MLB and the Minnesota Twins unveiled the 2014 All-Star Game logo, featuring a silhouette of Target Field in front of a downtown-Minneapolis skyline.
“The Twins are honored to host the 2014 All-Star Game Events,” said Twins Owner and CEO Jim Pohlad. “Even before opening Target Field in 2010, we dreamed of hosting this incredible event. With this logo unveiling, we’re one step closer to making this dream a reality.”
“Hosting the 2014 All-Star Game Events is exciting for the Twin Cities community,” said chair of the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners Mike Opat, a key player in the effort to build Target Field. “Not only will we collectively reap the incredible economic benefits of hosting this jewel event, the associated charitable contributions will also greatly benefit our community as a whole.”
The design of the logo is tied to Minneapolis-St. Paul and Twins history. The top of the logo evokes the old Minneapolis-St. Paul shaking-hands logo done up in LED lighting in Target Field’s center-field area; it was also featured in the logo for the 1965 All-Star Game held at the old Met Stadium. The skyline shown in the logo: it’s what you see when you look southeast from the ballpark. The New York Mets didn’t use a literal skyline when designing the 2013 All-Star Game logo, instead choosing a stylized version that included regional icons like the Empire State Building, the Williamsburg Savings Bank, the United Nations headquarters and the Woolworth Building. It’s too bad the Twins and MLB didn’t do the same: the tall building in the left of the 2014 logo represents the rather bland and mostly reviled 33 South Sixth building (formerly the Multifoods Tower, once dubbed by a local critic as a “big architectural oaf”), a Skidmore, Owings and Merrill project that never caught on among the locals. More noteworthy skyline inhabitants, like the IDS Center and the Wells Fargo Center, are downplayed, and other architectural gems, like the Foshay Tower, aren’t present at all. There was no need to be so literal in the logo design. While the Target Field silhouette is a notable centerpiece to the design, an opportunity was missed to create a great logo that would resonated with the locals and anyone with fond memories of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
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