In 2018, we had the unique duel challenge to honor two team cities in New York AND a 10th anniversary celebration in a single mark and extended branding program. In our research, we discovered that in the early years of hockey, both Buffalo and New York City simultaneously built iconic buildings in the Art Deco architectural style. This became the glue of the program.

The first consideration when designing this program was the venue. Citi Field–located in Queens, NYC–was the host venue. Since the event was technically a Buffalo Sabres home game, we needed to strike the right balance.

Secondly, in celebrating the 10th anniversary of this extremely popular event we needed to give an appropriate level of recognition to this anniversary and have it be integral to the branding system. The duel challenge was to honor two team cities and a 10th anniversary in a single mark and extended branding program. 

While many approaches were explored, through research we discovered that in the early years of hockey, both Buffalo, New York and New York City simultaneously built important iconic buildings in the Art Deco architectural style. Buffalo built City Hall, Central Terminal, the Rand Building, and many more distinguished examples, while in New York we saw dozens of buildings including the Empire State Building, Wall Street, and the Chrysler Building appear on the cityscape.