Knicks Gaming’s first-ever logo is a doozy and they might want to go back to the drawing board.
Online gaming has come a long way since the days of rushing home from school to jump on with your friends. Like the YouTube generation before it, which spawned stars who took advantage of the fertile platform, online gaming careers are a real thing. There’s an entire industry behind eSport, and the NBA is shooting its shot.
The NBA 2K League is exactly what it sounds like: an online basketball league where the best NBA 2Kers in the world join forces to win championships on virtual teams. Those teams are sponsored by real NBA teams — 17 of them in total to start.
League action doesn’t start until May, with the draft happening today, but already the first big loss has been dealt (unsurprisingly to the team sponsored by the Knicks).
Just take a nice long look at this logo and tell us what you see. No one will judge you if you see something bad, it’s not a Rorschach test (maybe).
Inside the @KnicksGaming “War Room” two hours before the start of the @NBA2KLeague Draft. Head scout @jerryferrara says he sees the gamers names in his sleep. “No, I genuinely do,” he says. pic.twitter.com/Rj4HcNygpn
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 4, 2018
Do you see it? A quick office straw poll revealed that at first glance it’s…not good. just take a closer look at the abbreviation above the basketball.
Let’s have Entourage’s Jerry Ferrara, who is heavily involved in Knicks Gaming’s operations, give us a better look to see if you can spot the blunder.
Still can’t see the snafu? Alright, spoilers: The logo not so unclearly resembles ‘KKK’, which is the opposite of what you’re going for in a graphic design. There are gross miscalculations and then there’s this. To be fair, the logo has been around for a while now, but no one really noticed the mistake until pictures of Ferrara at the 2K League draft started circulating.
None of this is to say it was intentional, because that’s beyond facetious; it’s just unfortunate. This isn’t the first time something has gone through a design phase and everyone missed a tremendous blunder. Just a borough away, the Brooklyn Nets allowed this design to get so far along that it was produced on T-Shirts:
#BoneGoal pic.twitter.com/rWR1k766JM
— Howard Beck (@HowardBeck) May 1, 2015
The word for when your brain replaces words in your head with something they resemble is called Typoglycemia. Not only does anyone who sees this logo think it’s a swing-and-a-miss, but so does neuroscience.
What do you see? Are we reaching here or should we all give Knicks Gaming its first assist of the season and help redesign this logo?