Opinion BY Armin

Motorsports Arena Maker gets Classier

Before the first race of the famous Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1959 took place, a new organization, International Speedway Corporation (ISC), was formed by NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr. in 1953 to oversee the construction of the racing complex and manage it. Since then, along with the explosion in popularity of professional car racing, ISC has become one of the most intrinsic organizations of this sport, owning thirteen major motorsports arenas in the U.S. This week they introduced a new logo that replaces a 12-year-old, going-on-fifty logo.

“As the leading promoter of major motorsports entertainment, we felt it was time to refresh and modernize our corporate logo while maintaining certain attributes of the previous version to reflect our proud heritage,” stated ISC Chief Executive Officer Lesa France Kennedy. “The new logo reflects the Company’s continuing growth and innovation in motorsports entertainment.”
— Press Release

For a company that hosts a good amount of a sport worth billions of dollars, the old logo was unacceptable by any given standard. It was unprofessional, unsightly and, to a certain degree, unreadable. The new logo isn’t anything that will earn a place in the canon of identity design, far from it, but it’s at least professional, moderate to see and readable. In fact, it would have been quite an improvement had the designers held back in the unnecessary gradient that swooshes across the icon. The typography is simple and strong — although I would have gone with monoweight letterforms — and the icon is a decent evolution of the previous one, even if the spacing in the frame is too thin. With a few more pushes in execution this could have been a great redesign.

Thanks to Dak Dillon for the tip.

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Before the first race of the famous Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1959 took place, a new organization, International Speedway Corporation (ISC), was formed by NASCAR founder Bill France, Sr. in 1953 to oversee the construction of the racing complex and manage it. Since then, along with the explosion in popularity of professional car racing, ISC has become one of the most intrinsic organizations of this sport, owning thirteen major motorsports arenas in the U.S. This week they introduced a new logo that replaces a 12-year-old, going-on-fifty logo.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners