Meet the new logo, same as the old logo

2 of 7: The Atlanta Hawks

Nostalgia: a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.

A yearning for a rose-colored, romanticized past permeates cultures across the world, and, in particular, in the United States. We hear the longing in slogans, see the interest and selling power in cinematic franchises, theatrical reboots, revived television series, cylical fashion fads, generous music sampling, and a classic video games renaissance.

And, over the past decade or so, nostalgia has found a home in the world of sports logos. Across the four major professional sports leagues—MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL—seeking inspiration from the past or resurrecting bygone era logos has become an underreported but active cottage industry.

Let’s start with the NBA. At least seven of the existing 30 franchises have either reverted wholly to logos of yesteryear or significantly extracted elements from classic logos for their current franchise symbols.

This is the second of seven articles highlighting each of the seven NBA franchises that returned class logos. Then, I will illuminate the revivals in MLB, NFL, and most voluminously, in the NHL.

The Atlanta Hawks

One of a handful of NBA franchises who retained moving companies on speed dial in their infancy, the franchise was born as the Buffalo Bisons—yes, not very original given that three baseball teams in the late 1800s, a minor league team from 1912 to 1970, two professional basketball teams, two professional football teams, and two minor league ice hockey teams have used that combination—in the National Basketball League in 1946.

Despite newspaper headlines offering that “Buffalo Joins the Big Leagues”, an expansive 14,000 seat Public Works Administration-funded $2.7 million Municipal Auditorium, and a home basketball schedule that promised games from November 9, 1946, through March 10, 1947, the Bisons bailed upstate New York after only 38 days and 13 games—arguably one of the shortest runs ever for any existing major sports franchises—for the banks of the Mississippi River. Buffalo morphed into the nebulous Tri-Cities, comprising the cities of Molina and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa. Most of the remaining 1946-1947 season games were played in Molina.

A Christmas Day Name the Team Contest and on January 1, 1947, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks were christened.

When the eastern-weighted Basketball Assocation of America (BAA) merged with the midwest-centric NBL in 1949 to form the National Basketball Association (NBA), Tri-Cities joined the ride.

However, after two seasons in the struggling NBA, owners Ben Kerner and Leo Ferris elected to transfer from the small markets to the growing nearby metropolis of Milwaukee. Shortening the mascot to the Hawks, the franchise played four seasons—finishing last in their divison in each of the four—before loading the moving van again and relocating west to St. Louis.

With the draft of Bob Pettit, the franchise’s fortunes progressed upward, winning five straight division crowns between 1956 and 1961, including the 1957-1958 NBA title.

Despite regular success on the court, attendance was problematic.

From the archives of St. Louis Today, in 1967, Kerner contended, "The attendance for the last four or five years has not been good. It appears that the interest is not there.

"If you have a product that people don't want, you can't make them buy it."

In the 1967-1968 season, St. Louis burst from the starting gate and finished with the best record in Western Division history at 56-26.

"When your team starts off with an 18 and 1 record and you have a hard time drawing crowds at home, you have to wonder," Kerner said.

Attendance at the first two playoff games illuminated the challenge—5,018 and 5,810 at the 9,300 seat Kiel Auditorium prompted Kerner to explore selling the team. He found willing suitors in real estate developer Tom Cousins and former Georgia Governor Carl Sanders.

"The crowds at the playoff games were very discouraging." Kerner said. "This certainly was a factor in my decision to sell the club."

The new owners were eager to move the franchise to the burgeoning Atlanta market, where the Falcons had joined the National Football League in 1966 and Major League Baseball’s Braves relocated from Milwaukee the same year.

In the first season in Atlanta, the franchise employed an anthropomorphic hawk running up the court dribbling a basketball wearing a white Hawks uniform as the logo, a mild update on the St. Louis insignia.

For the 1970-1971 season, the logo was recast. Gone was the anthropomorphic hawk, replaced by a blue hawks’ head with a slightly open jaw on a lime green circle.

However, the new logo proved unsatisfactory. The owners, who now had the OMNI arena and a new National Hockey League franchise, the Flames, in their portfolio in addition to the Hawks, approached one of the South’s leading advertising agencies, McDonald & Little, to craft logos for their properties.

The agency had just the right person for the job—a fresh-faced, 24-year old recent college graduate.

“He looked like a kid,” remembers agency cofounder Mike McDonald in an article on the website artsatl.com. “I thought he was 14!”

Ted Burn, the agency’s senior art director, noted that the new hire “had a keen eye for talent and knew Bob Wages had an aptitude for logos,” recalls McDonald. Wages was assigned the task of designing the Atlanta teams’ logos.

“Bill Putnam was CEO and GM of The OMNI Group,” said McDonald. “He trusted us and so gave us free reign to find solutions. When it came time to show the Hawks’ logo design, and later that of the Atlanta Flames, Putnam knew the logos were winners.”

“You can imagine how I felt,” recalls Wages. “Straight out of design school, I was designing logos for two major league sports franchises. It was surreal.”

What became known as the Pac-Man logo was born—even though Pac-Man did not emerge until eight years later.

Surprisingly, the Hawks’ logo encountered a shadow.

“In some ways, the 1972 Hawks logo was eclipsed by the hullabaloo surrounding the Flames’ launch,” recalls Wages. “Not that the owners complained. Everyone went to a lot of hockey games back then. It was the hottest ticket in town.”

Wages says many people have asked him over the years why the two franchise logos have the same line weight, same clarity, same scale and same color. “It’s because they were designed for the same owners, at the same time, and developed to fit in with the OMNI logo designed by my boss, Ted Burn. It was smart branding, plain and simple.”

In 1995, the Sports Design Agency reimagined the logo from the bird head to the entire bird body with expansive wings, an agressive expression, and talons fiercely clutching a basketball.

The agency offered, “Fierce. Powerful. Focused. Attributes of a Hawk Magnified to the Masses in Atlanta. The Atlanta Hawks have had a long and colorful history of making changes to their team identity going back to their days as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks in 1946. In 1995, the Hawks began their pursuit in the next chapter of Atlanta team logos and uniforms. O’Grady, working with Champion Athletic was mastering dye sublimation techniques with the popular Phoenix Suns, Toronto Raptors, Utah Jazz and Milwaukee Bucks uniform designs. The final Atlanta Hawks designs used the bold hawk image across the entire identity creating a graphically powerful and relevant look on home, road and team court designs.”

Mock the Agency noted, “This version featured a more abstract and modern depiction of a hawk, emphasizing speed and movement.

“The design included a gradient color scheme, adding depth and a sense of motion to the emblem.

“This update was part of a broader rebranding effort to appeal to a younger, more diverse fanbase and align with contemporary design trends.”

The wingspan hawk lasted 20 years.

In 2014, the Pac was brought back. This time, the outlined hawks’ head was tilted at a more predatory angle and wrapped in the now ubiquitious band of red offering Atlanta Hawks Basketball Club.

Wages was kept in the dark that his original design would be revived and updated—until the night of the game, May 1, 2014.

“I had no idea my old bird was going to show up for that game,” Wages said. “But, by golly, I’m delighted it did.”

McDonald, though, was puzzled why the Hawks switched logos in 1995.

“The so-called ‘Pac-Man’ logo was classic, pure and honest. It was memorable . . . It worked large. It worked small. Most importantly, it looked great on uniforms racing up and down a basketball court whether you were at a game or watching it on TV.”

And McDonald was also not beholden to the more aggressive angle of the profiled bird.

“Why bring back the iconic ‘Pac-Man’ logo but feel compelled to add to it? They actually diminish it because ‘more is less,’ as great Mies van der Rohe once said. And I agree.”

Wages, however, in the artsatl.com article, is more diplomatic.

“Re-launching any logo requires change to generate excitement. I might not have done exactly what their designers did, but I would have toyed with the look of the bird, too. When we worked on the design in 1972, we struggled with the fine line between a fierce bird and an angry bird. I think we got it right.”

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