As a sports fan, you may not put much thought into a team’s logo, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t important. From a branding perspective, a good logo is crucial. In fact, a logo is often the first thing others will see when they decide what your brand stands for and what it can do for them. When it comes to the NFL, teams are definitely brands. That’s partly why I was interested in how NFL fans would rank the logos of the league’s 32 teams.

I recruited 1,488 fans, primarily from the community at r/NFL, to participate in a MaxDiff research study with the goal of understanding which NFL logos work and which do not. While MaxDiff is a great technique for ranking any long list of items, it particularly shines when it comes to ranking logos. When people are asked to rank 30+ images, it quickly becomes apparent just how impossibly difficult (not to mention time-consuming) that task can be. It is much easier for people to view sets of four logos and choose the one they like most and least in each set. The experience is more enjoyable, less time-consuming, and it yields much more rich and accurate data. That’s why Maxdiff studies like this one are commonly used by big ad agencies and their clients when they have a large number of logo or ad designs and need to choose a few to put into market.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of the respondents in this research are hardcore NFL fans. How would you answer the following question?





“On a scale of 1 – 5, with ‘5’ being ‘extremely closely’ and ‘1’ being ‘not closely at all,’ how closely would you say you follow NFL football?”



In this research, a majority (55%) chose a ‘5’ and 35% chose a ‘4’. In other words, about 9 out of 10 respondents are close followers of the NFL, which means that almost all of the people in this research will have seen these logos before, probably hundreds or even thousands of times in a variety of contexts. It is something worth keeping in mind when looking at the results.

In market research, ratings and rankings are all well and good, but we really want to understand why people feel the way they do. I’m not a graphic designer, so it was difficult for me to speculate on why certain logos rose to the top. That’s why I partnered with Eugenie Mclellan, a freelance graphic designer here in New Orleans, to get her take on each logo and their rankings. Eugenie (“The Graphic Designer”) was quick to point out that she’s not a hardcore NFL fan (she’s a ‘2’ on the 1-5 scale), but she does openly identify as a Saints fan. Regardless, she’s probably better than most at separating her opinions on the logos from her feelings for the team. The Panthers’ logo is her favorite from a design standpoint, so take that for what you will. We discussed each logo in a random order, so as not to bias her opinions, but overall she generally agreed with the rankings. Of course there were some big exceptions, which you can read about below.

Now to the results!

A Graphic Designer’s Point of View

#32 Cleveland Browns