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Crafting a logo for a sports tournament is no easy job. It has to appeal to sports fans, who are notoriously conservative. It’s going to have to work at tiny sizes, on a phone screen, and at massive sizes like a billboard or a stadium banner. The best sports logos manage all of the above.
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It also has to make its point quickly and efficiently, because ordinary (non-designer) people are barely going to give it a second glance. So it usually pays to make the central visual idea blindingly obvious.
With this in mind, when I first saw the logo for the 2027 FIVB Men’s Volleyball World Cup, my reaction was: “Er… what that’s supposed to be exactly?
The meaning behind the design
Representing the tournament taking place in Poland next September, the logo emblem is a tall white shape with spikes at the top, a cluster of small squares in the middle and wavy stripes flaring out towards the base.
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Perhaps I’m missing something, not being a volleyball fan myself. But to my eyes, it didn’t look like… anything.
According to the press release, the inspiration was the World Cup trophy, whose “industrial form” has been distilled into a minimalist mark. And sure enough, when you look at the very distinctive trophy, it does look a lot like it. But it’s not a pure representation, and that’s deliberate.
Instead, four ideas are said to come together in the logo: the silhouette of the trophy, a circle representing the Earth, a sweeping curve representing the net, and reaching hands and a rising ball for the players. In the press release Maciej Bogusz, marketing director for the local organising committee, also added a fifth: the fans, represented by a wave rippling through the base.
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Once you stare at the logo for a bit and pick out all these elements, yep, they’re all present and correct. But that’s kind of the problem: you have to stare to pick them out. All these concepts don’t just magically mesh into one simple design; indeed, there are so many, that feels like it’d be close to impossible.
At the same time, it annoys the heck out of me when people judge a logo on first sight, because that’s not how a logo should be judged. A logo is not primarily designed to be liked on first sight, it’s designed to work over time.
The history of design is littered with logos that attracted a wave of negativity on first release, yet ended up being loved over time. And I don’t want to make the same mistake here.
So here’s something positive I can say: this doesn’t look like any other sports logo I can think of. There’s no generic shield, no generic ball with a swoosh, no cliches of any kind really.
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Remember the London 2012 logo? It was widely ridiculed at first, but by the time the Olympic Games started, it had become a welcome part of the furniture.
This design now has plenty of time to do the same. Its first big outing is on 3 December, when the draw will take place 125m underground in the Wieliczka Salt Mine (because why not, eh?). And when the games start in Kraków, seven months later, the shape that looks so wrong to me may look, well, entirely right.
Honestly, I’m not convinced yet. But ask me again in September. My answer may be very different.
