State watercolor artist created Spurs logo
Collins is behind the S.A. team’s design, famous to this day
Finis Collins has made a name for himself in San Antonio with his watercolors. But few know that the 93-year-old artist’s most famous work features silver and black.
Collins created the San Antonio Spurs’ world-famous logo, an iconic design that has been close to players’ chests and fans’ hearts for nearly 50 years, emblazoned on jerseys, Tshirts and other merchandise.
“It happened like it was another day’s work,” a humble Collins said. “I didn’t know that it would really take off. You don’t think about it as the one I’d be known for.”
A Spurs logo with the heel band of a spur for a “U” has been a constant since the Spurs’ 1973 debut. Even after a new 50th anniversary logo and three new secondary logos were unveiled recently, the team made it clear its “longstanding primary Spurs logo and icon featuring the classic spur design” will remain unchanged, according to a press release.
Collins drew up the original Spurs logo in 1973 while working at the Pitluk Group, one of the top advertising agencies in San Antonio at the time.
That year, a group of investors led by B.J. “Red” McCombs purchased the Dallas Chaparrals, and they needed a new logo to go with the team’s new name and new home in San Antonio. One of those investors included Jack Pitluk, who ran the Pitluk agency with his brother Louis.
The Pitluk brothers met with McCombs and his management team, then assigned Collins the job to draw up a logo. He never spoke with McCombs or other Spurs owners, though he was told they had one request: Try to get a spur somewhere in the “sig” or logo.
“It could be up in the corner. It could be down at the bottom. I could do it a thousand ways, because they never told me to put the (spur) where it is. It could have been anywhere,” Collins said.
Collins spent two days sketching ideas then submitted three designs. He drew everything by hand, including the Spurs typeface, which he created as a bold 3-D text.
Of the three proposals, only one featured a spur for a “u” in the team name. And the artist was sure McCombs would pick it.
“Everything went so smooth with the Spurs that I think I read his mind,” Collins said.
McCombs and Spurs management approved Collins’ design in a single meeting with no changes. Start to finish, the Spurs logo was developed in less than four days.
When it came time to finalize the logo, Collins already was working on another project, so he asked Pitluk artist Bob Welch to make the Spurs sig camera-ready. Welch retraced and finished the logo in black and white, much like an inker finalizes a penciler’s drawings in comic books.
“Because I was the creator, I get the credit,” Collins said. “But I want you to know that Bob Welch was also a part of that.”
The Spurs have tweaked the main logo over the years, most notably in the 1990s, when swaths of teal, pink and yellow were added behind it. It returned to just silver and black in the early 2000s. Yet the franchise has always stuck with the classic spur design.
San Antonio artist Nellie Gill has known Collins since the early 1980s, when she first took watercolor lessons from him at the Jewish Community Center. She said Collins’ skills with a brush range from realistic to stylistic, and that such talent served him well in designing the Spurs logo.
“I don’t think anyone but Finis could have come up with that design for the Spurs,” Gill said. “I think that’s a history to be remembered.”
Collins says he’s just honored he did the work and feels like he did his best.
“I’m behind the Spurs,” Collins said with a laugh. “I was always behind them.”
And clearly in front of them, too.