MICHAEL DORET DESIGNED THE KNICKS LOGO IN 1992

A Brooklyn kid sits in a studio in 1991, rendering logo concepts in colored pencil because computer design programs are not yet part of his workflow. The NBA has handed him a near-blank brief: make something symbolic of New York City. No specific typography direction. No firm color requirements. Just keep the blue and orange. Michael Doret, trained at Cooper Union and shaped by the visual noise of Coney Island, is about to design one of the most durable marks in professional sports history. He doesn't know that yet. Nobody does. The result, unveiled for the 1992 season, has not meaningfully changed in 34 years. That is not a coincidence. That is a standard almost no other major sports logo has met. ## One Brief, Colored Pencil, and a Decision That Lasted 34 Years Designed by Michael Doret and unveiled in 1992, the Knicks logo shows the team's name written out in bold, blocky letters above a basketball and on top of an inverted triangle. The assignment itself was remarkably open. Doret received little input from the NBA beyond wanting something symbolic of New York City. After discussion, the Empire State Building was settled on as the only viable option, but that element was ultimately dropped as the design progressed. Beyond keeping the original blue and orange, the creative directions were mostly left up to him. Some sketches and elements eventually made it into color concepts which, before the widespread use of computer design programs, Doret rendered in colored pencil. That detail matters. The most recognized sports logo of the last three decades was developed by hand, through iteration, before Adobe Illustrator was a standard tool. The craft was the process. Though the blue-and-orange color palette has since been tweaked and an all-caps "New York" was added in 1995, the form of the logo is the same today as it was then. For context: the Chicago Bulls logo, the Los Angeles Lakers wordmark, and the Boston Celtics' Lucky the Leprechaun have all been touched since 1992. The Knicks mark has not, in any meaningful way. ## The NYK Token and a Copyright Fight Nobody Talks About The primary logo is the famous one. The secondary story is sharper. Doret's design drew inspiration from the old MTA subway tokens. Growing up riding the subways, he always had that image of the token with the Y cut out somewhere in the back of his mind, and saw an opportunity to use that iconic NY image for an iconic NY team. The Knicks eventually adopted a secondary monogram based on this concept. Doret had proposed it during the original project. They passed. Then, a couple of years later, the monogram appeared on team equipment and merchandise without his involvement. A couple of years had passed before Doret found out about the infringement, and in the meantime his work had been published in a book called "Design In Progress," which included sketches of the NYK token monogram. The book was published just after the Knicks project and well before the Knicks started using the token logo. When pressed, Doret pointed them to the book, which carried a copyright date of 1992. The book was the receipt. Design history almost lost this story entirely. ## From Kiss Album Covers to Wreck-It Ralph, the Career Nobody Assembled Into a Single Sentence Michael Nicholas Doret, born July 19, 1946, is an American designer, lettering artist, and illustrator based in Los Angeles who has created logos, album covers, magazine covers, and art for Wreck-It Ralph, the New York Knicks, MLB, TIME, Playboy, Wired, TV Guide, Kiss, Capitol Records, Columbia Records, Walt Disney Imagineering, and Universal Studios. That list reads like a name-drop. It is actually a map of how American visual culture was built across five decades, one lettering commission at a time. Doret is an eight-time winner of the New York Art Directors Club Silver Award, and his 3D Bedlam Ballroom CD package designed for Squirrel Nut Zippers was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package at the 44th Grammy Awards in 2002. The through-line is letterforms. His work almost always revolves around letterforms, whether it's a logo design assignment or one of his own font designs. Along with his design studio, Doret owns AlphabetSoup Type Founders, which distributes his original font designs through Font Bros., Fontshop, MyFonts, and Veer. His font Deliscript is not a trivia footnote; it was chosen by the Type Directors Club to receive the Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in the display fonts category for their TDC² 2010 Typeface Design Competition. Here is the honest counterpoint: Doret's name is known inside the design world and almost nowhere outside it. The Knicks logo has appeared in roughly 41 NBA seasons, on billions of dollars of merchandise, and at center court of the most famous arena in the world. His name has never appeared on a jersey, a ticket stub, or a press release. That gap between contribution and attribution is not unique to Doret. It is the operating condition for most commercial designers. The Kith collaboration, discussed below, represents something genuinely unusual: a streetwear brand using the designer's anonymity as the concept itself. ## Kith Found the Reject Pile and Built a Collection From It In November 2024, Ronnie Fieg's Kith released its third annual Knicks collection. The previous two leaned on team history and player imagery. This one went directly to Doret's archive. For the 2024 collection, Kith worked with Doret to unarchive and complete a range of logos he developed in 1991 while creating the team's final logo, logos that had never been used. These special logos were the foundation of the year's design approach. Think about what that means structurally. Kith did not license the approved logo and print it on a hoodie. Kith and Doret collaborated to utilize an abundance of different logos for the collection, all of which were original sketches and ideas by Doret for Knicks logos that did not ultimately make the cut. The reject pile became the product. That is not a standard licensing arrangement. That is a fashion brand making a 33-year-old designer's discarded work the centerpiece of its most high-profile sports collaboration. The campaign starred Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, and Mikal Bridges. Current players wearing a designer's 1991 sketches. The temporal collision alone is worth a second look. In a memoir and monograph titled "Growing Up in Alphabet City," Doret shares his process for making words into iconic images for clients such as Kiss, Disney, and the Knicks. With more than 600 images, the book traces his influences from 1950s Brooklyn to 2000s LA. Doret signed copies at the Chase Lounge inside Madison Square Garden on Kith Night in November 2024. A 78-year-old designer, in the building where his 1991 work lives on the floor, signing a book for people who had never heard his name before that week. ## The Standard That 34 Years of Franchise Chaos Could Not Break A lot has changed for the New York Knicks since the team last made it to the NBA Finals in 1999, from the length of the players' shorts to the more than $1 billion in renovations for their home at Madison Square Garden. Multiple coaches. Multiple general managers. Multiple eras of roster construction ranging from Patrick Ewing to Carmelo Anthony to Jalen Brunson. The logo has been there for all of it. That emblem has been a constant symbol of the team, and its distinctive big, block lettering echoed throughout several other teams' redesigns in the 1990s, some of which are still in place today. The 1992 redesign sparked a wave of similar approaches across the league. Doret did not just design a logo. He defined a visual grammar that other NBA teams spent the next decade borrowing. "I think that that logo and I think that the team itself has become so iconically New York," Doret told Fast Company. He grew up in New York City near Coney Island and was inspired by its rich graphic environment. Doret told one interviewer he never tried to make the logo timeless. He believes one cannot and should not try to infuse a personal style into their work, and does not believe one should try to create work that is timeless, because the qualities that make something timeless are quite elusive. That philosophy is either the most honest thing a designer has ever said about permanence, or a convenient way of describing work that simply got everything right the first time. The Knicks are currently in the 2026 Eastern Conference Finals. Jalen Brunson is running the offense. Michael Doret's mark is still at center court. The man who drew it in colored pencil in 1991 is still the answer to a question most people haven't thought to ask.