“Son, I’m Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?”

By Kurt Hunzeker (with some copy points provided by the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl)

“Son, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?”

For the second time in 12 years, the city of Pittsburgh will be hosting the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. While such renowned “baseball cities” like St. Louis have yet to enjoy a Midsummer’s Classic since the Sixties, MLB has once again given the Pirates a chance to rekindle its fan base, and add some “oomph” to the somewhat struggling franchise.

Projected estimates have the economic windfall of the 2006 MLB All-Star Game at $52.3 million for the entire All-Star Week; which now consists of a handful of events, all of which have sponsors spending millions of dollars to MLB for the presenting sponsorship.

The first big domino for the ASG debuts on Tuesday, August 2nd, when the Pirates unveil the ASG logo before its home game. A number of dignitaries will be there…but most notably the designer of the logo, Pittsburgh-native Burton Morris.

Morris’ unique design style should breathe some fresh air in what has become a stagnant template for MLB ASG logos: use the host team’s primary colors, incorporate some feature of the host team’s ballpark, and use a font NOT associated with the team as the dominant text style.

Morris’ work (http://www.burtonmorris.com) can be summed up using adjectives like: bright, colorful, moving and energetic…all adjectives not at all descriptive of most ASG logos. His work has been commissioned for museums and rock concerts, menus, consumer product packaging and print advertisements. So this will not be your run of the mill sports logo.

“I think we've all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically.”

It will be interesting to see how Morris’ logo is received, and the various applications the team will use it (and the design style) for all collateral leading up to the game next year. If I was in charge, I would take this design and:

1. Blanket the city – Every window, door and car should have the artwork proudly displayed. The Seattle Mariners frequently employ this tactic by delivering the season’s particular slogan via a poster or window cling to every business, retail or corporate, in downtown Seattle. It is hard to walk anywhere in downtown Seattle and not see a Mariners’ poster (credit Kevin Martinez, the team’s marketing chief).
2. Uniform the kids – We’re talking above and beyond t-shirts. School book covers, lunch boxes and shoelaces should all have the commemorative logo on it. If a school district has a reading program, every child involved gets a bookmark advertising everything ASG-related.
3. Outfit the ballpark – So what if PNC Park is not that old. Every available nook and cranny should have this design style on it. New signs, new wall coverings…I’d even change the style of the outfield fence.

Here’s the best aspect of using a famed designer for this…it will be timeless. Once the game ends, remove the dated logo, but keep the style up to remind everyone that Pittsburgh put on the best Midsummer’s Classic ever. The ballpark is timeless, so should this logo.

Then again, I’d hate for someone to say this after he/she sees the logo:

“That is, without doubt, the worst pirate I've ever seen.”