NHL Standings Chart

My second attempt at National Hockey League inspired artwork is done and dusted. This is the second time I've undertaken such a project and I'm pleased to say that I think my latest one is an improvement on the one I made 4 years ago (see image below). My intention was to go one better than my previous effort anyway, so I'm glad all the work wasn't for naught.



NHL standings chart 2008

I love sports logos and colours. Something about a team brand and the identity of each organisation has always been appealing to me, so when I look back and realise just how much time I've spent on them I'm not really surprised. This was a very laborious undertaking but I do get lost in my work when it comes to something I get excited about. Most people would consider myself crazy for having the patience to do all this, but there's nothing I enjoy more than watching a beautiful logo come to life infront of me. Well there are things I enjoy more, but you know what I mean.

My concept for this project grew from the many pages of scribble in my notepad. When I had nothing else on my mind I would scratch out what was in my head and try to imagine how it would come together. Each page had a slight variation to the previous but my final scribble was almost spot on to what I ended up constructing for real.

So, first of all each logo had to be painted onto a block of wood that I cut for all 30 teams. I cropped then traced each logo and began the countless hours of colour by numbers...

A few teams required mixing colours to get the right shade of burgundy or teal or gold. For Colorado I ended up repainting the whole thing because I wasn't happy with the original colour I came up with. The same thing happened with the shade of blue for Toronto and Tampa Bay.

Some logos take longer to paint than others, but on average I did about 3 or 4 a week. Most of that was on weekends. As you can see, they all require a steady hand. And a steady mind for that matter. It really was mind over matter!

And a peice of NHL artwork is never complete without the good ol' NHL sheild..

Once I finished all the logos and sealed them with a clear coat I began constrcting the board that they would all sit on. In the back of my mind I didn't think this would take nearly as long as what it did to paint all the logos, but it actually did.

There was a fair amount of measuring involved to make sure things would fit. I kept having to place out the logos to try to imagine how it would look as the finished product so that I could work out balance and spacing, but this was difficult. I ended up just having to trust my instinct and go ahead and do it.

I wanted to use magnets to hold the blocks in place to avoid any visible hooks or slots which I felt would just make the whole thing even more busy. I'd never used magnets before but I knew they would be hidden so I ordered some online and hoped the most expensive element of the whole design would work.

To allow the logo blocks to sit on the magnets nicely, I routered out two holes in the back of each and glued small washers in to attract the magnets. I didn't want the magnetic pull to be so strong that you needed a crowbar to pull each block off, but strong enough that it held each one nice and firm. This required measuring the gap between magnet and washer and doing a few test runs to find that sweet spot before doing all 30.

In my mind I always wanted the presence of silver in the design so I had the idea to paint wood to look like stainless steel. Preperation is always important so you dont see wood grains in your 'steel', so I sanded and primed it meticulously then spray painted it with chrome silver.

Silver buttons to add a touch of class..

From start to finish the board took around 6 weeks to construct, so 3 months was about how long the entire project took to complete. The final product looks, not quite, but almost exactly how I had imagined it in my head from the rough drawings in my notepad. The white X's are the only bit of improvisation I included along the way, which is pretty rare considering most of the stuff I do is made up as I go.

Theoretically the interchangeable nature of the standings chart means it should be adjusted almost daily in accordance with the NHL standings, but that's a big commitment. It would be the perfect addition to a sports bar in North America where the bar staff could update it each morning, but seeing as I'm all the way on the other side of the world in Australia that's not going to happen. Besides, I couldn't part with it after all the hours we've spent together.

It's priceless... almost.