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Special to Packer Plus, by Martin Hendricks, March 20, 2013
In 1961, head coach Vince Lombardi asked him (Dad Braisher) to develop a design for the Packers’ logo-less helmets.
Braisher, a lifelong bachelor, worked on a logo in his spare time at night in his room at the Union Hotel in De Pere – his home for more than 40 years until his death at age 81 in July 1982.
His efforts resulted in the “G” logo. Lombardi approved the design and color scheme, which has become one of the most recognizable sports symbols in the world.
Several high schools and colleges, including the University of Georgia and Grambling University, sport the same “G” design, but the Green Bay Packers had it first.
McKim Boyd, whose family has owned and operated the Union Hotel since 1918, said Braisher used to come down from his room at night and show rough pencil sketches to his father at the hotel bar.
“To us, Dad was part of the family,” Boyd said. “He told my father that he was trying to fit the “G” into a football shape.”
The last game the Packers played with a logoless helmet was the 1960 NFL championship game. Three future Hall of Famers, Paul Hornung (5) and Jim Taylor (31) walk off Philadelphia's Franklin Field with Eagles linebacker Chuck Bednarik (60). It was the only meaningful playoff game lost by a Lombardi coached Green Bay team. Final score: Eagles 17 Packers 13. Following the game Coach Lombardi reportedly said, "We didn't lose, we just ran out of time." The Packers were driving for a score when the clock ran out with the ball on the Eagles nine-yard line.
Packers team historian Cliff Christl wrote the following on August 20, 2020:
Lombardi asked Dad Braisher, his equipment manager, to take charge of the project and Braisher asked one of his student aides, John Gordon, who happened to be an art student at St. Norbert College, to design it. Gordon was in his second summer of helping Braisher in the equipment room.
“(Lombardi) told Dad Braisher to come up with a design for the helmet,” Gordon said in a 2010 interview. “I don’t know how specific they got in their talks. But when I came in in the morning, Dad said Lombardi wants me to come up with a design for a Packer logo and I want you to draw it: a ‘G’ in a football shape.”
At first, Gordon said he balked at the idea.
“The concept was Dad’s,” said Gordon. “I resisted the football shape of the ‘G.’ That was Dad Braisher. He insisted on that.”