Phillies embracing old logo and wordmark

[BrianLion]

18 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Yow!  Sorry to hear that.  Never meet your heroes.  (I was so nervous when I met Paul Stanley at a book signing, for just this reason -- I didn't want my dream shattered.  But I was lucky that he was very personable.)

Despite Schmidt's jerkishness towards you, I hope you don't mind that I picked up this doll as a memento of my trip.

 

 

Well I'm a transplanted Michigander and Tiger fan who's been living in the Philly area for going on 20 years now, so it didnt really ruin my day. I was just excited to meet a HoF player.  My friends, who were life-long Phillies fans, found it far more upsetting.  

[Sport]

I wouldn't want to see this, but the Phillies could go the Padres and Brewers route and adopt a once a week alternate in throwback colors to appease the fans who want to see that look return. 

 

 

[RichO]

7 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

I wouldn't want to see this, but the Phillies could go the Padres and Brewers route and adopt a once a week alternate in throwback colors to appease the fans who want to see that look return. 

 

 

I'm a little surprised they haven't.

 

Thinking about it- are the Rangers the only team that doesn't really have an 80s nostalgia aspect to them either on the field or in merch? At least among teams that look noticeably different from then they're the ones that seem to have bleached that period from memory.

 

Not that there's anything worth being nostalgic about in pre-Nolan Rangers looks.

[WSU151]

1 minute ago, RichO said:

I'm a little surprised they haven't.

 

Thinking about it- are the Rangers the only team that doesn't really have an 80s nostalgia aspect to them either on the field or in merch? At least among teams that look noticeably different from then they're the ones that seem to have bleached that period from memory.

 

Not that there's anything worth being nostalgic about in pre-Nolan Rangers looks.

 

The Rangers have a pre-Nolan throwback every year.  Wore it just a few weeks ago against the Angels.  

[Gothamite]

15 minutes ago, McCarthy said:

I wouldn't want to see this, but the Phillies could go the Padres and Brewers route and adopt a once a week alternate in throwback colors to appease the fans who want to see that look return.

 

I hope not.  I don't think the practice has been particularly good for the Brewers, allowing them to linger with a bad modern look instead of adopting the old colors full-time.  Would hate to see another club fall into that trap. 

[Rebuy]

As a Phillies fan, I like the throwbacks but I'd rather they stay in the past. The current look is better.

 

If they do go back I much prefer the 50's look. I think that would be an upgrade.

[The_Admiral]

On 7/26/2017 at 2:51 PM, RichO said:

Thinking about it- are the Rangers the only team that doesn't really have an 80s nostalgia aspect to them either on the field or in merch? At least among teams that look noticeably different from then they're the ones that seem to have bleached that period from memory.

 

The Rangers are kind of an arriviste team in general. Aside from a few blips like the new park and the A-Rod contract, they weren't really to be taken seriously as a baseball power until 2009. Now they seem to have lots of free agent signings and huge TV money and are getting another new park. I can see why they would, if not discard, not be swift to recall their history as a team that lost a lot of games and played in a crappy Quadruple-A stadium that was too hot to sit in. I think of them along the lines of the Angels, a loser-ass franchise that was just sorta there until they weren't.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

1 hour ago, Rebuy said:

As a Phillies fan, I like the throwbacks but I'd rather they stay in the past. The current look is better.

 

If they do go back I much prefer the 50's look. I think that would be an upgrade.

 

But the current look is the 50s look, with only a slight modernising modification.

 

The Phillies' current look is closer to their 50s look than the Blue Jays' current look is to their 90s World Series look, and closer than the Giants' current look is to their classic 40s-70s look.

 

I would say that the Phillies' current look as compared to their 50s look has a distance that is similar to the distance between the Braves' current look and that team's look from the 40s and 50s.

[Rebuy]

Of course Ferdinand it's a modified look with some twists.

 

I love the 50's script and hat, it really fits a franchise as old as the Phillies. It's timeless and classic and it'd be great to truly bring it back.

 

The 70's and 80's era stuff is cool and it's fun to see it from time to time but I think it would have a short shelf life as the primary jersey. In five years everyone would want to bring back the scarlet red.

[UncleJunior]

Always loved the classic 1971-1993 "P." Phillies usually do a few retro night games per year, they seemed to do more this year with the 1983 "100th Anniversary patch jerseys. MIGHT do it again the weekend of Aug 11 against the Mets. On Aug 12, Pete Rose will be inducted to the Phillies Wall of Fame.

[BBTV]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

But the current look is the 50s look, with only a slight modernising modification.

 

The Phillies' current look is closer to their 50s look than the Blue Jays' current look is to their 90s World Series look, and closer than the Giants' current look is to their classic 40s-70s look.

 

I would say that the Phillies' current look as compared to their 50s look has a distance that is similar to the distance between the Braves' current look and that team's look from the 40s and 50s.

 

I disagree with this.  It's more than a slight modernising modification.  It's a total removal of character, and introduction of silliness like the bubbly font, blue stars, and blue squatchee.

 

The cap alone is a disaster compared to the 50s.  The current P simply isn't a good stand alone logo.  

[leopard88]

11 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

But the current look is the 50s look, with only a slight modernising modification.

 

The Phillies' current look is closer to their 50s look than the Blue Jays' current look is to their 90s World Series look, and closer than the Giants' current look is to their classic 40s-70s look.

 

I would say that the Phillies' current look as compared to their 50s look has a distance that is similar to the distance between the Braves' current look and that team's look from the 40s and 50s.

 

9 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

I disagree with this.  It's more than a slight modernising modification.  It's a total removal of character, and introduction of silliness like the bubbly font, blue stars, and blue squatchee.

 

The cap alone is a disaster compared to the 50s.  The current P simply isn't a good stand alone logo.  

 

I'll second what BBTV said.  The current look is a modernized modification of the 50s look.  However, every aspect of the modernization is worse than the original in some respect.

 

1.  The number font is unnecessarily unique and just doesn't look good.

2.  The thicker wordmark is a downgrade in general.

3.  The P in the current wordmark actually overlaps the H, which makes it seems as if the P isn't part of the rest of the word.

4.  The extra thick white outline, which basically turns the wordmark into a patch, looks terrible.  

5.  The current cap logo matches the wordmark better than the '50s logo.  However, it just isn't as good looking, IMHO.  As BBTV, said, it "simply isn't a good stand alone logo."

[ScubaSteve]

13 minutes ago, leopard88 said:

 

 

I'll second what BBTV said.  The current look is a modernized modification of the 50s look.  However, every aspect of the modernization is worse than the original in some respect.

 

1.  The number font is unnecessarily unique and just doesn't look good.

2.  The thicker wordmark is a downgrade in general.

3.  The P in the current wordmark actually overlaps the H, which makes it seems as if the P isn't part of the rest of the word.

4.  The extra thick white outline, which basically turns the wordmark into a patch, looks terrible.  

5.  The current cap logo matches the wordmark better than the '50s logo.  However, it just isn't as good looking, IMHO.  As BBTV, said, it "simply isn't a good stand alone logo."

 

I'll have to dig up the article and post when I find it, but Paul Lukas had something a while back that was really interesting. Apparently, when designing the current script the design was much more similar to the 50s/60s font. However, the extra thickness of the letters was a result of it being Xeroxed back and forth so many times, and they just kind of kept it.

[Lights Out]

On 7/26/2017 at 3:51 PM, RichO said:

I'm a little surprised they haven't.

 

Thinking about it- are the Rangers the only team that doesn't really have an 80s nostalgia aspect to them either on the field or in merch? At least among teams that look noticeably different from then they're the ones that seem to have bleached that period from memory.

 

Not that there's anything worth being nostalgic about in pre-Nolan Rangers looks.

Well, the teams that didn't exist yet in the '80s obviously don't have an '80s nostalgia aspect to them. And neither do the Nationals, who have mostly retconned the Montreal era out of their history (with the exception of team records).

[BBTV]

It's more than just the thickness.  The late 40s script was plenty thick (considering the outlines) and looked fine.  This one looks so "perfect" and unnatural.  The way the letters are all rounded makes it look impossible to actually "write", which is kind of what a script should emulate.  The P is probably the worst offender of this - the little tail is so unnatural.

 

It's similar to the arguments we have regarding the Twins current faux-script vs classic imperfect script.  While in general I'm a fan of contemporary design, in both of these cases I'll take the original over the current any day of the week.

[Lights Out]

As far as the Phillies' script is concerned - let's not forget that until last season, they actually used a different (and better) version of the script on their on-field jerseys that didn't look nearly as blobby. The letter "e" in particular looked a million times better on the old jerseys:

 

 

I understand why they wanted to standardize the script, but they should have standardized around the old jersey script instead of the uglier version they've used in all other applications.

[Gothamite]

On 7/27/2017 at 8:36 PM, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

But the current look is the 50s look, with only a slight modernising modification.

 

And yet every "modernizing modification" is in its own way a significant downgrade.  

 

The wordmark is close, but worse. The silly bubble numbers are worse. The cap logo is definitely worse.

 

Bringing back the originals, the true originals, might not be a radical change.  But the result would be radically better. 

[Around the Horn]

I never liked the 50's look (or the modern modification)... the 1947 jerseys (and the current daytime alt) are much better IMO.

 

 

(a uniform set revolving around these, a road grey version and red and blue alternate tops would be pretty nice)

 

EDIT: and bring back Phil and Phylis as a sleeve patch

[Trapper John]

Has anyone ever mocked up the current uniforms with the darker 70's red and light blue in place of the current shades? 

[WSU151]

5 hours ago, Trapper John said:

Has anyone ever mocked up the current uniforms with the darker 70's red and light blue in place of the current shades? 

 

Check out @MJD7's MLB Redesign thread in the Concepts section.