US Open tennis tournament launches new logo
The United States Tennis Association has launched a new logo for the U.S. Open tournament. One of the most important and old tennis championships in the world, the logo was designed by New York-based independent graphic design firm Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv. The initiative was occasioned by the event's half-century anniversary this year.
The previous logo, which has been in use for the last 20 years, featured a flaming tennis ball along with thin serif fonts and a red swoosh, an outdated visual identity that did not translate well into on-screen application. Its look didn’t suit the image of a premium sporting and entertainment band the tournament wanted to convey, while its many variations made the US Open logo unrecognisable to the audience.
Conscious of the tournament’s heritage, Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv kept the main component of the old logo, the flaming tennis ball, and modernised it by making the lines straight and simple. Along with the revamped tennis ball, italic, lowercase sanserif fonts were chosen for legibility.
In the colour palette, the white background was replaced by a blue one. The fonts became white from navy blue and the colour of the flaming tennis ball was swapped for more vibrant yellow.
Nicole Kankam, managing director of marketing at USTA, says, “The US Open has a great tradition, so the evolved symbol respects the legacy while moving us confidently into the future. This innovative rendition of a tennis ball perfectly captures the dynamism of our event.”
The new logo is minimal, recognisable and digitally adaptable while it conveys energy and determination in its simple aesthetic, improving the tournament’s visual identity in both print ads and on-screen applications.
Other tennis tournament have adopted new visual identities in recent months with the Australian Open tennis tournament having undergone a logo revamp in 2016 to improve on-screen readability and make access to smaller digital devices easier .
For more from Transform magazine, follow us on Twitter @Transformsays
