UFC to unveil improved logo and look on Saturday
The UFC is subtly altering everything from its logo to its fight posters to its television broadcast graphics with the help of a design company.
In the beginning there was:
Then ZUFFA bought the UFC and the league got a makeover, including the now familiar logo:
And now there has been a subtle makeover:
See what they did there?
The wrench is gone, and there is much more to come, from the minds of Gil Haslam and Seton Kim, two veteran creative directors at the Hollywood branding firm Troika. Saturday will of course see the debut of the new Reebok Fight Kit, but there is much more, albeit far subtler than the end of the NASCAR look.
Greg Beacham has the story.
Along with a comprehensive drug-testing program and plans for a large new headquarters in its hometown, the UFC is subtly altering everything from its logo to its fight posters to its television broadcast graphics with the help of a design company that is pushing simplicity into a famously anarchic corner of the sports world.
Most of the changes are subtle — putting the fight date in the same spot on every poster for every event, for instance, or using exclusively gold imagery when promoting a championship fight. The UFC’s telecasts, which the promotion zealously controls, will feature tweaks such as sprucing up the fight clock and moving it from a low corner to the bottom center of the screen.
Their creators believe the cumulative effect will make the UFC more fun to watch for hardcore enthusiasts and less confusing for casual fans.
Roughly 30 people worked on the complicated project over the last six months, and they’ll unveil much of that work this weekend. From the connected logos for every UFC program to the cleaned-up look of the Fight Pass website, the UFC says all of this work outside the octagon is designed to spotlight what happens inside the cage.
It doesn’t mean we’ve gone more corporate or more conservative, or that we want to be like anything else out there, said Heidi Noland, the UFC’s vice president of global brand creative. We just want to embrace our DNA. This isn’t a rebrand, to be honest. It isn’t reinventing ourselves. It’s really just presenting what the UFC is in its best form.