First, I started by just looking at their currenogol tnert logo. It's that classic basketball with the "New York Knicks" written over it in that pointy, kind of gothic font. It's alright, but it's been the same for a while now.
Then I started sketching some ideas. I grabbed my notebook and just started drawing anything that came to mind. Basketballs, hoops, the Empire State Building, whatever felt like New York and basketball together. It was a mess, honestly. A bunch of doodles that didn't really go anywhere.
After that, I decided to look at some other sports logos for inspiration. I checked out the logos of other NBA teams, and even some from other sports. I wanted to see what made a good logo, what made it stand out.
Once I had a better idea of what I liked, I started working on some more polished designs. I used this free online design tool to make things look cleaner. I played around with different shapes, colors, and fonts. I tried a bunch of different versions, but none of them were quite right.
I showed my designs to a few friends to get their opinion. Some liked this one design that had a stylized basketball with the city skyline inside it. Others thought it was too busy. Some other friends really like a design with a bold "NYK" lettermark, others thought it was too simple.
I took their feedback and went back to the drawing board. I tried to combine the best elements of each design into something new. I simplified the skyline, made the "NYK" more prominent, and played around with the colors some more. Orange and blue, obviously.
Finally, after a lot of tweaking, I came up with a design I was happy with. It's a circular logo with a basketball in the center. The basketball has a simplified silhouette of the New York City skyline inside it. Around the basketball, it says "New York Knicks" in a bold, modern font. I kept the classic orange and blue, but I used slightly different shades to make it pop a bit more.
My Thoughts
- It was a fun project. It was cool to try and create something for a team I love.
- Design is hard. It's not as easy as it looks to come up with something that looks good and represents what you want it to.
- Getting feedback is important. It's helpful to hear what other people think of your work, even if you don't always agree with them.
So yeah, that's my story about trying to design a new logo for the Knicks. It might not be perfect, but I'm pretty proud of it. Maybe one day they'll change their logo, and maybe, just maybe, they'll use something like mine. A guy can dream, right?
