Oilpressure

I’ve always been a logo guy. I guess that comes from my college days, when I got my degree in marketing. My wife pays attention to logos too. Susan was an art major and got her degree in graphic design, when computers were very new and a lot of that was still done on drawing boards. As you can imagine, there is a lot of interest in our household when it comes to each logo for the Indianapolis 500.

When I was a budding Indianapolis 500 fan growing up in the 60s, logos were not that big of a deal. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosted one event each year, and we all knew what that was – the Indianapolis 500. There were a couple of variations on the traditional Wing & Wheel logo to the present logo, but that’s all there was for years.

Then, in 1981 – IMS designed a specific logo for the 65th Running, which reflects the style of the times.

Since then, there has been a different logo for each Indianapolis 500, with varying degrees of taste – good and bad. When the Brickyard 400 came about in 1994, it warranted its own event logo. Then Formula One, Moto GP and the GMR Grand Prix each got their own logos each and every year. For our purposes, this post will only focus on some of the Indianapolis 500 logos that have come about over the years – some of my favorites and not-so-favorites.

Some of my favorites include:

1986

1991

1992

1994

1995

1999

2002

2007

2008

2011

2013

2014

2019

I really liked the 2019 logo, except for two things – only one of which is visible. Practically most logos prior to the 2019 logo said Indianapolis 500. The 2019 logo began the regular use of Indy 500. History indicates that Tony Hulman did not care for the term Indy 500 at all. Supposedly in the first half of the past century, the only people that called the city Indy were out-of-towners. No Hoosiers referred to the city as Indy.

Consequently, Hulman disliked the name Indy 500. Those feelings were passed along to Donald Davidson and ultimately to people like me. That is why in fourteen years of my writings, I always refer to the race strictly as The Indianapolis 500. Naturally I would bristle at a logo that says Indy 500. I’m sure that younger folks or non-traditionalists will disagree with me, but that’s my one of my two complaints about the 2019 logo.

The other is that it is a template. It is essentially the same basic logo used for the past five years. Yes, it goes from bricks, to a checkered flag, to the Pagoda, to the wheat of the Harvest Classic, but the basic design is the same. This year, it looks like the forgot they had to come up with a logo, so they just took the underlying template and used that at the last minute.

I have to say that the 2023 Indianapolis 500 logo may be one of my least favorites, simply due to the lack of imagination that went into it.

Speaking of logos I don’t like. Here are a few, with special attention for my all-time least favorite – the 2012 logo, with the 2017 logo a close second.

1983

1989

1990

2001

2003

2004

2006

2012

2017

I am sure there are some of you who despise the ones I really like, and some that love the ones I find objectionable. That’s why we are free to have opinions.

In the 90s and early 2000s, it used to be that we learned the next year’s logo when we see the ticket renewal form for the next year in the program. Once we got into the digital age, the new logo magically appeared on the race website the day after the race. Recently, there has been an announcement at some point in the Month of May unveiling the next year’s logo.

My hope for the future is that they realize they have gotten about all they can from the template of the last five years. I would also like for them to get away from templates altogether. The Super Bowl used to have very unique logos that played off of whatever city the game was in. Recently, they went to just putting emphasis on the Roman numerals, making that the only difference from year to year. It didn’t take real long for the Super Bowl logos to get real boring and start running together. The last few Indianapolis 500 logos have gotten very boring. If they are utilizing the templates to save money, Susan has told me she would gladly offer up her graphic design talents to design a new logo each year, for free.

I hope they will get back to a very unique logo for each year, where some thought and imagination goes into it – and not anything as boring as this year’s logo.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 8, 2023 at 4:02 am and is filed under Indianapolis 500. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.