This is an image of the testing of football helmuts in 1912. We came across this during our work for the NYC restaurant Mudville 9 on the development of a new visual identity for them. Our client was interested in a refresh of their brand to reflect their recent investment in renovating the space and refining their offering a bit. Mudville 9 is a sports bar restaurant located in downtown, NYC. It was a good NYC dive restaurant. They were seeking to evolve and place more emphasis on their food, without losing their roots as a sports-focused establishment.
In our work we were seeking to expand the lens of sports horizontally and highlight the culture of athletes and sports. This is how we came upon this image of the crude, and we’re sure quite painful process for testing the effectiveness of football helmuts. It was a great image considering the recent debate around the dangers of contact in football and represented the type of conversation we wanted to have with the new identity.
We also had sourced imagery to reflect a broader range of athlete profiles and sports—best exemplified in the image grabs from a fashion shoot with a model skateboarding and moments in sports that required a narrative to understand what was happening. These images were used to explain our proposal and as direction for sourcing and creating the final imagery.
