The story behind the iconic ‘Kachina’ logo
The late Steve Weston said it best when he covered the Coyotes’ original logo reveal for on April 8, 1996, writing that “if anyone expected a logo that looked something like Wile E. Coyote of cartoon fame or the overdone Southwest artist’s figure of a coyote — a handkerchief tied around his neck, howling against the background of a full moon on the desert — that person will be disappointed.”
Indeed, those expecting anything traditional upon the original Winnipeg Jets’ relocation to Phoenix prior to the 1996-97 season were sorely mistaken. Instead, Valley residents were treated to a truly unique logo — an almost abstract rendition of a Kachina figure as a hockey-playing coyote — to go along with a distinctive set of branding they could call their own.
Almost a quarter-century later, it’s a design that has endured through a sports landscape that recycles and retires logos with alarming frequency. In Arizona, where it has remained a fan favorite, the design won azcentral sports’ bracket challenge that garnered over 13,000 votes on Twitter to name the greatest Arizona sports logo of all time.
David Haney can’t remember the first time he saw a Kachina doll. All he knows is how fascinated he was by it. Visiting Arizona for the first time in his life, Haney, then the NHL’s creative director, traveled to the desert to meet with Coyotes’ leadership.
At that point, the Coyotes weren’t actually the Coyotes yet. There was a contest to name the team, and it had been narrowed down to two choices — the Coyotes or Scorpions. The NHL took a vested interest in teams’ branding, with Haney and Fred Scalera, then in charge of the NHL’s worldwide licensing, spearheading the effort from the league’s perspective.
During what was a transitional time for the league, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman wanted the league to have a “national footprint,” Haney said, relaying that the NHL had a desire to do something different with Phoenix’s branding.
As he searched for inspiration and took in the new surroundings, something caught Haney’s eye as he perused the gift shop at the Hyatt Regency Phoenix.
“We get so used to seeing the things around us and what they look like,” Haney said. “When fresh eyes come in, they can provide an outside perspective. One of the things I was intrigued about … was that Kachina doll, which had an interesting design and rich cultural history.”
The NHL had identified Phoenixbased design firm Campbell Fisher Ditko, and more specifically artist Greg Fisher, as the one to actually create the logo. Fisher had a prior business relationship with Jerry Colangelo, who played an instrumental role in bringing NHL hockey to Arizona along with original Coyotes owners Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern.
“You had the guy who had that good local knowledge,” Scalera said of Fisher. “He understood some of the do’s and dont’s of sports. … That was a nice advantage, to have people there who really got it.”
Fisher remembers Haney relaying his fascination in seeing a Kachina doll for the first time. Fisher himself recalls meetings in Colangelo’s office, where the businessman kept expansive collections of the figures, which feature prominently in the culture of the Hopi people who are native to Arizona and other areas of the American Southwest.
“I think we were trying to find things that would demonstrate the heritage of the people that were represented here in Arizona,” Fisher said. “David was a New York guy and had never seen a Kachina before, so we felt like maybe we should push down that direction.”
In Arizona, Haney met Shawn Hunter, who was the team’s first president and was tasked with facilitating the branding process with Haney. It was an easy relationship since the two had just worked together on the Colorado Avalanche’s logo design the year prior, when the Quebec Nordiques relocated to Denver.
The message from the NHL on the Phoenix branding was clear: No angry animals. Two teams, the San Jose Sharks and Florida Panthers, were newcomers to the league in the few years prior and both used logos with semi-realistic animals in aggressive positions. The league wanted that trend to stop with Phoenix.
Once the team had settled on “Coyotes,” the design process began. From those early meetings with Haney and Hunter, Fisher knew the Kachina was a subject of interest. Mike Campbell, one of Fisher’s partners at the time, remembers being the driving force behind designing the coyote head and that Fisher was the brain behind the Kachinastyle body.
Fisher remembers the NHL’s reaction at his first draft of the completed Kachina logo.
“It was a very intricate logo and very detailed for that time,” Fisher said. “It was a completely different look. The league came back and said, ‘Whoa, this is never gonna fly.’ They thought it was too many colors and too many things going on, so we just kept working to simplify it so it could work on a sweater.”
Eventually, Fisher and his team settled on a color palette for the Kachina design and simplified it enough for submission.
“We all identified the Kachina as the most distinctive and most representative of the Southwest,” Hunter said. “If we were going to do something bold and different, which we were, that was it. The first time I saw that creative direction, I knew that was it. Just a ton of credit goes to Greg, who was a creative force on that logo. I just remember the process being fun and pretty easy.”
The final result was a coyote figure in a Kachina style, standing on ice stakes and holding a hockey stick. The head of the coyote was half-covered in an old-school goalie mask, asymmetrically drawn to form a loose “A” shape for Arizona. Under the coyote are the words “Phoenix” and “Coyotes” stacked on top of one another and placed on a black background that creates the illusion of a hockey puck.
Prior to team and city officials revealing the branding in a five-hour ceremony on April 8, 1996 at America West Arena in Phoenix, the designs were brought before Hopi leadership by the NHL, which was in line with league policy at the time.
Haney remembers it being a smooth process and that Hopi officials were “more than fine” with the logo, but the initial reception by fans was mixed when the world got its first glimpse at the Kachina coyote.
“What a dog,” one fan told
Bob McManaman, who was also covering the event that night. “Why couldn’t they have come up with a better name or a better-looking picture?”
For the NHL and the rest of the sports world, the Kachina logo was a relatively sophisticated and obscure design. And while most Valley residents embraced it with zeal, it left others outside Arizona scratching their heads. Just what were they looking at?
“I think in general it was positive,” Hunter said of the initial reaction. “You probably had some hockey traditionalists take a deep breath and a step back, but for a new team in a new market, especially a non-traditional market, I think it was received well.”
But even after the Coyotes lifted the curtain on its various designs, which included a crescent moon to resemble a “C” as well as a three-dimensional hockey puck as a secondary logo, there was still the matter of creating the actual jerseys, which elicited some varying opinions from the designers.
“To be honest with you,” Fisher said, “the most controversial thing at the time for the sweater was that nobody liked the banding on the collars. They thought it was too busy.”
Haney wanted the sweaters to only bear the coyote head as the jersey crest, while Hunter and the Coyotes lobbied for the entire coyote “to tell the whole story,” Hunter said. Eventually, Hunter and Haney, who had worked so tightly on the Avalanche designs in 1995, “agreed to disagree,” Haney said.
Eventually, Haney got his wish when the Coyotes introduced a third jersey in 1998 that featured the isolated coyote head.
“For those inside the Valley,” Haney said, “this would become almost instantly recognizable. You see (Kachina figures) everywhere. But I think for those outside, they might have some vague familiarity with Arizona and the Southwest, and they would get the colors and the sort of native interpretation of the artwork.
Despite the fact that the Kachina logo is undoubtedly the Coyotes’ most recognizable symbol, it was essentially closeted for about half of the team’s history, having been swapped out for a new logo and color scheme in 2003 and not touched again until 2015.
The Coyotes’ decision to change logos was understandable. The Burke family, which still resides in the Valley, sold the team to Steve Ellman in 2001, which led to a move to a new arena in Glendale just a few years later. As is common for professional sports teams, the Coyotes’ change of scenery came with a change in branding.
The Kachina was replaced by a howling coyote head and designed by a separate firm. The red color was lightened slightly to what is commonly referred to as “Sedona red,” and the rust, green and purple were removed entirely. The Coyotes kept just one logo from Fisher’s package, the crescent moon, although the purple was replaced by red.
The Coyotes wore the howling coyote on various jerseys for a dozen years before pulling out of retirement the Kachina, a logo that had remained popular with vintage collectors and sports design enthusiasts.
“There has always been a crazy secondary market for it,” Fisher said of the Kachina merchandise. “I’m a designer and I’ve designed a lot of brands in many markets, but this thing has become its own beast and has its own cult in the sports logo world, which I think is really cool.”
The Coyotes’ throwback nights were so popular with fans it spurred the team to adopt the old Kachina sweater, with slight modifications, as its official third jersey prior to the 2018-19 season. The team dons the classic sweaters for Saturday home games and other special occasions.
The Coyotes also have been utilizing the Kachina logo in various marketing and public relations campaigns as well. Both Phil Kessel and Taylor Hall, two marquee players brought to Arizona via trade in the last year, were introduced with Kachina jerseys at their respective press conferences.
Scalera remembers how the Buffalo Sabres eventually returned to their original logo after 15 years of tinkering with different, modernized designs. He wonders whether the Coyotes are headed down the same path.
“The fans just wanted to go back to the one they remembered,” Scalera said of the Sabres’ branding timeline. “They had gone through three or four iterations of it and eventually came back to where it began. Maybe there’s a little bit of that same feeling out in Phoenix for that original one and the uniqueness of it.”
Still, whichever logo the Coyotes choose to use, there is little doubt the Kachina still occupies a special place in the hearts of Valley residents.
“Characters in sports identities come and go,” Fisher said. “They’re fashionable sometimes and then in other times they’re not fashionable. Time changes the perspective.
“... What is so cool about the Kachina is that it has not only endured, but that it’s gotten popular again.”