Designer hit a home run with iconic baseball logo
JERRY DIOR ( 1932 — 201 5 )
Jerry Dior, whose design of a hitter awaiting a pitch is the universally recognized symbol of Major League Baseball, as well as one of the most visible and influential graphic images of our time, died May 10 at his home in Edison, N.J. He was 82.
The cause was colon cancer, said his wife, Lita Dior.
Dior was an illustrator and graphic designer for a New York marketing and design company, Sandgren & Murtha, when it received a contract from Major League Baseball in 1968. He was assigned to create an image to commemorate baseball’s 100th anniversary, to be observed in 1969.
In a single afternoon, sketching with Magic Markers, Dior came up with one of the most enduring brand designs in marketing history — but he would wait decades to gain recognition for his work.
His image of a batter awaiting a pitch stands in white silhouette between a field of blue on the left and an angled slice of red on the right. The words “Major League Baseball” appear at the bottom in Helvetica capital letters.
“That design looks every bit as contemporary today as it did then,” said Paul Lukas, who runs a website, UniWatch.com, devoted to athletic uniforms and imagery. “Although it was a pre-digital design, it transcends the era in which it was created. I don’t think Jerry was out to create something that outlasted him, but he absolutely did create a masterpiece.”
The logo was intended for just a single season, but in the years since, it has become the lasting trademark of Major League Baseball. It is emblazoned on every cap, uniform, helmet and jacket worn on the field by players, managers and umpires. It appears on all officially sanctioned merchandise, the MLB.com website and on anything having to do with its corporate identity.
Soon after Dior’s design appeared, it became the model for the logo of the National Basketball Association, which was designed by one of his colleagues at Sandgren & Murtha. It later served as the template for logos representing the Professional Golfers’ Association, Major League Soccer, IndyCar auto racing and other sports.
The MLB logo “was a real breakthrough in sports, because it’s a very powerful graphic expression,” Alan Siegel, who designed the NBA logo and was Dior’s supervisor at Sandgren & Murtha, told the Wall Street Journal in 2008. “It has set the tone for many of the brand identities that are being used by sports organizations around the world.”
In 1969, Dior noticed his logo on the sleeves of the uniforms of his hometown New York Mets, as they won the World Series. But as baseball blossomed into a multibillion-dollar business, he did not reap a penny in royalties.
During his career, Dior created designs and packaging for Kellogg’s, Nabisco and Howard Johnson’s .The baseball logo was just another assignment done on contract; when it was done, he moved on to the next job.
In 2009, after the Wall Street Journal and ESPN.com highlighted Dior’s contribution, baseball officials belatedly gave him credit for a design that remains virtually unchanged from the day he drew it. He was honoured at ceremonies at New York’s Yankee Stadium and Citi Field and gave a talk at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
“Every other design I’ve done has been dropped or changed or updated over the years,” he said in 2008. “This is the only thing I can point to that hasn’t changed in 40 years. It’s the proudest I’ve ever been of my work.”
Jerry Nicholas Dior was born May 14, 1932, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Dior attended the Art Students League of New York and the Pratt Institute. He served in the Korean War, then worked for printing companies before joining Sandgren & Murtha in the 1960s. Shortly after completing his baseball design, Dior became a freelance illustrator and graphic designer.