Connect with us

Design

A Showcase of bluemedia’s Super Bowl Graphics

It’s no big game without big signage

Published

on

The world’s greatest annual sports spectacle gained its name from a rubber, bouncing ball. During the mid-1960s, the National Football League (NFL) and its then-fledgling rival, the American Football League (AFL), agreed to an ultimate game between the two leagues’ champions. Lamar Hunt, the late owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and one of the game’s architects, struggled with a catchy moniker for the contest. One day, he saw his son playing with the aforementioned ball, and asked him what it was called. When his son responded, “It’s a Superball”, an idea emerged.
College football’s postseason games were known as “bowls”; why not call the pro-football championship the Super Bowl?

The game started humbly; the inaugural, 1967 contest between Hunt’s AFL Chiefs and the NFL’s formidable Green Bay Packers failed to sell out the L.A. Coliseum, and was broadcast on two networks because of then-low broadcast fees. However, its status quickly escalated; Joe Namath’s prophetic guarantee that his New York Jets would upset the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III provided a publicity boon. And, as football’s popularity eclipsed baseball’s – I’m not sure what metrics could be used to measure the paradigm shift, but I estimate it began to happen during the mid- to late-1980s – the game’s organic growth in fans was amplified in its culminating contest.

This past February’s big game attracted staggering viewership. According to CNN’s website, Super Bowl XLIX attracted an average of 114.4 million viewers per minute (Nielsen’s rating system tabulates average viewership every 60 seconds), which exceeded last year’s total by more than two million and established a record. During the fourth quarter, when the New England Patriots snatched a lead and then induced a Seattle Seahawks turnover in the final two minutes to preserve a 28-24 win, the game attracted approximately 120 million viewers each minute.

Of course, a cultural staple such as the Super Bowl transcends the 60 minutes of gridiron action. The two-week buildup that begins after the semifinal (aka conference championship) games, and hits a crescendo at kickoff, includes an onslaught of media blitzes and numerous promotional and social events that provide a lively Super Bowl preamble.

In recent years, Super Bowl host cities – with a few exceptions, such as last year’s staging in NYC – have comprised a rotation of such warm-weather cities as Atlanta, Houston, Miami, New Orleans and, this year, Phoenix. Working in partnership with the AZ Super Bowl Host Committee, NFL officials tabbed bluemedia (Tempe, AZ) to produce 1.2 million sq. ft. of graphics, which entailed 263 individual installations, for University of Phoenix Stadium in suburban Glendale and various prominent buildings throughout greater Phoenix.

“We worked on the project for approximately six months from beginning to end, but, for a lot of pieces, we only had an eight-week turnaround after final approvals,” Jared Smith, bluemedia’s president, said. “This was far and away the largest single project our shop has ever undertaken.”
Enjoy the gallery of bluemedia’s gargantuan handiwork.

Advertisement

The timeless advertising maxim, “You don’t sell the steak; you sell the sizzle”, applies exponentially more for such iconic events as the Super Bowl. Signage rendered large provides unrivaled sizzle; grand-format graphics promote the NFL’s brand, its players that give the game its personality, and, most importantly, the promise of an exciting game that will culminate another successful season for the multibillion-dollar NFL.
 

Advertisement

Subscribe

Advertisement

Most Popular