Baseball’s brightest stars have gathered in the Lone Star State for the annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game, hosted by the Texas Rangers in Arlington.
Every year, alongside the big game, the Home Run Derby, the fan events, and all the other fun that comes with hosting the Mid-Summer Classic, a carefully planned, developed, and designed identity package is created. This package includes everything from the game logo to the secondary branding, the auxiliary events, and even the background and borders of signage throughout.
And naturally, every year I want to know how this happens.
In a video chat SportsLogos.Net had with Jason Yeadon, the Senior Creative Director at Major League Baseball, I asked about the process that goes into designing an All-Star Game package (specifically this one).
“We met with the Texas Rangers about two years ago to figure out what they wanted out of this game,” Yeadon explained. “I talked to them about their club history, their visuals, their look and feel, and how we can express that into a mark for the All-Star Game.”
“It wasn’t even a formal conversation, just a discussion,” Yeadon continued. “We sent them a questionnaire based on a few bullet points, which then turned into a discussion — who Texas is, who current Texas is, and what they ultimately wanted to hit home with was, even though the city of Arlington is where they are, they’re really all of Texas. They’re one of the only professional sports teams to have ‘Texas’ across their chest, and they’re proud of that.”
When the Texas Rangers hosted the All-Star Game in 1995, the theme of the logo was more focused on the team itself. The logo was essentially a clone of the team’s then-new alternate logo, featuring a star on a circle resembling a sheriff’s badge.
Once Yeadon and his team at Major League Baseball got the overall theme of “Texas” from the Rangers, they went to work studying different ways they could tell the story of Texas, the Rangers, as well as the All-Star Game itself.
“We definitely saw this Texas pride and this big bold feeling, making sure we wanted to have that in the mark,” said Yeadon. “We looked at different shapes, and we kept going back to the state map. Texas loves Texas, and that was where we started. From there we developed these different pieces around the shape of Texas that gets across that it’s a diverse community in Arlington and the surrounding area.”
One thing that’s certain about the design of the 2024 MLB All-Star Game logo is that it’s for an event taking place in Texas. The main element is a large navy blue state map of Texas, and if that wasn’t enough, a red banner wraps around the top portion of the state with TEXAS written across it. Surrounding the entire logo is a band of red and orange stars and flourishes, “ALL STAR GAME” is then splashed across the front in giant beige letters.
“We brought in this colour palette for the logo, which was similar to the Rangers, but with a little extra warmth,” Yeadon described. “It’s a warm community, the game is right in the middle of summer and it’s pretty hot down there, so making sure it felt like it was this festive environment and a celebration of baseball in July.”
In addition to the Rangers getting some attention via the colour scheme, they also get a nod courtesy of the typeface across the main part of the logo.
“The font [of the All-Star Game wordmark] is reminiscent of the Rangers’ font with the spur typeface. It has this rough edge, a refined look where parts of it are rough, and then it gets super refined. The overall style of the game is this raw look, whether it’s embossed leather or screen printed, a little dusty, but then super refined.”
You can see this same font style across the front of the American League and National League’s 2024 MLB All-Star Game uniforms.
Like most of Major League Baseball’s “jewel events”, the logo was designed with a look towards the design trends of the future rather than something more traditional or retro.
“We didn’t want this to feel like old Texas. This feels super new, fresh, and modern, and that’s the approach we wanted to take.”
LINK: A history of MLB All-Star Game logos
The 2024 MLB All-Star Game will be played at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, on Tuesday, July 16th at 8:00 p.m. ET.
