The Evolution of the World Cup Ball

The New York Times has a nice interactive piece showing the history of the design for the World Cup soccer ball, dating back to 1930.

(via NYTimes.com)

Coca-Cola campaign for the FIFA World Cup

Attik teamed up with official beverage sponsor Coca Cola to design the new visual identity campaign for the FIFA World Cup Trophy Tour. We spotted a few different aluminum can designs in the past month.

(via Fast Company)

“Super Bowl XLIV, Extra Bold ” designed by Attik
(via Brand New)

ESPNOutdoors.com redesigns their web site, using much of the same visual language of the parent ESPN.com site to pull the brands closer together.

A new video carousel on the homepage has a wide, 16-by-9 format with clips both short and long, engaging you to dig a little further (after watching a pre-roll of course).

via AmmoLand

NYTimes.com – For XLIII Years, the Big Game as Art Form

Super Bowl XLIII has some designers talking shop and doing their own takes on what the Super Bowl is really about… design? It appears that there’s more trash talking off the field, and for once having nothing to do with referees, athletes, or coaches:

“I’ll go out on a limb and say all the logos starting with XVII are based on beer labels,” Steven Heller, a design critic, said in an e-mail message. He added that the latest logo “looks like the Bank of America logo.”

Armin Vit, principal of the design firm UnderConsideration in Brooklyn, said, “They’re rather underwhelming.”

Love it or hate it, the Super Bowl logo is a mark that has to be extremely versatile as it gets reproduced on $100 million of licensed merchandise.

Designers including the likes of Armin Vit and Pentagram step up their game with these  alternative Super Bowl logos.

An evolution of Super Bowl logo designs since the NFL championship game was first played on January 15, 1967 (up to and including Superbowl XLIV).

via ViaComIT

Espn.com recently launched a complete redesign of their website, but it appears to be mostly aesthetic and navigational updates (not to mention even more red).