A cricket ground in 1905, two new names and a move to Flinders Park.

The Australian Open started under another name. English Wikipedia says the tournament was first played in November 1905 at the Warehouseman’s Cricket Ground in Melbourne, a grass-court venue now known as the Albert Reserve Tennis Centre, and that it was first called the Australasian Championships. The name reflected the region rather than the country: Wikipedia says the championships were staged twice in New Zealand in the early years, in Christchurch in 1906 and in Hastings in 1912.

The name changed twice. Wikipedia says the event became the Australian Championships in 1927 and the Australian Open in 1969, the year after tennis opened its major events to professionals. The organiser also changed its name over that period. Wikipedia says the tournament is managed by Tennis Australia, formerly the Lawn Tennis Association of Australia.

For much of its history the tournament travelled. Wikipedia says it has been staged in five Australian cities, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, as well as the two New Zealand cities, and that it was not held during the First World War, from 1916 to 1918, or during the Second World War, from 1941 to 1945. In 1972 the decision was taken to hold the championships in Melbourne every year, and the event settled at the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club.

The address that defines the modern brand came in 1988. Wikipedia says the tournament moved that year from Kooyong to the new Flinders Park complex, later renamed Melbourne Park, because the event had outgrown the Kooyong grounds. The park sits in the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Precinct on the banks of the Yarra River, close to the city centre, and the move brought a change of surface from grass to hard courts.

The venue’s arenas carry the names of Australian players. Wikipedia lists Rod Laver Arena, opened with the park in 1988, John Cain Arena and Margaret Court Arena as the three main courts, each with a retractable roof so play can continue in rain or extreme heat. The trophies also carry names: Wikipedia says the women’s singles winner receives the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup and the men’s singles winner the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup.

Green Rebound Ace, then blue courts from 2008.

The colour now associated with the tournament arrived late. Wikipedia says the Australian Open was played on grass from 1905 until 1987 and switched to hard courts in 1988 with the move to Flinders Park. Three hard-court surfaces have been used since: green-coloured Rebound Ace from 1988 to 2007, blue Plexicushion from 2008 to 2019, and blue GreenSet since 2020.

The 2008 change turned the tournament’s courts from green to blue, and the blue has stayed through a later change of supplier. Wikipedia says the Rebound Ace surface was replaced in 2008 after twenty years of use.

The 2016 identity was built to work on screens. B&T, the Australian marketing trade magazine, reported on 5 October 2016 that Landor Australia had partnered with Tennis Australia to create a new identity for the Australian Open. Landor’s brief, according to the article, was to present the tournament as an entertainment brand that connects with new audiences. Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley told the magazine the aim was to make the tournament “more relevant globally and more adaptable in an increasingly digital world,” and described the result as “fresh, fun and often playful.”

Transform magazine, reporting the same launch in 2016, said the rebrand introduced a new typeface, colourway and logo, and that it was intended to give the Australian Open a fresh face for the 2017 tournament. Both publications quoted Mike Staniford, Landor’s executive creative director, who said the agency wanted “a living system which could animate and move in accordance with the dynamic of the game itself.”

B&T also quoted Dominic Walsh, Landor Australia’s managing director, who said that while the brand needed to remain simple and recognisable, it also needed the flexibility to adapt and respond to its environment.

Blue courts and two letters.

A sporting event has no factory and no product on a shelf, so its identity lives almost entirely in graphics and objects that return on a calendar. The annual logo is a visible piece: many events keep a permanent mark and add a dated edition lockup each year, so a single season can be identified at a glance on tickets, programmes and merchandise. Posters do similar work in a looser register; some organisers commission a different artist every year, which turns the poster series into a running record of illustration and type styles across decades.

Trophies are the physical centre of the identity. Their silhouette, material and engraving are often fixed for long periods, and photographs of the presentation moment carry that shape far beyond the venue. Venue marks add a third layer: signage, painted grass or tarmac, gates and grandstand lettering that fix the event to a particular place.

Broadcast graphics complete the set. Score bugs, timing towers, lower thirds and title sequences are redesigned every few seasons, and they are where viewers meet the event’s typefaces and colours. Read together, these layers show how an event keeps a stable core while letting each edition look like its own year.

A name shortened to its initials.

The core of the 2016 identity is a mark built on the tournament’s initials, “AO”. Staniford told B&T in October 2016 that the simplicity of the mark gave it the licence to do almost anything, and that it was not only a shorthand for the Australian Open but a vehicle for constant reinvention.

The system was designed to move. Staniford told both B&T and Transform that the identity was meant to animate in step with the game, and Walsh said it needed to be agile, adapting and responding to the environment. B&T reported that the new look would be in place for the 2017 tournament, held at Melbourne Park from 16 to 29 January, and Transform placed the launch alongside the other Grand Slam brands, Wimbledon, the French Open at Roland Garros and the US Open.

The court colour and the identity were separate decisions taken eight years apart. Wikipedia says the courts turned blue in 2008 with Plexicushion and kept the colour when GreenSet replaced it in 2020, while Transform said the 2016 rebrand brought its own new colourway along with the typeface and logo.

The brand’s history explains its shape. A championship that began as the Australasian Championships in 1905, became the Australian Championships in 1927 and the Australian Open in 1969, and moved to Flinders Park in 1988 had already changed its name and its surface more than once before Landor shortened it to two letters. Tennis Australia, which has run the event under its earlier and current names, commissioned the result.

For a design guide, the Australian Open shows how an event can turn a long name into initials and build a flexible system around a single court colour. Compare Roland-Garros, whose identity rests on orange clay and artists’ posters, and Wimbledon, which registered its green and purple as a colour mark. For this guide we use court blue, night navy and line white with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Australian Open’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.