JTernup

13 minutes ago, Digby said:

Honestly I really dig the beehive/mountain combo design motifs that DetroitHockey has been using in coverage, and it's a sharp color scheme too. But I suppose a bees theme are too Blue Jackets (and opens the door to something corny like the Utah Buzz), the mountains and colors are too Avalanche, and the mountains are doubly beaten to the punch by Real Salt Lake's new jersey.

 

(Honestly didn't even realize Utah changed their flag until all of this -- new one is pretty good!) 

 

I don't like the name Buzz but I'm kind of shocked that it hasn't been floated more. It checks off the beehive state component, has the double ZZ that matches up with the Jazz and actually sounds pretty natural when you say 'Utah Buzz'.

The satin finish on the helmet looks awful in these images, curious to see what it looks like in games. The glossiness of the old one still showed up as navy in most shots, this one could look black in domes and at night. The white helmet is awful, that should have never seen the light of day. Way too simple, and their logo has way too much white, it looks like a stock helmet from the sporting goods store.

The jersey is pretty good if you get over the sleeve caps being way too similar to the Chargers IMO. 

The pants suck but at least they have stripes and the socks are abysmal and the way they are being paired with the pants is not promising. 

Overall a slight upgrade since the old unis were so stale and they had the jersey/pant stripe matching issue, but the Broncos tried to reinvent the wheel and pumped out something sub-optimal as a result.

Reading the Nike-speak, "the sun rising and setting behind the mountain peak" is so ridiculously stupid. From Denver, the sun has never risen from behind a mountain. It's like they didn't want to just say the sun is setting because the way this franchise has looked for the last decade it feels like the sun is setting on them. 

2 hours ago, TBGKon said:

I do like the design, but the only issue with the Cigar City moniker is that it belongs to Tampa proper, and since the team plays in St. Petersburg that might not look good when they're in the middle of working out the details of a new ballpark in St Pete.

That is probably correct, I am very anti-St. Pete when it comes to the Rays' future home though and it is by far the most recognizable nickname/historical tie in for the team that I can think of for a city connect.

2 hours ago, bowld said:

Wouldn't read into the Cigar City shirt. Nike has a line called Local Team that has shirts like this for all teams-

 

 

Yeah, it was an old shirt that I just liked. I'm not expecting it at all but I think it would create the best CC identity.

1 hour ago, BC985 said:

Won’t happen. You can’t sell youth gear with the word cigar on it. 

I hate that you are probably right on this, it just seems so silly when cigars are a very important historical part of Tampa Bay. Nixing the phrase 'Cigar' just seems so silly when you have active players that have committed terrible crimes, gambling advertisements everywhere, and ballparks named after beer.

22 minutes ago, TBGKon said:

I'm hoping for light blue jersey and pants, but with a crossover into the gradient Devil Rays throwbacks. 

 

They're rumored to wear these on a Friday for the first time and currently Fridays are Devil Rays Days when they wear the throwbacks at home.  It would only make sense if they kept that up.

They had some Cigar City Nike shirts a couple years back that I really liked that I've been hoping would inspire the City Connect gear. This word mark on a light blue jersey with light blue pants would be a great city connect.

1 hour ago, bbush24 said:

 

It's not so much about hating the company, but discouraging companies from seeing it as a good advertising investment. I don't hate or blame the individual companies, I just hate the whole idea of it. Again, a pretty worthless endeavor considering 99.99% of the population doesn't care. But I still do it out of principle.

I don't disagree with this in theory but I think it takes aim at the wrong target. I will boycott purchasing jerseys and team items with the ads if I want to make a point. That is much more of an easily identified causal choice to teams than it would be to Wawa to  fill up my gas at the Chevron instead of the Wawa.

19 hours ago, kaleb_girod said:

Are you a Florida fan, because personally I’ve never heard of this being a lifelong fan? Tbh, that “superstition” sounds really dumb if true. I’d be very welcome to blue over orange every now and then. It’s still a really

nice, clean look that you could argue is better than the blue over white combo. Reminds me of the Browns going brown over orange.

 

Imo, while I prefer the blue, for a team with an orange helmet, we don’t use the orange pants enough like we should.

I’m a Gator fan and have said it in reference to the combo, I wouldn’t call it a superstition though. I just think the combo is terrible looking and happens to match Illinois who plays terrible on the field and tends to look terrible. I just really don’t think that combo is befitting of the Gators much in the same way I’ve thought our home white outs, Gator skin, and black helmet weren’t befitting of the brand.

2 hours ago, pepis21 said:

 Same is with NBA, no one except Americans and maybe Canadians recognize Denver Nuggets as a "World Champions" but as a "NBA Champions" because this what they are.

If someone create World League where NBA would play against teams from over the world, then they could be a World Champions.

This conversation always makes me laugh. Your side always makes this second point like we can’t wrap our minds around a world league or that you’ve added something interesting or nuanced. Everyone gets it.

Its like saying World War 2 wasn’t really a world war because Yemen wasn’t involved.

It actually reminds me of when a child says something that is technically right but the adult just laughs it off and keeps living their life because they are older, smarter, better, and makes more money.

48 minutes ago, j'villejags said:

It may just be the lighting, but the Florida jersey looks anthracite / charcoal to me -- not quite black. (Not that dark gray is any better.)

It’s black, the lighting in the bookstore was terrible and I couldn’t get a more accurate picture.

39 minutes ago, CrookedThumb said:

UF apparently unveiled their upcoming black football jerseys 

 

 

Not so much of an unveiling. More like I was walking through the bookstore on the way to lunch, snapped a pic and sent it to Gators Unis. I like them but I’m really hoping they’ll look better on the field (they usually do, replica jerseys look bad often).

I was meh on the Nuggets city uniforms all season. I like them but didn't feel the need to buy one until they wore them way too much and had several of the franchise's most iconic moments in them. 

Hopefully the Nuggets will strong arm Nike and bring them back for next year.

With all of that said I thought they were loosely based off of the old Denver Rockets uniforms this whole time and never made the Union Station connection. 

5 hours ago, Bmac said:

I almost wonder if that's why they added the random patch to the side of these caps. The Marlins cap needed to look different than their regular cap, so they added a patch, and of course had to add that onto all of them.

Side patches have been huge in the fitted hat collecting community for the last few years. This is just New Era and MLB trying to capitalize on that popularity and capture he fitted cap collectors and fans.

On 5/16/2023 at 2:09 PM, JTernup said:

There is no reason that it needs to be retro. Appropriate road uniform colors in baseball history have been as follows 1) Grey, 2) Powder Blue and the Rays have decided to mix those and create a far worse look than all grey or all powder. 

 

Your second point is literally so false that I'll ignore it.

I was just watching the Rays game and thinking about why the Powder over Grey doesn’t work for me. I typically think colored tops look decent over white or grey pants, but not in this case.

Color Value! The powder blue and grey have nearly the same color value and it makes the set look very out of sorts. You either need a monochrome look or color value contrast and this Rays set has neither.

Thats simultaneously why powder works as replacement for gray and doesn’t work with it.

On 5/13/2023 at 2:51 AM, adsarebad said:

Those powder blue pants are a 70's look right?

why should the rays go retro like that, when they were not even around back then?

 

MLB unis should have different colored jersey and pants, this is not basketball.

and it looks ridiculous, a pajama party/softball party, on the biggest stage!

There is no reason that it needs to be retro. Appropriate road uniform colors in baseball history have been as follows 1) Grey, 2) Powder Blue and the Rays have decided to mix those and create a far worse look than all grey or all powder. 

Your second point is literally so false that I'll ignore it.

3 hours ago, coco1997 said:

The Rays as an organization do pretty much everything right, but matching powder blue jerseys with gray pants is not one of them. 

I desperately want them to adopt powder blue pants. It just makes way too much sense at this point. You've got all these other teams creating contrived powder blue home alts and the Rays are the only team wearing powder the way it was originally intended and botch the pants.

14 hours ago, WSU151 said:

 

The recent white jerseys used navy as the main accent color, then for whetever reason they switched to black the next year. Not sure they should have white and black unis now. 

 

The rainbow “Atari Breakout” look was definitely not ahead of its time. It was definitely a product of the 80s and extremely dated in the 1990s

 

Everyone knows the navy gold and crimson were dripped because of awful basketball after 1995 and Kiki wanted UCLA colors. 

 

They nailed the color balance, not necessarily the colors. Outside of the rainbow itself both the black and white city rainbows were essentially two color designs with no outlined numbers, very minimal adornment, and minimal one color trim. Compare that to the classic rainbows which had a bright base color, three color twill, and bright gold trim. The new uniforms let the rainbow shine with a simplistic base while the old ones (as much as I love them) had a lot competing for visual interest.

It can be of its time for general design and culture but still ahead of its time for an NBA uniform. Nobody else did anything approaching that level of detail and unique design for another decade. I wasn't around for the switch but if it were "dated" I'd say that is mostly a result of the general business I described above.  Looking back on it now from a marketability, nostalgia, and memorable perspective it is clear that they dropped something that was great and could have continued to be with some updates for something that was completely forgettable and drab. 

5 hours ago, tBBP said:

That may be all and good, but now thanks to the Utah red rock and Phoenix rainbow-esque alternates (that's what I'm referring to them as--bump all that mess up above), not to mention the other NBA team that made rainbow-esque motifs part of their identity (that'd be the deer), it wouldn't even be all that unique to Denver anymore.

 

 

I mean there has definitely been some infringement (Dallas skyline alternate comes to mind as well) but as the basis for an identity it would still be pretty unique. The red rocks and valley uniforms read as much more of a gradient than a rainbow to me.

4 minutes ago, WSU151 said:

As someone who lived in Denver in the 90s, damn near the whole city was ecstatic that the Nuggets finally had three main colors in 1993 rather than six colors.  Royal, yellow and red can work while going back to a classic skyline-mountain look. 

I totally believe that. It was honestly pretty far ahead of its time and the 90’s aesthetic was so dark and drab compared to the rainbows. FWIW I do think the recent black and white rainbow city jerseys of recent years nailed the color balance needed to really let the rainbow shine. The old school gold cuffs and Royal base were very busy alongside the rainbow.

3 hours ago, gosioux76 said:

The thing I find odd about the Nuggets current uniforms is that I can't really get a sense of what their actual colors are. Are they a primarily navy+yellow team? Navy + white with touches of yellow and maroon? Navy with imbalanced amounts of dark red/yellow/white? And then for good measure, they thrown in a royal blue alt that doesn't fit in at all. 

 

The way to think of the Nuggets' color scheme is blue and gold. They have always worn primarily blue uniforms with gold as a secondary and various tertiary colors (often red).  It's definitely a unique way to handle a color scheme but I think it is much more consistent than what we've seen with the Jazz for example. 

As a Nuggets fan, I think that this idea that the powder blue was beloved is a bit wrong though. To a lot of Nuggets fans that almost feels like an era of Nuggets basketball rather than the basis of our core identity. The real issue is that they refuse to embrace the rainbows fully, which would really solve all of their identity problems in my opinion.

50 minutes ago, Chromatic said:

I have no issues with the Senators having a Roman military theme to their identity. Rising to high political office in Ancient Rome essentially required a decorated military service. The term "senator" today still invokes some level of Roman imagery.

 

As far as I'm concerned when you have a somewhat vague name, its perfectly appropriate to lean your identity into a particular direction that may not be explicit in it, so long as whatever you're choosing to depict is not precluded from the term. For example, I think the 'Patriots' explicitly using  minuteman branding, the 'Canucks' leaning into the lumberjack motif, 'Islanders' using a fisherman, 'Texans' having bull imagery' etc.  'Senators' having a Roman bent to it is fine.  It gives the brand something else to latch onto beyond mere location signifiers. 

 

It would be different if it were a very explicit name that all the logos and branding depicted something wildly out of place, like the Pittsburgh Penguins using a wildebeest as their logo or something.

 

 

That's the part of my commentary on Ottawa that keeps getting overlooked though. You can absolutely do that and have a successful brand (pretty much all of those that you listed) if you do it well. The Senators have literally always had one of the worst logos in the Big 4 though. If you have a bad logo and it's only tangentially related to your name you have a mess of a brand identity.

4 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

Why does a teams logo HAVE to be an exactly literal interpretation of their name and location, though? Boston doesn't have a brown bear as their primary logo despite being named the Boston Brown Bears, their capital cohort Washington literally just uses their own name as their primary brand identity, the Rangers don't have a hockey-playing cop or cowboy for a primary logo, LA doesn't use a king as their primary logo at all, Seattle only vaguely suggests their namesake in their logo...

It absolutely doesn’t need to be a literal interpretation of the name and I’ve never said it did. Hell, my favorite teams are the Nuggets and Chiefs, neither of which have literal representations and both have what I believe are awesome primary logos. The difference between the Sens and all of your other examples is that all of those actually WORK. In my opinion the Senators’ use of a Roman doesn’t, but I also recognize that the fan base and many others could disagree with that assessment. What is harder to disagree with is that they have never taken that already flawed inspiration and created a logo that is really good. I don’t think they’ve ever even cracked the top 75% of professional sports logos. 
 

To prove this point to myself I went through the rest of the big 4 logos on the mothership and the Clippers are the only equivalent I could find. Their primary logo SUCKS and is not a literal interpretation of a Clipper but I think we can all agree that it sucks because it’s a bad logo and it’s even worse because it is a poor representation of the name. That’s how I feel about the Senators.

1 hour ago, IceCap said:

Look, I gave up this fight a while ago. The Senators have used the Roman theme for so long that it just is what it is, and there's likely no undoing that. I accept it. But if you want to have a discussion on the identity's merits... well it's gotta be pointed out it's not exactly well constructed or totally sensical. 

 

That's a bit revisionist. The Roman theme isn't popular because it connected in a way nothing else could. It's popular because it was the logo when the city got NHL hockey back for the first time in over half a century, endearing it to fans. And because it was the logo for the team when fans today were kids. It's a combination of nostalgia and positive association. 

 

Which is fine. If that's what Sens fans want so be it. But if the Sens had rolled out a Peace Tower logo instead and nothing else was different then that's the logo everyone would love today. 

IceCap did a great job explaining some of my issues with the identity but I think this last part is especially prudent. You can’t reasonably compare how beloved a Peace Tower or alternative inspiration design would have been received because we didn’t get those under the same conditions we got the Roman senators.

14 hours ago, Ridleylash said:

Eh, I'd disagree. There's too much history wrapped in the current identity to drop it altogether (fans would riot if they rid of the look they just fought to get back), and too much design potential to waste it going for a design that's just "HEY GUIZ U KNOW WE'RE THE CAPITAL OF CANADA RIGHT?!"

I get that fans are probably sentimental about the Roman logo but in a vacuum it's bad. The team is literally named the Senators,  your problem with their branding leaning on being the capital is more a problem with the name than it is any branding choices. 

They do have a very tough branding niche to fill with Senators as their name and playing in the capital though. There is already a Canadiens, Maple Leafs, Canucks and even Jets that have their own versions of Canada imagery. Roman Senators just feels like a strange inspiration and has never been done particularly well.

I don’t have much to add here but the Senators have to have the worst logo history in big 4 sports for my money. Those lifeless white faces, design flaws, and uncanny valley aspects leave nothing to admire. I’m sure their fans like the Roman Senator look but I’d be tempted to shift towards a Canadian capital logo like the Weagle or Nationals  capital dome cap logo.

5 minutes ago, adsarebad said:

yellow blob on a license plate, does not it mean it looks good on a MLB jersey!!

And on this plate the yellow sticker is small, on the jersey it's huge.

 

And exactly the same thing as the ads, they now stick out like sore thumbs! 

 

I also hate the yellow patch, but it has nothing to do with the license plate. It was inspired by a Double Black Diamond ski warning sign. My big problem with the Rockies city connect is that horrendous hat logo. They described it as a tourist sticker, which is literally the opposite of connecting with the local community. 

2 hours ago, pelicanfan said:

my predictions:

- the suns. we've seen the leaks already and so this might be the year they'll come to fruition. which is great because although i really like the current jerseys ive always disliked their shorts. just because of how nike copied and pasted the same design for them and the clippers. also they get the chance to incorporate some more black now since thats what their brand has been leaning towards recently.

 

(i know these pics are old but they're the best angle i could find of the shorts) 

The Suns' uniforms have become such a forgettable mess. None of their sets since moving on from the Nash era uniforms have been particularly good. They've muddled their primary color scheme with grey and black, they can's seem to stick with a style (sun burst, upside down/backwords word mark, bevels, gradients etc.). It's actually shocking that they've only had two overhauls in the last 10 years. I literally forget what their uniforms look like every time I see them because they are so forgettable and bland. At least when other teams destroy their visual identities there is a look that feels "right", I don't know what the Suns should be wearing at this point.

9 hours ago, JohnnyCowboy5 said:

thats a youth not a mens

Next time try reading my comment. They do sell them, they are currently sold out. I posted a youth size in an attempt to be helpful to you if they restock.

1 hour ago, JohnnyCowboy5 said:

Do you know or anyone else know why Nike wont sell those jersey to the fans?

Nike sells the throwback jersey in white. I think the piping is black and the on-field is probably navy (honestly can’t tell) but it’s passable. As of a couple days ago the team store (Bay Republic) had them in men’s but they seem to be sold out. Here is the kids jersey and the website if you want to keep an eye out for a restock of the adult jersey. https://thebayrepublic.com/collections/jerseys-rays/products/rays-white-youth-devil-rays-replica-nike-jersey 
 

FWIW I’d be shocked if we don’t get a full release this season. Now that it’s an official jersey Nike has started producing Authentic Collection Devil Rays gear.