If you are anything like me, you probably experienced quite a few instances of sports bewilderment while watching the Beijing Olympics over the last few weeks.  Dozens of sports were showcased, many of which are entirely foreign to the average viewer.  As a result, I’d wager the following questions were pondered by millions:

• “What’s the name of this sport, again?”
• “How exactly do the rules/scoring work?”
• “Is this a qualifying heat, or the final race?”
• “Which team would the winner of this match go on to play?”
• “Which star players on the court/field should I be keeping an eye on?”
• “What other related events will this athlete be competing in?”

While a viewer could answer any of these questions by visiting websites like NBCOlympics.com or Wikipedia, this equates to lousy user experience.  Most viewers aren’t going to want to get off the couch.  Even those armed with a laptop have to take their eyes off the TV, pull up a browser, and wade through the website to find their obscure answer.  Ugh.

But there’s good news!  I would wager that by the 2012 Olympic games, viewers will be able to find answers to all of the questions above (and more) simply by using their TV’s remote control.  How?  By using TV widgets. Continue reading »

In my recent work for Professional Baseball Training I had the task of designing a logo. This was a challenge that excited me from the outset, as it brought to mind the countless hours I used to spend as a child sketching the logos of my favorite sports teams. It was with these fond memories in mind that I looked back at the evolution of sports logos of recent decades, taking careful note of how things have changed over time.

It did not take much searching before I stumbled upon Chris Creamer’s SportsLogos.net, a “virtual museum” dedicated to sports logos & uniforms. This site has been invaluable for my research needs, as it provides quite the in-dept historical record for all teams in every sporting league you can imagine. In this post I would like to share some of my findings.

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