Brian in Boston

56 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

It’s fine, I guess.  But after the fridge and the skeleton, it’s a little obvious and more than a title underwhelming. 

Underwhelming? It pays homage to the "skating Admiral" logos that the team sported in the 1970s and '80s. It marries a retro vibe reminiscent of said era - indeed, it wouldn't have been out of place in the 1950s or '60s - with a more polished, modern rendering style.  It strikes me as being the best logo a hockey team dubbed the Milwaukee Admirals has ever sported, hands down. If the Admirals adopted it as their regular logo, it would - to my mind - be the best primary mark in the AHL.



This is some outstanding craftsmanship on Dan Simon's part. I've long been a fan of his work and this is no exception.  Frankly, it's one of my favorite sports logos... period. I'd love to get my hands on a jersey!

1 hour ago, GFB said:

[W]hen a hawk is resting, it’s beak is closed and you don’t see the lower one... It’s only when a hawk is acting aggressive that it opens its mouth enough to the point where you can see the lower beak. 

My problem with this logo...



... is the complete lack of detail on the entirety of the hawk's lower jaw. No mouth line... no lower mandible... no detail whatsoever. Minimalism taken to the extreme.

In the photo of the hawk at rest which you shared...



... one can still discern details such as the mouth line, the separation of the upper and lower mandibles, and the feather-covered rear portion of the lower mandible. They're all plainly visible here...



While the artist who designed the Winterhawks' alternate logo had every right to design a more minimalist mark, I feel the choice - and its execution - leave something to be desired aesthetically. It strikes me as a bit too stylized. There's something "robotic" about the hawk. Certainly attractive, but not what I'd choose for a team dubbed the Winterhawks.   
 

While a solid logo, this has always struck me as being a depiction of a cyborg hawk from the distant future that was sent back to 21st-century Portland in order to prevent the erasure of major junior hockey in said city from our timeline.

"I'll be BEAK."

Had this Portland Winterhawks logo been unveiled yet, or could the team's new mark be hiding in plain sight on their web page? 

I can just see the Review-Journal banner headline officially announcing the relocation: Viva LA's Vegas!

 

In the Euro 2020 final, Italy played to win and they won. England played "not to lose"... so they lost.

40 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

This might sound like a smartass question, but it's not: how is NYCFC different than Chivas USA?

NYCFC have picked up as many regular season wins, one more playoff appearance, and one less "Wooden Spoon" in the six seasons and ten matches of their Major League Soccer play to date than Club Deportivo Chivas USA managed in the entirety of its 10-season  MLS existence. 

This Angel City FC season ticket-holder dropped some serious coin on team merchandise today. I'll be proud - indeed, tickled Sol Rosa - to wear such an attractive crest.

On 5/29/2021 at 9:56 AM, WideRight said:

 So we have the Knights, Monarchs, Surge and Mad Dogs all as options. 

A bland and poorly rendered logo appropriately paired with a derivative and ill-fitting name. "Meh" sports branding at its most middling-to-subpar.   

Bridgeport Islanders? Derivative crap.

5 hours ago, WideRight said:

OK, Next crowdsourcing question. I have a new Denver Gold logo ready to go once Nike takes over branding in the mid-90's, but the Gold are getting a uniform update from Russell Athletic/Champion in 1990.  Do I go with their standard logo or is there an intermediary logo that they use for a few years?

I'd stick with their standard logo until Nike takes over branding in the mid-'90s.

2 hours ago, WideRight said:

I am not going to get rid of one of the best USFL looks just for that reason though. Maybe the team will eventually move somewhere else with an oceanfront view, but for now they remain because that is still one of the best helmets in football history.

Hmmmmm. You're just heading into the 1988 playoffs in your USFL simulation, correct? Plenty of time for me to convince simulation Bob Kraft to build a privately-financed stadium for USFL football, convince the simulation Boston City Council to let him construct it on the city's Seaport waterfront, and for the Breakers to return to their rightful home. Depending upon how quickly simulation Bob Kraft can build the stadium and close on the purchase of the team, he could conceivably have the Breakers lifting the first of their ten USFL championship trophies (Kraft's Breakers don't lose four USFL title games, including two heartbreakers to the New Jersey Generals and one to the Philadelphia Stars) before his real world counterpart would have actually purchased the NFL's Patriots.          

5 hours ago, B-Rich said:

Although not ocean waves, the breakers of Lake Pontchartrain say hello...

While the waves on Lake Pontchartrain are impressive, Breakers still isn't a better identity for a New Orleans-based franchise than it was for a Boston team. And the waves on Lake Pontchartrain had less to do with the Breakers name being maintained in the Crescent City than it did with George Matthews' willingness (or lack thereof) to foot-the-bill for a rebrand. Again, in my honest opinion, New Orleans VooDoo was a far better brand for football in the market than Breakers ever was. Lose the sunglasses in the AFL squad's logo and you're set.    

Replacing metallic silver with metallic silver-blue in the Showboats' palette is exactly what's necessary to give Memphis a unique look within the league. That shade you've chosen is stunning, particularly when paired with the darker red. Phenomenal!  

To my mind, if the Ottawa Senators are going to lean into the 'O' as the core image of their brand, simply layering it over a background of a rectangle comprised of a red stripe and a black stripe leaves a great deal to be desired. The 'O' itself needs some sort of adornment, if only to draw attention away from the fact that the letter is not that far removed from being a number '0'... and being labeled a zero isn't exactly something that most people - particularly, professional athletes - are striving to achieve.

With that in mind, here's what I've managed to crudely scrape together on the paper tablecloth of a Studio City café with colored pencils borrowed from the barista:



The Red, Black, and White are self-explanatory. The Grey is meant to be rendered in Metallic Silver. I recognize that jettisoning Gold for Silver would bring the Senators closer to the Hurricanes' palette, but the Silver is meant as a nod to the original Ottawa Hockey Club's "Silver Seven" era. Is it stunningly original design? No, of course not. Then again, my goal was to emulate the simplicity of classic NHL brands such as those of the Canadiens and Maple Leafs, without resorting to just slapping an 'O' on the front of a jersey, cap, t-shirt, etc. I'll admit that I'm not normally a fan of rendering a team's nickname in abbreviated form on a primary mark, but there was simply no way to get 'SENATORS' into the banner without having to shrink the type to a size that would risk legibility issues, either when seen from a distance or rendered at smaller sizes. Further, with regard to the word mark, I'd bow to the expertise of anyone particularly gifted at crafting fonts. I also wouldn't be averse to the word mark being rendered in two colors - but, that said, simplicity is to be strived for. 

Oh... and I realize that a certain Big Ten Conference member university would likely have a team of its attorneys readying a trademark infringement challenge within moments of the Ottawa Senators rolling such a mark out. 

11 hours ago, Skycast said:

The Breakers are one of the all time best identities and helmets in sports, no way they should become the Voodoo.

While I love the Breakers identity and helmets, it suited the Boston market far better than either New Orleans or Portland, as the Massachusetts capital is an oceanfront city where breakers - heavy ocean waves which break violently into foam against a rocky coast - are quite likely to occur. New Orleans and Portland are riverfront cities situated 100 miles upriver from, respectively, the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean.  

2 hours ago, qckgnc said:

I would like to add that he Baltimore Madauders logo from the failed NFL expansion bid would make a great update for the Blitz.

While the silhouette of a Martin B-26 Marauder was featured on the proposed logo of the Baltimore-based NFL expansion bid in 1993, the team was to have been named the Baltimore Bombers. 

The Somerset Patriots - now the Double-A affiliate of the New York Yankees after 22 seasons in the independent Atlantic League - have unveiled "Bronx Bomber"-inspired uniforms in advance of their first affiliated campaign.

  

8 hours ago, WideRight said:

Hi everyone.  As some of you may recall, I am running an alt-history simulation of the USFL (https://apsbertsche.wixsite.com/mysite) and we are now well past the actual 3 years that the league ran.  It is in 1988 right now, but as we move along, teams would normally start tweaking their look, some may relocate, we will have expansion.  So I am looking for some advice.  I have 3 questions for you which will help guide me into the 90's.  I will post updated designs here, such as the one below.  But first the questions.

 

1. Which USFL logos or uniforms would benefit from some minor tweaks?  And what tweaks?  A few thoughts I have are:  

• Adding some black to the blue/silver Orlando Renegades (BFBS? or because it is in the logo?)
• Adding some black to the Memphis Showboats (more BFBS)
• Modernizing the LA Express logo.
• Swapping the original Pittsburgh Maulers logo for the NFLE Berlin Thunder logo in purple, orange and metallic grey.
• Either adding some detail to the Birmingham Stallions logo, or swapping it for the CFL's Baltimore Stallions logo in red/gold. 

 

2. Are there any USFL teams that you could see doing a major color change to be more "Xtreme" and adding teal or purple in the 90's?

 

3. Are there any NFL Europe, CFL USA, or Arena Football logos/identities which you believe would fit alongside the USFL teams if we expanded.  My goal is not to create all new logo identities from scratch, but to make use of "real world" designs in a new format or with a USFL team since the WLAF/NFLE, CFL expansion, and maybe Arenaball would likely not exist in a world with a strong and ongoing USFL.

1) The Arizona Wranglers primary mark could use an update. It's always struck me as a bit busy. I'd suggest something along the lines of an evolutionary mid-point between the original USFL Wranglers primary and Dane Storrusten's proposed design for the A11FL's Dallas Wranglers. 

As for the thoughts that you had: 

• I'd jettison the Orlando Renegades identity entirely. In my opinion, it was amongst the worst of the USFL's team names and marks. The logo looks like a mash-up of randomly combined clip-art elements. Perhaps you could repurpose the Arena Football League's Grand Rapids Rampage name and logo for the market? There's something about the flow of Orlando Rampage that I like. If you're inclined to go with a blue/silver/black color scheme in Orlando, I think that would work just as well with the rhino-themed Rampage identity as the red/black/silver palette the actual AFL team employed in Grand Rapids.
• I don't know that the Memphis Showboats identity would be improved by the addition of "black for black's sake". My gut reaction is that it wouldn't, but I'd have to see what you have in mind to be sure. Truth be told, the Showboats primary logo is in need of an update. It's fine as a secondary mark/helmet device, but a true primary logo needs something more.
• The LA Express logo definitely needs to be modernized.
• Ditto for the original Pittsburgh Maulers logo, which always resembled something a 13-year-old sports fan would come up with in his spiral-bound notebook. At the very least, it needs to be fine-tuned by a talented graphic designer such as yourself. Simply replacing the USFL Maulers logo with that of NFL Europe's Berlin Thunder leaves me a bit cold, as the lightning bolt element that's incorporated into the Berlin Thunder logo - while quite fitting in a team mark that's meant to tie into the Norse/Teutonic god Thor - doesn't conjure up images of the iron and steel processing for which Pittsburgh has historically been famous. Now, if that lightning bolt could be replaced by a trail of flame, you'd be on to something.
• The Baltimore Stallions logo would definitely makes for a bolder, more detailed primary mark for your USFL's Birmingham franchise. That said, the stars and stripes could stand to be eliminated from the logo, as their ties to "The Star-Spangled Banner" would no longer fit the host market. If the stars were removed from the Baltimore Stallions logo, the namesake animals' neck were rendered in a manner that didn't include the stripes, and the resultant mark were then placed between the arched BIRMINGHAM and horizontal STALLIONS in the USFL team's logo, that would result in a solid update

2) Could I envision one of your USFL teams adding purple in the '90s? Absolutely... along with the adoption of an Arena Football League name and logo package. The New Orleans Breakers name and logos should be retired and replaced with the vastly superior - and more locally relevant - New Orleans VooDoo identity.

3) As for other NFL Europe, CFL USA, and/or Arena Football League identities that I think are worthy of inclusion in your take on the USFL, I'd recommend:

• The (London) Monarchs identity could be shifted to the Carolinas if your USFL beats the NFL to Charlotte.
• The  (Frankfurt) Galaxy identity could serve your Orlando-based franchise, as Kennedy Space Center - the epicenter of Florida's Space Coast - is approximately 50 miles from central Orlando. Then again, perhaps the Galaxy identity beats Major League Soccer to Los Angeles and replaces Express as the name of your SoCal USFL franchise.
• Speaking of Los Angeles, both the Cobras and Avengers identities ably served the market in the Arena Football League and could be revived to grace said city's entry in your USFL. Or, either - though Cobras strikes me as particularly fitting (you'd need to flip the 'A' in the logo) - could adorn a Las Vegas-based USFL franchise. 

I really like the Chicago Machine and I can't wait to see what else the future holds for your take on the USFL.

On 3/29/2021 at 3:43 PM, Sodboy13 said:

Interesting move to make the logo of the Checkers an actual checker.

Panthers strengthen Checkers through NHL Draughts   

13 minutes ago, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Glad there is a California connection!

As I said, friends in Arcadia, California were the first people I heard use the term "disco turkey". That was three or four years ago. Since then, I've heard people use it elsewhere throughout the country. I don't know exactly how widespread use of the term happens to be, but it strikes me that "disco turkey" is to peafowl, as "trash panda" is to raccoon.   

21 hours ago, Jay_Mellowed said:

I like the logo; the name, however, doesn't work, as the identity is more peacock than turkey.

The term "disco turkey" is slang for peacock. I have friends who live in Arcadia, California. Peafowl that call said city home - as well as those in nearby municipalities such as Monrovia, Pasadena, and Altadena - are referred to as "disco turkeys". 

The Carolina Disco Turkeys aren't a minor pro team. They're a collegiate wood bat summer baseball team that's scheduled to play its home games at a minor pro ballpark - namely, Truist Stadium in Winston-Salem, NC.

Somehow, I'm a bit more forgiving of identities akin to Bacon, Bananas, Chatt-a-Hoots, Pippins, Sweets, and - yes - Disco Turkeys when they're adorning the uniforms and souvenir merchandise of amateur teams comprised of college students. I'm not saying that I'd actually slap a similar moniker on a summer collegiate squad that I owned/operated, but I'd certainly be more likely to consider such branding at said level of play.

As for minor league baseball branding, I'm a huge proponent of team identities that are distinct from that of parent clubs and - where possible - inspired by the culture, history, flora, or fauna of the host market. Might that lead to an eccentric name and logo from time to time? Certainly. That said, I feel the trend of minor league ball clubs adopting the most off-the-wall identities possible - often with exceedingly strained arguments for why they're purportedly locally relevant, and clearly in blatant attempts to garner press coverage - to have grown tiresome. In my opinion, the hits are far outweighed by the swings-and-misses.

This Disco Turkeys identity? As collegiate wood bat summer baseball brands, I'd take it over Booyah, Otterbots, Pickles, Tarp Skunks, etc.       

      

6 hours ago, Sport said:

They should just go back to exactly what they were wearing in 1998.

Bingo! The uniforms that the Jaguars sported from 1998 through 2001 were their best attire ever.