What does it take to rebrand a huge sports team? GQ finds out. Join Justin Thomas Kay as we look at the evolution of the Kansas City Chiefs’ branding ahead of Super Bowl LIX, from their founding logo as the Dallas Texans to the most recent Chiefs’ hallmark. What are the key ingredients to a team logo in the NFL? Did the Kansas City Chiefs get it right? What could the team’s future branding look like? GQ settles the score, as the Kansas City Chiefs get rebranded.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Today I'm going to take a look at the Chief's visual identity, dive into the history of some
00:04Chief's past logo designs, and even take a crack at making a new logo myself.
00:13This is a logo for the Kansas City Chiefs. It's remained largely unchanged since it was launched
00:18in 1963. First introduced as a helmet design and then eventually it became the primary logo
00:25in 1972. So the logo itself was designed by Lamar Hunt, the owner of the team. He was the one who
00:31moved the team from Dallas to Kansas City. He was heavily influenced by the San Francisco 49ers logo
00:37which is, you know, obvious if you look at it now. The primary thing that I think about when I see
00:41this mark is a slab serif typography in the KC monogram. So when we're talking about slab serif
00:47we're talking about these flourishes at the end of the letters which in a slab serif are squared
00:52off. You know, in a serif typeface, i.e. Times New Roman, they tend to be sharper. They're a little more
00:57decorative. In a slab serif they're much more bold, impactful, blockier. That's kind of like the
01:02defining characteristic of the typeface. Or in the case of a sand serif, you have none of the above.
01:06It just ends with a flat edge. So aside from the specifics about the type style, the thing that's
01:11interesting to me about the dimensionality is that it's not necessarily correct. It doesn't make
01:18optical sense necessarily. The way the shadow is coming off of the C in this area and this area
01:24versus the more straightforward shadow that is just coming off of this area in the K. They just
01:29feel a little bit, you know, disconnected from how it would appear in real life. Which is fine. It has
01:34a little bit of that naivete. It feels hand-drawn and then at some point it was digitized and there's
01:39a certain kind of like character that comes with that. But, you know, I would say that's an area
01:43of opportunity as we start to think about what we can do with it. You have the actual arrowhead
01:48shape. As much as that could be refined, I understand why they did that. It adds kind of like a
01:53human quality to it and obviously reflects kind of like the roughness of the edge of these arrowheads
01:58themselves. Over the years certain things have become inconsistent with it or treated in different
02:02ways depending on where it lives. So in this case, you're seeing the logo as it largely stands on the
02:08helmet. It might feature a logo with a white outline around it. What you are looking at here
02:13is the closed C version which has a flat bottom. There is an open C version where the C comes out a
02:20little bit and it gets cut off without the flat edge. That is something that even to this day
02:27there is an open C on the helmets but does not exist anywhere else. So, for example, we have this
02:33helmet from 1971. This helmet from 2024. Interestingly, you can see that they both use the open C.
02:40The primary logo, however, since 1972 has been the closed C logo. It wasn't necessarily drawn
02:47this way because of, you know, rounds and rounds and rounds of revisions and putting it through
02:53the lens of what kind of like a corporate brand identity needs to accomplish. It was more for the
02:56spirit of it and I think that adds to the character and frankly like what people love about it. So I
03:02think that this exercise in and of itself is probably going to ruffle some feathers because
03:07there's an idea of how logos have that kind of like built-in imperfection and that makes it what
03:13you know and you love. So I think that for me part of the challenge of this is you don't want to ruin
03:18that spirit but you instead want to think what can you do to, you know, add to it. So from 1960 to 62
03:28the Dallas Texans. This was the original iteration of the team. The mascot itself was drawn by someone
03:35who apparently worked for a local newspaper in Dallas as a cartoonist. Interesting to look at
03:40it now because it feels a little folksy and just less rigid than what we think about as sports
03:46logos but this is pretty common if you look at like, you know, old baseball teams, old football
03:50teams. So the main two elements obviously you've got your cowboy, state of Texas, and then he's
03:59holding a football. Beyond that there's not much of a story to be told here. It's pretty straightforward.
04:04Feels a little more like something that could just be for any local sports team. Also, you know, to
04:10be clear the NFL didn't even exist at the time of this. The Dallas Texans played in the AFL which
04:14merged with the NFL's former version in 1970 thanks in part to Lamar Hunt. So one thing you will notice
04:20is the color. Even though the logo itself has nothing to do with what's happening now in 2025,
04:25color has remained largely unchanged with red being the dominant color. From 1963 to 1971,
04:34after the team moves to Kansas City, this is a logo that they end up with. It's an evolution
04:39obviously from when they were in Dallas. The same artist had drawn the logo for Lamar Hunt. It wasn't
04:44clear that they were going to be called the Chiefs at the time. Lamar had actually pitched to call
04:48them the Kansas City Texans and was talked out of that by a member of his team. The name the Chiefs
04:54came from the mayor of Kansas City at the time who they called the Chief. With that, you know,
04:59they ended up going with this mascot. So for a variety of reasons this would not fly today. Teams
05:05much like the Washington Commanders, the Cleveland Guardians, they've all had to contend with this.
05:10When they move to Kansas City it's a little bit funny. Now part of it is, you know, the orientation
05:14of the city. Rather than just picking Missouri much like they went with Texas here, they have
05:19kind of like a mess of about, what is this, six states behind the logo. And with that, you know,
05:25obviously they have their mascot and the axe. You have the beginnings of what you could say is
05:30something that's going to evolve eventually into the Arrowhead that we know now. And then aside
05:34from that, one other dominant feature of this you can see is still you have your red color and you
05:41have your gold. The gold did evolve a little bit over time, became brighter, but the red obviously
05:46was still the anchor point. Okay, so and then in here you have the beginnings of what we'll call
05:52a monogram. Monogram is a collection of letters that overlap, generally speaking, and build kind
05:57of like a unique symbol based on those letter forms. Here you have the beginnings of the KC
06:03that will evolve into the logo that we know now. So that's the logo history. We touched briefly on
06:08the Commanders, but I think we should take a minute to look at how they dealt with a similar challenge.
06:13So in 2022, this is the identity that the Commanders came up with. For a variety of obvious
06:19reasons, they needed to change the name. I mean, look, like these are very complicated conversations.
06:23I'm sure there was a lot of deliberation. They ended up landing on the Commanders, which
06:28built the base for kind of what I would say is like a strong identity. However, an identity that
06:35really just to me, it lacks a cultural anchor. The way that this W was translated into kind of like
06:43a larger type system, it feels modern. Maybe you could say there's some like forward momentum here.
06:48It's based in this idea of a stencil typeface, much like when you have to like spray paint
06:54initials onto something. I have my own personal issues with stenciling type. I think sometimes
06:59it's a little bit of a cliche and it can just fall into this kind of like attempt to make
07:04something feel iconic and feel unique. But again, it's not really saying anything. But just to
07:10circle back on like what I think they were really anchoring this in, the color. So we've taken a
07:15look at a recent rebrand that maybe fell a little bit short. What I'd like to do now is take a look
07:19at one that I think anchors itself in history well and was executed perfectly. So this was done in
07:262024 by House Industries. House is undoubtedly the masters of a lot of different things,
07:32adding character to typography and figuring out how to take the bones of something and make it
07:37work the best that it can. A notable element of the way the King's logo has worked for a long time
07:43is the slanted lettering. They decreased the amount that it was italicized and they reworked
07:49all these lines that were coming off the letters. They made the letters feel a little bit bolder.
07:53They rebuilt this lettering to make it all tie together. And then with the crown, this was an
07:59update to an existing crown that existed in an old logo. So the logo on a whole was only undertaken
08:05because they did a throwback jersey that had a vintage brand mark on it and it ended up being
08:10so well loved that they ended up using that now moving forward. I think it's time for us to start
08:16our rebrand. So I think the logo overall could benefit from a little more room. This area just
08:22gets totally swallowed up and you lose all sense of dimension. You lose the kind of like where the
08:27K and the C are coming together. The approach, in my opinion, is not the full-scale rebrand,
08:33but really to think about what's working with the logo right now. What do people love? Tighten up
08:38some of the inconsistencies that have crept in over the years. How does that then extend out
08:42into a larger brand world that brings in the marketing and all the other pieces of the brand
08:46on a whole? Same as the last episode when we were working on the clippers, the goal here isn't to
08:53build the perfect proportions right now. I'm just trying to give myself a starting point so that I
08:59understand what I'm trying to accomplish when I get to the computer. Sometimes that's math, sometimes
09:03that's eyeballing it and having to optically correct things so that they feel right more than
09:09they measure correctly. Lettering is more of an art form than a science. I mean, it's a little bit of
09:16both, but I would say more so than a lot of graphic design. The actual drawing of the letter
09:21forms is something that often is imperfect. The next step from here will be going on a little
09:27bit of a typeface hunt to try to find something that works not just for this mark, but also,
09:32you know, how does that apply to the larger Chiefs brand system? Right now, the Chiefs wordmark is
09:39something that has this 70s pastiche, I would say, and the arrowhead stadium mark follows a
09:46similar type style as the Chiefs wordmark, but feels oddly different. So what you end up with
09:52is it's a brand, but it's just a collection of a bunch of different ideas that somehow feel
09:58disparate and not as linked together as they could be. Not perfect, but for me, that's the basic
10:03framework for how I want to approach the KC. Now, the other consideration and where we'll
10:08probably move from here, the relationship of this mark to the arrowhead shape, then we'll go from
10:13there onto the computer. The existing arrowhead meets the edges of the letter forms on both sides.
10:21The biggest area of opportunity for me is just trying to open it up, give a little more breathing
10:26room around the K and the C, protecting the monogram a little bit more.
10:43Again, this is not totally perfect, but I think this gives me a good starting point to understand
10:48sort of like the basic relationship of where I want to take the monogram within the arrowhead
10:53shape. Let's get it into the computer. This book is the Photo Lettering One-Line Manual of Styles.
10:59This serves as a way to navigate all of the different typeface families that are a part of
11:03the photo lettering family. Photo Lettering Inc. is the name of a company that was founded in New
11:08York City in the, I believe it was founded in the 60s. Even though this is way pre-computer, I still
11:15use it as a way to navigate and wrap my head around just what the possibilities are within
11:21each of these different type families. These start to get a little too expressive, a little
11:27too condensed, and you can see it just it starts to get a little too fancy, a little too
11:32flourished, and we're looking for something that's more straightforward and a little bit more like
11:36brutal in how geometric it is. So I think this is a good reference for the style of about what
11:44we're looking for. We're not going to be able to get this exact piece of type, but there is a
11:50type foundry by the name of Commercial Type that has done a really good job of sort of like finding
11:54these historical references and updating them, and I believe that they have one that I could work
11:59with. Antique number six. You can see there like stylistically it's pretty close because they don't
12:07offer an extended weight of this. What I'd have to do is use this as a framework, but then I can
12:10kind of like you know adjust it and rebuild the letter, but use this as the bones. The slab serifs
12:16are a little longer than I need them to be. That's an easy adjustment to make, but the proportion
12:21in how the joints of these letters are working is actually exactly what I'm looking for. Let's see.
12:28The bold gets a little too dense, so I'm going to stick with the medium. Potentially sacrilegious
12:34in terms of type setting here, but basically what I'm going to do is I am just going to
12:40stretch the type out. Generally speaking, you would never really want to stretch the typography
12:45either vertically or horizontally because the proportions of those letters, again going back
12:50to what I was saying about type design being an art form, those are built with extremely specific
12:56nuances in mind. But when it comes to what we're doing here, it's really just giving me the
13:00proportional width that I'm looking for, and then I'm going to have to go into the individual letters
13:05and not redraw them, but adjust them so that they work the way I need them to.
13:10Now here, this is a super important part, is I want to make sure that I'm opening up that interior
13:14so that when I have my C crossing through, that it has enough space to breathe. As far as I'm
13:20concerned, one of the things that is not really necessary in this exercise is to be worrying about
13:26the basic colors of the team. I don't think that has anything to do with any issues that we have
13:30here. Simple stroke on it. So the way that I'm going to try to build the shadow in this
13:36simple stroke on it. So the way that I'm going to try to build the shadow in this one, which is going
13:40to be different than the way the shadow is drawn in on the existing logo, is I'm going to build it
13:46just true based on actual math so that every angle of the shadow can follow the exact same dimensions.
13:52Okay, I'm feeling good about where we're at with the KC monogram. Let's move on to the arrowhead
13:56shape. Rather than just draw one out of thin air, what I wanted to try to do was just find an image
14:04that I could use as a starting shape. So the edges on this one are going to be a mess.
14:18Now what I'm going to do as well is even just while I'm sketching it out, I'm going to throw
14:22it on the red background because I think the logo very rarely just appears on a white background,
14:27and I don't want to be judging how this is working without taking that into account.
14:33My gut is that the primary use case of this logo should be with the white outline. The way it
14:39appears on the helmet, I can understand why they wouldn't do that. It keeps it somehow simpler,
14:45but at the same time, this gives me an opportunity to play with the outline around the letters,
14:51as well as the outline that holds the arrowhead shape and how those can have a relationship to
14:57each other. Yeah, I think that's pretty good. There's still some more work that I'm going to
15:01keep doing to that one, but I think for now we got a good thing to start as the base for the
15:06rest of the letters. One thing that I love about the way that this type family works is that the
15:12different weights sort of have a different vibe, and I think, you know, one way to have a
15:17complementary wordmark without going to the extreme that the current wordmark has, where it's
15:22an entirely different family, entirely different sort of aesthetic, is to just lean into the heavier
15:27weights of this, which give a little bit of like a different flavor. Now, I think for the purposes
15:32of this, though, I want it to be a little deeper. I want more of a shadow on it because I'm imagining
15:36this living, you know, in the end zone, maybe somewhere in the uniform, but I want it to,
15:42you know, have a little bit of like a stronger base. The main thing I would say about the Chiefs
15:49jerseys, there's actually relatively little branding. For me, the yellow around the numbers
15:55gets lost, and then there's this more current jersey that includes the little tribute patch
16:02for Lamar Hunt, and even though these jerseys are two decades apart, they largely are exactly the
16:08same. You know, how do we want to approach the numbers? How do we want to approach any other
16:13inclusion of branding? I think that's where we can start to have some fun.
16:16The main challenge for me is going to be to figure out one other way to bring in brand
16:28recognition into the uniforms. The existing Kansas City Chiefs uniforms look really good,
16:32but I think that if we're going to go through all this trouble of trying to bring
16:36the wordmark into this world, think about different ways that we can use color. I think
16:41that there is an opportunity to maybe do something on the helmet, including play with a color stripe,
16:45which is something that some teams play with, but Kansas City just has classically not done so.
16:51One thing that I would push overall is for the jerseys just to feel a little bit,
16:55somehow, simpler. Right now, there's a lot of different color blocking happening,
17:00the way that the red and the white, and there's just like some contrast issues, and
17:05I think that when I look at the palette, it feels like if things flattened out a little
17:08bit more and just became a little more like specifically red dominant across the board,
17:12it might just help to simplify things a little bit. Taking some liberties here.
17:18Now, for the number, I'm staying a little more traditional varsity style. Outline in black,
17:23which is a little bit weird because it makes it stand out, but I like the idea of the contrast
17:28of that tying back to the KC logo, and then a little bit more reduced in where that yellow
17:35color comes in because I think that too much of that, and it just kind of like,
17:38to me, it throws it off a little bit. I think staying a little more red dominant makes for
17:43a newer look. To recap the things that were fixed here, we get a lot less of the mark getting
17:49swallowed up and losing the space within, but then also around the KC. Tried to even out the
17:54strokes within the letter forms. As the mark reduces, gets smaller on the field, you don't
18:00lose the definition of the letter forms in the monogram in the middle. So the other thing I
18:04wanted to do is bring consistency to the word marks. I really like the way that this chief's
18:09mark goes back and speaks to the logo and where we're ending up. I like that the shadow operates
18:16in the same angle and with the same treatment. It has its own kind of like necessary depth,
18:22so it does have its own little touch, which was the goal. One thing also that the chief's current
18:27identity does not include is a lockup with Kansas City. You know, this is by no means final,
18:32but I think that the type family that we're choosing here really creates an opportunity
18:37to create a consistent treatment as a way of kind of like instilling some pride in place.
18:42One other little Easter egg that I liked is that the C in this typeface has that same sort of
18:47openness from the helmet logo as it exists right now. So even if we were to go in and update the
18:52logo, I like that this mark maintains a little bit of that kind of like historical nod and
18:58reference. With the exact same style of the chief's word mark, I think you could very easily just bring
19:04the Arrowhead brand into the same family as everything else. So rather than having this
19:09sort of like disparate kit of parts where everything feels somehow disconnected from
19:15each other, I think that there is a real opportunity to bring all this stuff into the
19:18same place from the same brand language and tie it all together. Thank you for watching.
19:23Hope you enjoyed it and let us know what team you want us to take a look at next.