Yesterday I was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway taking some photos for a client. It was a great Carb day; nice, sunny, a little warm, and strangely exciting.
As a resident of Indy for the last 12 years or so, I have never been able to work up any sort of interest for the race. It is just a bunch of cars going around in circles. But as other bloggers agree, it was strangely more exciting in person.
I remained stoic and relatively unmoved until the motors started. Then, all of the noise and revving was more exciting that I expected. When a car goes screaming past at 200mph, you really get the true impression of FAST. I figure that the essence of speed is only experienced if you are standing close by.
Working on Indy 500 packages, I can’t help but pay close attention to the yearly logo update. As in the previous few years, this year the logo is quite underwhelming. They have been making a grand effort to push the feeling of rich tradition, but the results have been bland and uninspired of late. Whatever one thinks of the retro attempts, this years logo and color scheme is a step up from last year’s, however. The yellow, red and green of 2006 looked too “moldy” for my taste. I’d say that overall, 2006 stands out as the worst of the bunch.
Designing the Indy 500 logo would be both a great and difficult experience. It’s the ultimate in portfolio pieces, but the sheer amount of revisions would be enough to send any sane person into a corner. Luckily for race fans everywhere, most designers are borderline insane. I had the pleasure of working with one of these insane folks in the past during the development of the 2003 Indy 500 logo, and I can assure you that the IMS doesn’t take their logo development each year lightly- It was a lengthly process with many, many iterations.
So here they are; 2007 at the top down to 1997 at the bottom, enjoy!
Technorati Tags: indy, 500, indianapolis_500, logo, indy_500, logo_design
May 26th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Is it just me or is the 2007 logo a big stinker? Looks like something out of the 50′s!
May 26th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Agreed… I’m not trying to be a critic but I’m really not fond of 2007′s logo either. I think it is just a hair better than 06, but just barely. I know they want to do retro, but they are taking it a bit too far… They just lack any sort of polish.
2007 has the Purina dog chow symbol in it too… I know it’s supposed to be the checkered flag, but it’s just too similar.
May 27th, 2007 at 6:05 am
[...] Seen on the toobz. Neat little collection of the past ten years of Indy 500 logos… [...]