Spor Repor is a sports logo database site that, unlike most others of its kind, is set-up as a mood board; organizing logos by design rather than who the logo belongs to. Not only is Spor Repor the Internet’s largest curated mood board geared toward sports logos but it is also one of the largest curated collections of sports logos online with over 7,500 sports logos at launch.
Who Is Spor Repor For?
Spor Repor is intended for graphic designers, casual sports fans or simply fans of art and design to observe the field of sports logo design through the lens of how different teams have tackled the construction of their visual identity in order to set themselves apart. My goal is to give visitors the ability to navigate a vast and ever-growing professional medium from a design-based perspective in order for it to benefit them and whatever their personal motivations might be.
How Did Spor Repor Come About?
During the prior iteration of Spor Repor, when it was a comedic journalism website, I included a sports logo encyclopedia on the site called Logo-Pedia. In January 2017, I made the decision to shift my career focus toward sports design and closed Spor Repor. Since then, I’ve been working and improving my skills as a graphic designer, with an ultimate goal to bring back Logo-Pedia in some manner. Since March 2019, I’ve been retooling the entire sitemap for the encyclopedia behind-the-scenes; shifting its focus from a sport-and-league-based organizational structure (ex. SportsLogos.Net) to a unique design-based structure.
Second, its an advertisement for my portfolio as I seek an entry-level full-time graphic designer position with a sports team, league or organization. Beyond sport and graphic design fans, I designed this as a free resource that front-office personnel as well as graphic designers and design agencies, who possess close relationships with professional sports organizations, could find useful. View my resume along with work samples at my portfolio website: marklavis.com. If you’re a prospective employer, you can contact me at marklavisdesign@gmail.com. I’m open for relocation. I’m also available for freelance work.
Lastly, after a traumatic experience during middle school, I buried myself into sites like oursportscentral.com and logoserver.com and escaped into the world of minor league sports and sports logos. At the time, I saw this as a means to explore the outside world and view how others enjoy and experience their local sports landscape in comparison to my upbringing. Since then, I’ve always been fascinated with the world of sports logo design; regularly frequenting sites like Chris Creamer’s SportsLogos.Net among others to keep up-to-date on the ebb and flow of sports franchises as my local teams slowly dwindled away or relocated.
How Is Spor Repor Organized?
Sports logos are divided into 10 major categories as shown in the menu and the front page of the site. Beyond that, the logos are further subdivided into 350+ different pages (enjoy the rabbit hole). On most of these pages, the logos are further categorized according to six different characteristics: Letter – Acronym, Mixed, Roundel, Shield, Solo, Wordmark.
The Mixed characteristic is the “junk drawer” category where logos that don’t fit nicely into the other five categories can be found. Animal and Human (i.e. anthropomorphic) logos are also further categorized according to how much of the animal or human in question is displayed (the full body, from the torso up, or just the head). Logos that could be slotted into multiple subdivisions are placed into the subdivision, I feel, they prioritize the most; with Equipment, Letter & Type and Heraldry being lower-priority categories. Roundel logos are also given increased scrutiny to retain a perfect circular shape, otherwise they are characterized as a shield logo.
If you happen to see the same logo twice or two very similar logos within the same category, it either means that the same team or program used the logo, whether choosing to modify it or not, multiple times in their existence or the logo had been used by more than one sports team or program; whether or not the team or program who established the logo initially granted legal permission for teams thereafter to reuse their logo. As the site grows, there may be a page on this site created to gather instances of the latter example occurring for easier discovery and more-thorough explanation for you, the visitor.
I also want perusing Spor Repor to be an exploratory experience which is why there isn’t a search bar function. I also made the navigation icons in the manner that I did in order to mitigate any “lost in translation” occurrences that might occur for non-English speaking users.
What Are The Plans For Spor Repor?
For starters, due to being busy reorganizing the database offline, I haven’t been keeping up with most new logo announcements over the past 6-12 months and so I’ll be tracking down those logos and adding them to the site.
Next up will be adding logos for leagues, tournaments, bowl games, etc. to the site. Given the unique design style that those logos have versus team and college logos, it might ultimately result in creating an 11th major category for the site once I determine how to integrate them into the sitemap.
Beyond that, there’s a world of logos out there I’ve yet to add to the site. Over the past 6 months, I’ve discovered leagues around the world so I’ll be working through that backlog. I will also focus on adding secondary, alternate, and other types of logos for current teams beyond their primary mark. There’s also the two elephants in the room I’ll inevitably have to tackle: LogoServer.com’s long-dormant database of largely defunct teams and original high school sports logos.
Whose Particular Logo Is This?
While part of this site’s goal is to focus entirely on the design of sports logos and disregard who the logos belongs to, I nonetheless do sort logos within each page alphabetically for quality of life purposes. If you are unable to identify which team a particular logo belongs to, you can message me on Twitter (@SporRepor) with a description of the logo in question (or screencap the logo in question and send it to me) and I’ll help.
Can I Submit Logos To You?
Absolutely. Message me on Twitter (@SporRepor) with logos you’d like to submit. I’d preferably like to add an entire league’s set of team logos to the site at once if possible (because I’m a compulsive completionist).
If you’ve got a logo with a noticeably better resolution than the one I already have on the site, please share it my way (once again, I’m a compulsive completionist so a few low-res stopgaps do exist on here).
Why The Name “Spor Repor”?
When I initially started Spor Repor as a comedic journalism website, The Colbert Report (which I adored) was in the process of going off-the-air. So, a few days after the last Sport Report segment aired, the site was born.
And before you ask, yes, I own an authentic Saginaw Spirit jersey.
Can I Further Support Spor Repor?
I’m truly humbled by any support I receive beyond you visiting, following or sharing the site along with viewing it a useful resource within the sports design world.
Beyond that, I’m currently job hunting so if you belong to a sports team, league, or organization that is looking to hire a full-time graphic designer (I also graduated with a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Oregon and have experience creating content across multiple facets of the sports digital media landscape) and you like what you see on my portfolio site (marklavis.com) then please feel free to contact me at marklavisdesign@gmail.com. Taking all of this into account is why I’ve chosen to have no ads on Spor Repor nor set-up a Patreon for the site in the interim since I don’t intend for the site to be a business venture. If one day, through a Patreon or online merch store, I was able to offset all of the costs associated with operating the site, that’d be the ultimate goal.
Thank you for visiting Spor Repor and I hope you find this site as a useful resource and worthwhile addition to your sports logo endeavors.
Mark Patrick Lavis
Founder, Spor Repor