SEGD 2010 No. 27 - 21

Below: 12.5-ft.-tall, internally illuminated channel letters top Gate 4 of the new stadium. The Yankees made a conscious decision not to include a sponsor’s name on the stadium. (Photo: Chuck Choi) Bottom: Above cylindrical bollards, Spectrum Signs installed 10-ft.-tall by city block-wide photo murals of current Yankees snapped in the moment. (Photo: © David Sundberg/Esto) aseball is only a game? Not to devotees of the New York Yankees. The renowned team’s 106 years contain whole sweeps of history. Its roster has boasted Babe Ruth, Reggie Jackson, and too many more legends to list. In 1977, the Yankees’ World Series win lifted the spirits of New Yorkers buffeted by the city’s ﬁnancial crisis, the Son of Sam murders, and a blackout that resulted in the burning of the Bronx. (This year’s World Series win was another well-timed morale booster.) And even the club’s ballparks are historic. In 1921, Yankee co-owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast l’Hommedieu Huston announced the construction of baseball’s ﬁrst triple-decker grandstand. On Opening Day in 1923, more than 74,000 people crowded the new structure. The newest Yankee Stadium pays homage to the team’s venerable past as well as its 1923 home. Designed by Populous—formerly HOK Sport, known for its historically inspired stadiums since Camden Yards in 1992—the new stadium largely recreates the dimensions and exterior of the 1923 building (marred by renovation in the mid1970s), but fashions the interior to the demands of the contemporary spectator and player. “We consider this whole building to be a museum,” Yankees Chief Operating Ofﬁcer Lonn Trost told USA Today, “…a living museum not just to the Yankees but baseball in general.” The New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff declared, “Yankee Stadium is the kind of stoic, self-conscious monument to history that beﬁts the most successful franchise in American sports.” Environmental graphics: “spirit of the past” C&G Partners (New York) was charged with the stadium’s wayﬁnding, environmental graphics, and exhibit design program, and its work needed to be equally respectful of the Yankee heritage and brand. That respect started at the stadium façade and worked its way through the structure, from adaptation of the original stadium typeface on the limestone exterior to fan favorites such as banners, exhibits, and signage that honor legendary players. “There were some solid ideas that would intuitively come to mind at the onset of a project like this, and they were realized faithfully in the end,” says C&G Partners Principal Keith Helmetag, whose team worked with Populous as well as owner’s representative Tishman Speyer and the Yankees themselves on the project. Another “good ﬁt” for the Yankees commission, Helmetag says, “was to keep the depiction of their brands, and without a lot of adornment or design pyrotechnics.” But respect didn’t mean the C&G Partners team couldn’t do some tweaking. Such was the case when C&G decided to render the stadium’s primary identity using the original 1923 typeface. Helmetag’s crew designed channel letters mounted above the stadium and carved letters inscribed into its limestone elevation. “It’s not a verbatim representation,” Helmetag clariﬁes, “because there wasn’t great documentation, and there were probably different iterations of typography over time. But it tries to take the spirit of the 1923 type and reﬁne it so it can move forward.” Using available photographic evidence and archival blueprints, Helmetag’s team determined that the 1923 letters were neither perfect nor so inconsistently rendered by hand that they were endearing. segdDESIGN 21

SEGD 2010 No. 27

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SEGD 2010 No. 27