The Big 10 is a pretty big deal in the world of collegiate sports; it’s no secret that amongst all college sports, football and basketball reign supreme in terms of popularity, and the Big 10 represents strongly in both.
But when the day is over, I can’t take the Big 10 conference seriously. It has nothing to do with the fact that it’s been over ten years since any sort of National Championship has been brought to the Big 10, or that Ohio State has turned into the Buffalo Bills of college sports, or sour grapes at Michigan for getting a referee-aided victory over Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl.
No, I can’t take the Big 10 conference seriously, because their logo is absolute rubbish.
I mean seriously, look at it – it sucks.
From a design standpoint, I can see the rationale behind it, I can see why it was designed the way it was designed. But it doesn’t matter that it can be justified, because the bottom line is that it just well, sucks.
Minimalism is sort of en vogue right now, and with power conferences like the SEC and the ACC being known for their three-letter acronyms, and other conferences seeming like they’re too mouthy like the Pac-10 and Big East, the Big 10 apparently saw an opportunity to minimalize their identity; make it look like a simplistic three-letter acronym, while still maintaining their name as the Big 10. They accomplish this by giving characters multiple uses; the “1” stands as both the “i” in “big” and the “G” in big, doubles as the zero in “10.”
And to drive the point across that it’s really two words in one logo, the “1G” is turned into a cyan color. I guess this is where my objective opinion comes into play first, because by doing such, it really makes the “B” look like the bastard child of the logo. If you were to ask someone who didn’t follow sports at all to interpret the logo, they might be inclined to say “B-1G,” and have absolutely no idea to what it’s supposed to mean.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t necessarily work even if it were all one color, to which I’ve demonstrated by simply just turning everything black here. Sure, it looks more like the word “BIG,” but design snobs or anyone with a perceptive eye would immediately notice that the “i” looks incomplete, because it’s not really an i, but a number 1.
At this point, B1G is not a logo at all, and just a retarded-looking representation of the word “big.
Ultimately, what I find the most offensive about the logo though, is the fact that whomever designed it felt that the letter “G” and “0” could be encapsulated into one character. If numbers are supposed to be the universal language throughout the entire world, then this not only falls flat on its face, its face sinks through the earth, emerges somewhere in Mongolia, and is trampled by an elephant that descended from the elephants that Hannibal rode through the Alps.
In no way, shape or form, do I see the number 10 when looking at this. If a football or basketball venue were constructed from scratch, and the current Big 10 logo were affixed or painted onto the field of play, and no teams took the floor, I would have absolutely zero idea to what this division this was. Maybe when teams took the playing field, I’d figure it out, but on its own, I have no earthly idea.
All I see when I look at the logo is “1G.” And when I think of numbers and G’s, I think only of mobile data, and that according to today’s standards, 1G would be considered highly unacceptable. I’m no expert on mobile data, but if 3G is slightly better than the data movement I used to get when I was a kid using dial-up internet, then I’d have to imagine that 1G would be close to the equivalent of the 2400baud modem that my first 486 computer came with back in like 1997.
And the font selection for the B1G reminds me a lot of the kind of typefaces that Verizon used in some old marketing materials in a previous year; but going on the topic of obsolete and shitty data plans, associating Verizon with 1G is kind of ironically appropriate.
So, there we have it – the Big 10’s logo is pretty much garbage. Considering what it evolved from, it’s hard to say it, but they somehow actually managed to go downhill in comparison to their previous iteration.
The designer in me cannot support any school in this conference, not just because all their teams are overrated in football and basketball, but that their logo is shit.
Edit: I realize that with the current standings, and that Ohio State now stands a chance to actually make it into the National Championship game, given the circumstances over the weekend, I have to pretty much guarantee that me posting this post will undoubtedly lead to Ohio State actually not choking for a change, and win a National Championship.
