Wally Krantz’s
Outside Order

National Football League

What began as a brand architecture project became a design evolution of the NFL shield and the creation of a proprietary typeface, Endzone.

The decision to redesign the shield became clear after seeing that the brand architecture system would be significantly stronger if there was some shared DNA between the system elements and the shield.

The legacy shield had 25 (23 visible) stars with an overlaid football and the rounded NFL letterforms.

The stars didn’t have a connection to any quantity of teams (there were never 23 or 25 teams in the League), the football (affectionately called “the hamburger” or “the U.F.O.”) was rather flat and got lost in the field of stars, and the NFL letterforms looked quite awkward when used outside of the shield.

The redesign field of stars used eight stars to represent each of the four divisions in the AFC and the NFC. A redrawn football was drawn to be in flight and modeled off the perspective of the Lombardi Trophy. The redesigned wedged slab serif logotype became the foundation for a proprietary NFL typeface that we named Endzone.

Every element of the new system was designed to thrive in digital, print, broadcast, uniforms, and on-field graphics.

National Football League

Creative direction and design by Wally with Annika Kappenstein, Bogdan Geana, Jane Boynton, and Nao Okawa at Landor.

Strategy led by Ken Runkel and Dave Gaglione at Landor.

Endzone typeface concept and design by Wally with Annika Kappenstein. Foundation characters were drawn by Annika and the full character set was extrapolated, refined, and digitized by Chester Jenkins.

Brand refresh
Visual identity system
Typeface design
Signature system
Brand guidelines

Wally Krantz’s Outside Order is based in Brooklyn, New York.

Contact wk@outorinc.com

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