Ahh, New York. The windy apple. It was a big deal for the league to finally hold the Super Bowl in New York, even if it was in New Jersey. Similar to Santa Clara and Arlington, the league sets up shop in the nearest team city, so we do too.
One advantage this process had over games in places like New Orleans, Miami, and Houston is this is the first time in New York, so we're free from repeating location-based concepts from previous logos. It also means we can lean into the first things that come to mind, so this being partly a celebration of the game finally coming to Gotham, we did just that.
Cabs, Greek coffee cups, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, the MTA design system, the flat iron building. You could go on and on, but above all of that (almost literally) is the Statue of Liberty.
The stark, wide font of the numerals gives enough room to use the crown to play with the negative space. It took some massaging, but the result we hope invites closer inspection.
The starkness of the numerals gives a nice impression of the buildings that make up the skyline, and the color grading going from top to bottom plus the scale all work together to give a solid impression of the city.
Finally, as a bit of a reference to the vintage and classic era logos, we used a script font for the type. Maybe an unexpected choice given the rest of the composition, but you stare at sans-serif fonts as long as we did. Sometimes the font chooses you.
Next week, we take a walk in the desert.