Ex-Stanford Basketball Star Is the Man Behind the Iconic San Jose Sharks Logo

Terry Smith may not be a household name, but his impact on Bay Area sports is undeniably huge.

Feb 22, 2021; San Jose, California, USA; General view of the shark head before the game between the San Jose Sharks and the Minnesota Wild at SAP Center at San Jose. Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-Imagn Images | Stan Szeto-Imagn Images

For decades, Bay Area sports fans have watched as the San Jose Sharks have gone through multiple different eras since joining the NHL in the early 1990s, from a perennial playoff contender and near Stanley Cup champion to a franchise that is deep in a rebuild looking to sniff the postseason once again.

But through it all, one thing has stayed relatively the same for the Sharks: the logo of a Shark biting through a hockey stick, which has itself gone through a couple of iterations.

Since the franchise's inaugural season in 1991-92, the iconic Sharks logo has given the team its lifelong identity, seeing several legendary hockey players suit up with the logo on their chest such as Artūrs Irbe, Joe Thornton, Brent Burns, Patrick Marleau and others.

But, how did the logo come to be? Well, as it turns out, Stanford University alum and former Cardinal basketball player, Terry Smith, is the one who came up with the original design.

A student-athlete at Stanford from 1978-82, Smith became an artist based in Northern California after his college days and has been the president and CEO of his own creative arts company since 1981, Terry Smith creations.

When the Sharks were founded in 1990, they needed to create an identity for themselves, which included a logo. The founders of the team wanted a logo that really represented the team, and the idea to create one with the stick being broken in half came to be.

But Smith, being the creative mind that he is, wanted to elevate that idea, and when he presented his idea for the logo to the team, they were willing to let him make it his own.

"We were taking the tool of their trade, a la the stick, and we were breaking it in half," Smith told NHL.com in 2020. "Fortunately, the team allowed me to do something different and were willing to take a chance."

Soon after the team debuted as the NHL's 22nd team in 1991-92, Smith's logo quickly became a sensation in the world of sports merchandising. So much so that Hockey News ranked the 1991-92 Sharks jersey as the best of all time on its top 100 list all-time jerseys in 2015, and called Smith's logo perfect.

But, the logo was not always viewed favorably. In fact, when the logo first came out, it got a negative review from the die-hard hockey fans and analysts, and was deemed to have 'broken a lot of rules' according to Smith, including the teal color scheme and the shark biting the stick.

"Traditional hockey people definitely didn't like it at the beginning," Smith said. "The people outside of hockey liked it and, over time, the hockey folks got on board. But it wasn't getting glowing reviews."

When the team took the ice for the first time, players who donned the jersey loved it, with the Sharks first-ever captain, and now former general manager, Doug Wilson, being one of the first players to really support the logo, feeling that it was a good representation of a new era of NHL hockey.

"We thought it was extremely cool and creative," Wilson said. "It captured the spirit of something new and it seemed like everywhere you looked, there it was along with the color teal. That was a moment in time for our franchise and the sport of hockey."

Over the years, the Sharks' logo evolved, with the team changing to a more updated logo in recent seasons. But in 2020-21, Smith's original logo made a comeback on the Sharks' Reverse Retro jersey, bringing nostalgia back to the the storied Bay Area franchise.

The success of the logo has made Smith a very in-demand artist for various sports leagues, having done work for the NBA, NFL, MLS and several other sports leagues at all levels. But because his hockey design is what made him who he is as an artist, Smith is eager to be more involved in the hockey community, hoping to use art and culture as a means to increase diversity and inclusion the sport.