A new design for the Chiefs logo was also in order upon the franchise’s move to Mid-America. Hunt went back to the drawing board, seeking to give his franchise a logo that would once again provide an easily recognizable link to its home locale. The resulting finished product remains one of the most distinctive logos in all of sports and has been proudly utilized by the team for more than 40 years.
1972 - Present
The Chiefs logo is a arrowhead design originally sketched by Lamar Hunt on a napkin. Hunt’s sketches, which were done on a napkin on a flight from Dallas to Kansas City, began with an interlocking “KC” inside a circle or an oval. Hunt’s inspiration for the interlocking “KC” design was the “SF” inside of an oval on the San Francisco 49ers helmets. Unlike the 49ers’ logo, Kansas City’s overlapping initials appear inside a white arrowhead instead of an oval and are surrounded by a thick chipped looking black border.
1963 - 1971
When the franchise moved to Kansas City in 1963, Bob Taylor was commissioned to produce a new logo that remained strikingly similar to his original incarnation. Taylor’s new rendition featured a Native American figure running with the same stride and holding the pigskin in the same manner as the gunslinger and a red tomahawk with the states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa and Arkansas serving as his backdrop.
1960 -1962
The American Football League’s Dallas Texans in 1960, featured a polished football toting gunslinger set over the state of Texas in red. The gunslinger is wearing cowboy boots and hat carrying a football and a gun. A design created by Bob Taylor, a cartoonist for the now defunct Dallas Times Herald.