I’m finishing up a new font, and decided to test it out on social media by telling the story of one of my first design heroes: Fred Gehrke, who created the first football helmet logo. He’s a hero in my mind because he saw a cool possibility where nobody else did, and then just went and made it happen. ⁠⠀

Like most kids I knew, I was into pro football, but looking back, I think I was as interested in the uniforms and logos as much or more than the games themselves.

I had this neat little book called “The Great NFL Fun Book II” which I read over and over, and still remember some of the jokes (“Which team charges $1 for corn? The Buccaneers!”).

My favorite part of the book presented detailed photos of each team’s logo, helmet and uniforms.

If you look closely, I added pencil notes when a team changed the slightest detail of their uniform, down to the sock stripes and facemask colors.

Yeah, I was a bit different.

The book also had these wonderful cartoons by Jack Davis (of MAD Magazine fame) illustrating key moments in NFL history.

The funniest one is probably this, where Packer Bart Starr, dripping with icicles, “quarterback sneaks” past a frozen-in-midair Cowboy to score the winning touchdown in the 1967 “Ice Bowl”.

In reality, Starr took the snap, tumbled over a pile of players, and landed face down in the frozen grass.

Not nearly as Fun.

But the drawing that I obsessed over was this: a guy sitting on a pile of helmets, painting horns on them.

The caption read: "1948. Helmet logos make their debut. Fred Gehrke, a halfback with the Rams spends the offseason hand painting ram's horns on the team's helmets."

This blew my mind. Up until this point, no team had a logo on their helmet. Then one day this guy has an idea, sits down and just goes about bringing it into existence.

I desperately wanted to do something that cool someday.

As it turned out, unlike the Ice Bowl, this cartoon showed events almost exactly as they happened… 

Fred Gehrke was a Rams halfback who was an art major in college and worked during the offseason as a technical illustrator for aircraft companies in Los Angeles.

Back in those days, professional football was barely professional. Most players worked other jobs in the offseason, or even during the season.

The leather helmets players wore sometimes had a stripe or two, but no one had ever thought to put a logo on one.

While putting horns on the helmets seemed perfectly obvious to Fred, his coach made him take one home and paint it to understand exactly what the heck he was talking about.

When Rams owner Dan Reeves saw the test helmet, he liked it so much he offered Gehrke a whopping $1 (plus expenses) to paint the rest of the team’s 75 helmets that summer.

Despite the newfound riches, I’m certain that a few helmets in, Fred was wondering just what he’d gotten himself into...

But when the helmets made their debut on the field that fall, the stunned L.A. Coliseum crowd reacted with a standing ovation!

This might be the first and last time a graphic designer has received such an honor.

Within a few years, nearly every NFL team had a logo on their helmet, and soon after that, the helmets themselves became the logos the league used to represent each team.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Gehrke’s innovation was a revolution in the way football teams — and sports in general — are marketed to and perceived by the public.

What I admire about Fred personally is that he had this wonderful, totally new idea, and then very graciously and determinedly went about bringing it into existence.

Having been a professional graphic designer for a number of years, I have learned that having a great idea is one thing, but getting people around you — especially the ones in charge — to understand and agree to it can be another job entirely.

The Rams’ coach, or owner, or even Fred's teammates, could have decided the "ram horn" idea was too goofy, or unusual, or impractical, and none of us would ever have ever known about it.

And the thing I appreciate about Fred’s design is that it was so brilliant and perfect as he initially imagined it, that hardly any changes were made to it for nearly 60 years.

Rare is the design with that combination of revolutionary impact AND staying power.

Artist Leroy Nieman even called the Rams logo "The most effective pop art symbol in all of sports."

It wasn’t until I found this old book in the garage recently and opened it up, that I realized that image of Fred Gehrke happily painting helmets has stayed lodged in the back of my mind.

Whenever I have a brainstorm and start working on it, I secretly hope my idea might have the same kind of impact.

There have been a handful of occasions when my idea, execution and circumstances have aligned, and I have felt a bit of the thrill Fred must have had every time he saw the Rams take the field wearing his helmets.

In 2016, the Rams announced they were moving back to Los Angeles after two decades in St. Louis. Uni Watch, a sports uniform website I visit far too often during the workweek, ran a “Redesign the Rams” contest in conjunction with ESPN. (Yes, there is such a website, and yes, it’s awesome. There’s always someone geekier than you…)

So of course I had to enter…

My design didn’t win overall, but that didn't matter, because the judge singled it out for “Best New Helmet”. He wrote:

Not bad, indeed! A true honor, in fact, coming from such a fellow uni-aficionado.

Plus I got to brag about it to my fantasy football buddies, some of whom thought that because it was ESPN, this meant the Rams would actually use my design!

That was not the case, though their eventual 2020 uniform overhaul featured a shortened horn with a split 3D effect… coincidence? Probably.

Fred Gehrke was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1972, not for his on-field accomplishments (which were nothing extraordinary), but as the inaugural recipient of the “Daniel F. Reeves Pioneer Award”, named for the longtime Rams owner who championed Fred’s brilliant, original, insanely cool idea.

And here's the post: