico City. It was a massive task, especially for a young designer only half a decennia withdrawn from the university.

Determined to obtain the right assignment, Wyman moved to Mexico in the months preceding his deadline and plunged into the culture of the country. He plunged into the archives, visited by archaeological sites and spoke to the inhabitants. Slowly, he began to pick up design clues – native huichol wire paintings in western Mexico, with Aztec stone sculptures that have always helped to define the country’s visual identity.

What Wyman has helped to produce is almost universally recognized as one of the largest sports design assemblies ever created. The logotype of the tournament alone – this hypnotic and concentric “Mexico City 1968” mixed the country’s culture with the Art OP movement. Wyman and his team created event posters, a signaling of Wayfaring and more and in years, their creations have dotted the landscape of the whole city.

In 1970, when the country welcomed its very first World Cup, they returned directly to the Wymanpe logotype, and Wyman himself created a handful of other designs for the tournament. It is fair to say that the visual identity of this tournament could well be the most recognizable design work of the most recognizable world cup in history.

I reached Wyman a few years ago in his New York office. Then 86, his work naturally slowed down. The World Cup returned to Mexico in 2026, and I was looking forward to gathering its reflections on some of the first creations associated with the tournament, in particular the official logo of the FIFA World Cup.

“I saw him, yes,” said Wyman at the time. “It is not that effective. It is not really identifiable when it becomes small, so it is certainly a problem. It certainly does not say “football”. I remember the first time I saw the [European] Champions League logo, I thought it was quite intelligent. This … I’m not sure there are a lot of things you can do with it.

The logo felt telephoned at the time, as it does now. It was manufactured by the FIFA internal design team and accompanied by the required explanatory graph and even a presentation of the FIFA itself, which has married its values: scalability and adaptability. It is less a logo and the more a logo system, they explained, allowing them to adapt the image to different devices and even to modify it to adapt to different host cities in the host countries of the tournament. It’s the same thing that Wyman did with expertise in 68, just worse.

My point of view, of course, is purely subjective – just like most things related to art and design. But watching the logo made me think more widely in the direction of ridges and design as a whole in American football.

More recently, the Crest for Denver Summit FC – the last NWSL extension club, which will make its debut in 2026 – only made what I had already thought about: why do these things look like all in recent years? And despite this, why are some so inspiring, and some if … bland?

In some respects, the designer based in Vermont Matthew Wolff holds the keys to the design management of the American Club Soccer. His work extends over the entire male and female game, after having managed some of the most well -received ridges of MLS, elegant designs for Lafc and NYC FC among them. In the NWSL, Wolff has recently been nicknamed to develop a new logo for the club now known as Boston Legacy (after this club, perhaps the most radically criticized name and brand in the history of American football.

His work also put the lower leagues, where several of his ridges felt instant classics – Union Omaha, and even the recent Champions of Ligue 2, Vermont Green, a Wolff club helped Co -Fonder.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” said Wolff. “I am thinking of the trajectory of American football in parallel with the place where I was in my education and my beginning of a career. [Everybody] Knowed that American football has been exploding for years and years. So I think that I was a little intentionally positioned to be ready, arranged and able to create football ridges in the United States. »»

Wolff’s works sometimes look a little like those of Lyman: refined, daring, simple. As Wyman did in 68, Wolff operates in a space where his work often ends up being representative of the community which commanded it and it often incorporates elements of these places in its final design.

It is quite easy to see in the NYC FC ridge, which looks like an old metro token, or the crest that Wolff has designed for the NWSL Gotham FC, which presents the statue of freedom. Others feel much more esoteric, such as the Crest Wolff made for One Knox FC of USL. Whoever includes a color palette inspired by a handful of local monuments from Knoxville, feels distinctly more generic, just like Denver.

This is an aesthetic summary on a podcast that I heard recently. In this document, the host drew about Denver’s new crest, saying that she would feel at home on the side of a reusable metal water bottle. For this person, it was a compliment. Sometimes, however, this type of omnipresence can deprive a conception of its character.

Wolff himself recognizes the reality of design work as a whole. His work is done for the customer, to meet the needs of his memory, not necessarily his tastes or preferences.

“My ideal vision is not relevant to these ridges,” explains Wolff. “I try to respond to a brief, certain parameters that have been set by a club or by me and the club together. There is obviously an infinite number of ways to execute it, even in the tightest memories. If you said to me ‘Ok, this ridge must have a heraldic lion that is blue, and be in a circle and say Chelsea in the upper club and football and I cannot really think of one or think of a little time or an idea or an idea or a little time whether it is a little time. My tastes in the crests as much as “it responds to the memory”.

The designers, in other words, are only part of the equation today in terms of manufacturing a brand identity.

“”[The process] Was far from graphic designers – specialists – and entered this nebulous room of other people who make design decisions by committee, “said Ben Mahler, former creative director of the MLS Club DC United.” Marketing directors, discussion groups, shit focused on analysis, everything ends up pushing things in a safer territory. It is to lose the artistic side and the wonkiness which comes from an individual. »»

Wolff, and any other designer in this space, is also subject to the mercy of the public, so to speak. Bos Nation is far from the only club to have corrected the course after an initial misstep – when the Chicago fire deployed an absolutely excruciating brand change in 2019, their fans were rabid. The fire turned to Wolff to solve this problem, and it did it with a much cleaner look and easier to look at.

“These conceptions are supposed to represent fans and the club,” said Wolff. “And if fans or the community see this crest and they think that it does not represent them, then I think they are in their rights to let the club know. These fans are the ones that clubs ask to buy a kit of $ 100. And of course, there are examples where people make comments [about a crest] which are a bit ridiculous. But overall, I understand.

For his part, Wyman, who grew up in Kearny, in New Jersey (a Holy Land of American football in itself) told me that he had never been invited to make a football crest. A few years ago, he joined a non -profit organization to help design a football ball, which turned out to be great: red, blue and white design is decorated with stars. It looks a bit like the design of the ball of the old North American football league, used in the 1970s and in the early 80s.

Apart from that, Wyman’s work has been largely done for local businesses and municipalities. Looking at his creations, it is difficult to imagine why a club did not put him in the fold. Wolff’s work is often fantastic, but a certain variety could also be pleasant. Perhaps a club could try a chance on the person whose conceptions have been launched on almost all mood forums linked to the logo over the years.

“From time to time, something will come with sport, but for the most part, my work has been concentrated elsewhere,” said Wyman a few years ago. “I would love to take a ridge, if I had the opportunity.”