The man behind the brands
Fisher has made logos and designs for Arizona teams such as the Suns, D-Backs, Coyotes and Mercury.
Greg Fisher paused to examine the sea of papers surrounding him. There, spread out across an enormous conference-room table, was Fisher’s life work in Arizona sports, a smorgasbord of sports logos and designs that he and his team of graphic artists had created over the years.
It was there, nestled in his Phoenix studio, that the 63-year-old Fisher really paused for the first time to examine his robust impact on the local sports landscape, which included serving as the driving force behind the branding of so many local professional sports teams such as the Suns, Diamondbacks, Coyotes, Mercury and others.
“I think it’s hard not to be prideful,” Fisher said, “when you see your work in Rome or you see your work outside the palace gates in Great Britain. Just people waiting in line who have no idea who I am and couldn’t care less, but they’re wearing my gear on their head or they’re wearing a jersey or t-shirt that I built.”
Fisher, which is also the name of his design firm, has been a staple in the market since he was chosen to rebrand the Suns pri
or to the 1992-93 season. Then-owner Jerry Colangelo was looking to freshen the franchise’s image for the move to the new America West Arena (now Talking Stick Resort Arena) and arrival of star player Charles Barkley.
A business associate had recommended Fisher’s name to Colangelo and Fisher was later told he should give Colangelo’s office a call. A woman answered the phone and told Fisher, “Mr. Colangelo has been waiting on your call.”
Fisher, who was only in his mid-30s at the time, wasn’t buying it.
“I was like, ‘My name is Greg Fisher. You must have the wrong person; Jerry Colangelo isn’t waiting for me to call.’”
But he was. Colangelo told Fisher to drive down to the Suns’ old offices on Central Avenue and Thomas Road in Phoenix. About an hour later, Fisher was face to face with the godfather of Arizona sports.
Colangelo shot straight with Fisher. The Suns wanted a new brand, and they were set to hire three design firms, Fisher’s included. Two of them would receive $5,000 payment, and the third would be the Suns’ exclusive design firm.
Fisher knew Colangelo’s origins were in Chicago with the Bulls, a team with a logo that has been left unchanged since 1966. Working with a number of people, including Bryan Colangelo, Jerry’s son and former general manager of the Suns, Fisher inferred the Suns weren’t in the market for a total makeover and likely just wanted some modernization.
The result was a slanted logo with a new streaking basketball design and typeface, a more trendy look but one that still maintained the spirit of the original branding, including the use of the “Suns” wordmark as an ambigram, a word that can be read the same right-side up and upside down.
“Looking at the NBA as an example,” Bryan Colangelo said, “there are very few logos that have stood the test of time. There are a couple you don’t want to mess with — the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics clearly stand out. And some of the newer ones haven’t had a need to change, like the Miami Heat. But the notion that you need to keep things fresh and relevant with your customers and fans is hugely important.”
To date, nearly 30 years later, Fisher is still the driving force behind each aspect of the Suns’ branding. In addition to the Suns’ primary logos, Fisher’s team created the popular secondary logo depicting the shape of a bird — a phoenix — in flames above a basketball, and the letters “PHX” as a crest, among many others. Fisher also works with the team and the NBA to design the team’s uniforms, court designs and video content.
“The one thing Greg was able to do was transition from our classic logo and keep alive the spirit of what the original was,” said Bryan, who remains close friends with Fisher. “Greg was successful in evolving us with a changing marketplace.”
The Suns’ rebrand was a large undertaking to be sure, but Fisher’s success with the Suns landed him more work with the Colangelos than he could have ever imagined. The opening of America West Arena in the early 1990s led to the Colangelos’ forming of Phoenix Arena Sports, a company that would end up owning several professional sports teams with the goal to get more tenants in the new building.
Those tenants included the Arizona Rattlers (Arena Football League), Phoenix Mercury (Women’s National Basketball Association), Arizona Sandsharks (Continental Indoor Soccer League) and the Phoenix Smash (World Team Tennis). The teams’ logos, uniforms and other branding would be created by Fisher, inciting a tornado of work for Fisher and his team.
Right about that time, Fisher was joined by partner Mike Campbell and the firm became known as Campbell Fisher. The two were close friends while attending the University of Kansas, where Fisher, a Kansas City native, starred as a long-jumper for the Jayhawks. Shortly thereafter, designer Steve Ditko came aboard to create Campbell Fisher Ditko, which rose to become one of the largest graphic design firms in Arizona during the 1990s.
But the work was only just getting started. Between late 1993 and early 1995, the process of bringing a Major League Baseball expansion team to Phoenix played out. Once again, Jerry Colangelo was right in the middle of all of it.
Fisher’s firm was at the top of Colangelo’s list to build the brand, and it wasn’t long before they were hard at work to develop logos, colors, fonts, etc. for a team that hadn’t even been named yet. Fisher still has early concept sketches for several naming options, including the Rattlers, Scorpions, and even Coyotes.
“We had so many great designers and everyone in the office wanted a piece of it,” Campbell said of the process behind branding Arizona’s MLB club. “It was highly competitive in our office. We always critiqued each others ideas and the best idea won. But with the Diamondbacks, they ended up liking a lot of them.”
Eventually, it came down to two names: Scorpions and Diamondbacks. Colangelo held a vote in his office to determine the winner. The attendees mulled over Fisher’s working designs for both nicknames.
“There were eight people in the room and I was the ninth,” Fisher, who received a last-minute vote, said. “And to be honest with you, the name was going to be the Scorpions.”
But, as Fisher remembers, the only vote that mattered belonged to Colangelo.
“We looked at the presentations and boards and so on and so forth,” Colangelo said. “I said I wasn’t voting and I would count the nine ballots. I got them back and the final response was 6-3 Scorpions, and I turned to the room and said: ‘The name of the team is the Diamondbacks.’”
With the naming settled, Fisher’s firm could finalize the Diamondbacks’ branding, which would prove to be a unique and identifiable look that excited Arizonans even if it irked baseball traditionalists.
Still, Fisher recalls some of his ideas being censored. For example, in his original concepts, Fisher designed matte-black helmets that featured a snakeskin pattern. The Diamondbacks, along with many MLB teams in recent years, wound up adopting matte-finished helmets during an internal rebrand in 2016, as well as similar diamond-gradient patterning on their jerseys and pants.
Fisher also rebranded the Diamondbacks in 2007 when the team wanted to switch up its color palette and modernize its image. There were roadblocks there, too, in the form of resistance from MLB to use a nickname — “Dbacks” — on the front of a jersey, which was an unprecedented style choice. There was also a legal spat with illusionist David Blaine over the team’s secondary logo that was designed to resemble the head of a snake while spelling out the letters “db.”
Colangelo would feed Campbell Fisher Ditko one more big project before the storm of the ‘90s would pass. Colangelo helped facilitate the arrival of a National Hockey League team to Phoenix, and recommended Fisher’s firm to Winnipeg Jets owners Richard Burke and Steven Gluckstern to build a new team identity.
And so Fisher’s firm built out the Phoenix Coyotes, complete with a logo featuring a Kachina-style, hockey-playing coyote to go along with some of the most unique uniforms the sport has ever seen. To date, they are perhaps some of Fisher’s most iconic designs.
“The common link is Jerry to a number of those things,” Bryan Colangelo said. “Baseball, hockey, Mercury, Rattlers, Suns ... Greg has been at the forefront of all of that.”
As time went by, Ditko and Campbell eventually went their separate ways and by 2006 it was just Fisher again. And while the firm continued to build some sports brands, including the Phoenix Roadrunners (East Coast Hockey League) and even bidding to design the Tucson Sidewinders (former Diamondbacks Triple-A affiliate), Fisher made even more headway in the corporate world with clients such as APS, Annexus Group, CopperPoint Insurance and Evil Controllers.
Still, Fisher never stopped trying to push the envelope with his sports clients, which include NBA teams outside the Valley such as the Golden State Warriors, Toronto Raptors, Sacramento
Kings and Dallas Mavericks, among others. One of Fisher’s current clients is Real Madrid, a legendary European soccer outfit that hasn’t changed its logo since its inception in 1902. Fisher is developing secondary logos and marks to help diversify the club’s merchandising and marketing.
But whether in Spain or Arizona, Fisher’s eye for creativity isn’t lost on his clients. One innovation that sticks with Bryan Colangelo is his belief that the Suns were the first NBA team to use a city abbreviation on its jerseys, a proposal that incited some push-back from the NBA.
“With uniform design and court design,” Bryan said, “the league has to approve everything. We went through some battles, but I think we were the first team to do the first abbreviated city name. Now, obviously, you see other cities doing that, like Atlanta. It just so happened it was not only a short way of saying Phoenix but also the airport designation.”
One issue on which the NBA would not budge was Fisher’s idea to put a zero before single-digit numbers on the back of the jersey to make them appear as a double-digit number. Colangelo said this was a trend in athletic wear at the time and that he and Fisher pushed hard to get Penny Hardaway’s jersey to read “01” on the back.
“You get a sense that he is in touch with what is now and what is impactful,” Colangelo said. “He knows how to bring creativity to the fold but also engage his clients at the same time.”
Over time, Fisher’s relationship with the younger Colangelo transcended the business world and became a close friendship. Their families shared a vacation home in Manhattan Beach, California, and during his time managing the Suns, Colangelo remembers Fisher’s two sons frequently offering advice on player transactions.
“I often wondered if it were their ideas being spoken or Greg’s,” Colangelo said.
For Fisher, as he examines those dozens of sketches, renderings and polished designs in front of him, those relationships are the first thing that comes to mind for the man behind the brands of several of Arizona’s most-recognizable sports teams.
“I think what it does is trigger so many emotions from so many great times,” Fisher said. “Those relationships … I just want our marketplace to be successful. I feel a more kindred spirit with the local teams. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I didn’t have a vested interest because I’m a huge sports fan and I have two boys who are huge sports fans. I’ve been really fortunate to get to work with great people.”
Fisher said he doesn’t own one piece of gear he designed, although he did purchase one recently — an original Coyotes jersey for his oldest son as a Christmas gift. Still, for the artist behind the logos, Fisher maintains he has never worn a Suns jersey, never worn a Diamondbacks cap.
“It’s not for me,” Fisher said. “It would look cheesy if the guy who designed it was wearing it.”
Fisher is a glitch in the matrix of Arizona’s sports landscape. Players come and go. Executives come and go. Owners come and go. Fisher, however, never left. He’s still here, still working, still innovating.
Still, Fisher is more than fine without the attention, a fact reflected by the understated exterior of his studio adjacent to the 50th Street light-rail station in Phoenix. Under the building’s maroon awning is a small white, rectangular sign above the door that spells out the company name in all lowercase letters — “fisher” — and only taking up the southeast corner of the sign.
The simplicity in his own company’s branding, Fisher said, is all by design.
“If you look at my website,” Fisher said, “it says we are the brand behind the brand. I don’t give a (expletive) if anyone knows about Fisher. That’s not my job. My job is to make sure they know about everyone else that Fisher works for. That’s just the truth.”
Still, a second look at the sign above the door reveals something different. Under the company name is a small circled “F” where the trademark sign would usually go — a hidden detail for those, like Fisher, who can look at things a little differently.
“That’s who we are,” Fisher said.