Late Stage WCW Was a Design Nightmare

Forget "Who Booked This s#!t"." 'Who designed this s#!t?"

It doesn’t take an expert on the wrestling business to know that the late stages of World Championship Wrestling were an organizational and creative nightmare. But one way that is not appreciated is how bad graphic design got in the company toward the late stages of the promotion’s demise.

For the rise of WCW, they of course used the classic WCW.

As most wrestling fans know, in 1999 it was changed to this monstrosity.

Much digital ink has been spilled concerning the new WCW logo, which has been called many things but not good. It has been called many things; an “giant butthole” by Eric Bischoff and “an exploding vagina” by Tony Schiavone being among the most memorable. But it was universally reviled then, and remains universally reviled today.

Part of the philosophy of this rebrand was to change and to update the product. After all, the WCW logo by that point had been used for almost ten years. Ratings were sagging. A new logo could help generate interest in the product and could show how…