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FinsUp1214

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Everything posted by FinsUp1214

  1. Good afternoon, all! If you've been over to the FIFA World Cup 2026 logo thread at all, you've certainly seen me voice my displeasure at the newly unveiled logo. I won't keep you all reading too long, but suffice to say, I believe the logo suffers from a few major problems. The first and most obvious is the use of a png trophy pasted on top of the "26", a truly bizarre choice. Secondly is the avoidance of any sort of color, pattern, iconography, or symbolism that celebrates Canada, USA, and Mexico. While the 16 host cities do include branding with colors and patterns that represent each city (albeit a bit convoluted in some cases), the primary logo itself missed an opportunity to do the same for the host nations and immediately present the brand's intentions. I had an itch to find a solution this morning, and cranked out this concept today. While I personally would have tried something completely different altogether, I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could make what FIFA was trying to do work somehow. The result is fairly self explanatory; I aimed to create something that gave the primary logo life, and tied it more strongly into the spirit of the host city branding approach. The logo in this concept now features a pattern composed of abstracted maple leafs for Canada, stars for USA, and a repetitive mountain pattern for Mexico that is inspired by the 1968 Mexico City Olympic branding. I also added "UNITED" underneath the "26" and trophy to more directly identify the name of the tournament. I also tried one version with a more stylized, abstracted trophy to see how a more "icon" style logo could work, and also maintained the use of the photo trophy in the 2nd version just to see how that would work as well. It's something I still want to play around with and polish up a bit more, but I wanted to get this out of my head and somewhere where I could get some eyes and thoughts on it. I'd love to hear any feedback and thoughts you all have! Thanks for reading and viewing!
  2. When you’re rolling out a major brand like this, you can’t afford to ask your audience to “be patient” or assume they will be. An initial brand rollout has to provide and present the context for what this is all about. Does this mean you have to release absolutely everything? No. But you have to release enough to provide the “why.” FIFA didn’t do that and spaced it all out too far, which allowed for the underwhelming logo to take all the attention and get daggered before the rest of the brand even came out. They were basically asking for it. We didn’t see any this city stuff until the day (or days) after the logo itself was released. We got the plain logo and a bunch of colors, but we never saw anything akin to this the night of. We never saw the intended “modularity” of the logo and how that was going to be accomplished. That led to some people (myself being one of them) waiting for colors and patterns or something to fill the logo in, and being a bit jilted when it never happened. Had they released the logo with the video above together on the same night? Different story. I think that context would’ve helped it out a little bit and provided more of a “why.” It wouldn’t save it for me personally - the logo is still pretty flawed between the png trophy and the lack of its own colors or patterns - but it would have more clearly defined what the intention behind the logo and brand was. So no, “patience” didn’t fix this, for me at least. The rollout strategy’s intentional delays between stages was a major flaw that led to lost context. The logo is still very underwhelming, lifeless, and I’m genuinely concerned about how well it’s going to function in various uses. Even the city branding, as great as a lot of it is, still presents a fair bit of confusion in its own right with multiple color schemes per city and overlapping between a few that’s already caused some confusion for me. All in all, the city branding made the whole thing a bit more palatable, yes. But even still, it did nothing to take away or fix the other flaws the brand has in my opinion. The good and the bad co-exist and neither are cancelling each other out.
  3. I’ll fully admit that there’s some really cool stuff there, some of which I think is especially promising (that orbit pattern for Houston and 8-bit stuff for San Francisco is pretty awesome, actually. Hadn’t seen either of those yet). That being said, I think the fact that there was some good effort put into the city stuff while the main logo is left plain honestly upsets me a little more. It goes to show the main logo could’ve had a really cool pattern or design placed into it if they really wanted. I get it - the intention I’m sure was for the main logo to “be the template” or whatever. But it still could have been that with some sort of RGB color scheme or pattern integrated within it. I don’t think it would’ve caused any disconnect to make that extra effort: in fact, I think it would have driven home what they were trying to do more with such a design. If they had run with something like that alongside what this video shows together on the same night instead, I would’ve been a little warmer towards this and understood what they were trying to do a little clearer. Rolling out the blank primary first and waiting to roll out the city stuff until the day(s) after didn’t allow for that context to be presented and recieved, and that chasm - among other mistakes - really hurt this. So yeah, there is some good stuff here, but not quite enough to redeem the poor overall execution of the logo and brand as a whole.
  4. One thing I still haven’t seen in the branding package is a wordmark akin to “Russia 2018”, “Qatar 2022”, etc. Is there a “United 2026” one floating around somewhere that I’m missing? That would especially be needed for television scorebugs: I can’t imagine “FOX | primary 26 logo” in the top right corner is going to work that well on screen. It’s going to be too small a scale for the logo. They’ve got to have some sort of alternative option. Also, it’s bugging me that the host cities have multiple color schemes rather than unique ones, and that some are overlapping (Philadelphia and Boston both have a yellow/blue/green option, for example). I think I’ve seen navy/powder blue/red for two different cities and keep mixing up who they’re even for. Kansas City and Houston, I think? This whole thing’s just weird.
  5. I’ve noticed a few occasions where some images don’t show up for me after about 10 seconds of a page trying to load. It’ll try to load it for a bit, then stop and put the question mark icon over where the image should be instead. I think there’s just so much going on with ads and images on this site that it’s as if it overloads and makes the page sort of “give up.” To be clear, this isn’t a constant issue, but I’ve encountered it a little more lately.
  6. There’s somebody who lives at my apartment complex that has a Napoli window sticker and license plate holder on thier car. When I see foreign soccer club stuff around here, it’s usually one of the Mexican clubs, Premier League clubs, or Barcelona. Seeing anything from Napoli, let alone car decor, was a bit of a shocker. — One of my favorite examples from TV would be the various team gear some of the characters wear on How I Met Your Mother. There’s the Canucks gear Robin occasionally wears (which makes sense as her character is from British Columbia), but Marshall and Ted both wear random college and baseball team gear fairly often in the earlier seasons. The most random is probably Marshall - a character from Minnesota living in New York - wearing a Wyoming Cowboys hoodie:
  7. Where are you getting this idea that everybody wants it to be 1930 again from? Besides, there weren’t “simple logos” in 1930 anyways - most examples that are cited as sports logos from that time period were really illustrations, cartoons, or even full posters or cards that were never official logos as outlined in a specific brand guide. Branding was far looser back then, and was for quite a long time after that. If you’re just trying to simply call those you disagree with old, then whatever, but at least get the era a little closer to correct if you’re going to do that. Anyways, you can have a progressive, forward thinking brand with a strong logo; the two are not mutually exclusive. I’d argue you’re putting yourself in a box if you think you can’t pull both off.
  8. Yeah, I’m feeling a lot of feelings with this one too. I think what I feel more than anything is shock, repulsion, and genuine concern about where World Cup branding (and maybe the branding of sports events in general) is headed moving forwards. The opportunity to blend the cultural inspiration of three countries together and make something visually exciting was right there. Especially in a host area that for the most part is still growing Soccer interest and could use something more celebratory of the locale to inspire. It was an open net! How they deliberately decided to not only miss the net, but not take the shot at all in favor of “modularity” or whatever is severely dissapointing. And that’s not even considering the bizarre decision to literally slap a png image of the real trophy onto it, call it a day, and do so with a straight face. I guess I’m just genuinely floored that this is really what all parties involved decided was the right course of action. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
  9. Well….NOW you’re not the only one. That’s going to be hard to unsee!
  10. Also the presentation event itself was hilariously amateur hour, I guess I should have seen this coming. The YouTube stream crashing for five minutes, Lalas trying five times to say “Emmy Winning” but saying some variation of “Ebble Wimble” instead, 300 minutes of highlights for no reason but filler, and “watch parties” in Dallas, Seattle, and Vancouver that weren’t watch parties at all and filmed with Nokia Bricks should have been an indicator of what was coming. That thing had a soundtrack and it was “Yakety Sax” on repeat.
  11. I can’t believe that’s actually it. I was watching that final reveal waiting for it to fill in with colors or patterns or something, and then it just never did. I kept waiting for the png of the trophy to turn into something stylized, and it never did. They’re really going to run with that. Mother of mercy. Maybe that’s what these 16 different host-specific logos are really - that shape filled in with whatever colors or patterns or icons ties it into the city. Even still, this is a really rough mark to lead out with. It’s an absolute nothingburger.
  12. “All 16 hosts will have a custom version.” Hmm, I’m intrigued as to what that could possibly entail. I feel like that could mean anything from “host city name under main logo” to a full on LA 2028 style package that literally includes 16 different logos based on the same template, but with an icon of some sort swapped out.
  13. Strangely enough, I only know one Avs fan here and he’s a co-worker who is originally from Denver anyways. One other co-worker is a Wild fan because he lived in Minnesota for a while, another co-worker is a Kraken fan because he worked in Seattle for a few years and adopted it as a second hometown, and a friend of mine is a Caps fan because she worked in DC for a few years. There’s a decent number of Knights fans here, but not nearly enough for me to say Utah is strongly Knights territory either. This is a long way of saying I think there’s interest in hockey here, but those who are fans here either root for teams from places they have other connections to, or just recently hopped on to the Knights wagon. The Avs don’t really have a foothold here at all, so there wouldn’t be any worry of cutting into any sort of territory. The biggest challenge for an SLC team would be the stadium. Soon-to-be-again Delta Celter wasn’t really built with hockey in mind and has bad sightlines, and as you mentioned, Maverik Center (formerly E Center) in West Valley is a minor league stadium. They’d either have to build a new stadium and grit out a season or two at the Delta Center, or renovate either existing stadium.
  14. Shoot……that modern take on the wishbone “C” is actually really, really, really cool. It absolutely shouldn’t be a full-time thing of course, but still. That’s an awesome cap logo. The red stripe on the cap is a nice touch too, which I’m assuming is a nod to team history:
  15. That’s the most corny and wordy way to announce you tweaked a color and removed a logo outline. This age of social media marketing in which everything needs to be “that deep” is really making market-speak insufferable these days. Man.
  16. I don’t know if his chances at starting are completely shot, though. Ridder’s the starter for now in Atlanta, but there’s no guarantee that experiment will work or last all season. I could absolutely see a situation where Heinicke steps in at some point, and I think he’s actually put himself in a decent position to do so if needed. Heinicke strikes me as a guy that 1) is truly grateful to be playing in the NFL after journeying a bit, and 2) clearly understands his role on a team and what he can offer. Let’s be real here: he hadn’t outright “earned” a long-term starting position in Washington, he started out of necessity due to injuries and such. Was he really going to get that chance to start this coming season in Washington when the brass was that high on Howell? Probably not. I don’t know if I’d call it “chess” per se, but Heinicke did seem to understand that Howell was going to be given the keys at some point. It wasn’t a bad idea to start looking elsewhere. Fast forward to now, and Heinicke got a nice pay raise backing up a quarterback in Atlanta that the jury is still out on, all while surrounded by some pretty significant talent in Drake London, Kyle Pitts, and Bijan Robinson. That’s not a bad gig with some potential for more opportunity, if you ask me.
  17. As much as I really like what they have now, I think this would have been an excellent set if it had been adopted. That shield logo on the sleeve stripes is really nice touch. I’d be curious to see a larger version of both that shield and the shield logo on the pants as well; all in all, this looks like it could have been a really cool, vintage-inspired identity.
  18. Pretty cool to see Jaren Hall drafted by the Vikings: I attended high school at K-12 charter school, and Jaren’s father, former BYU and CFL running back Kalin Hall, was the assistant director there. Jaren attended the same school (in the middle school section) as well until he transferred to Maple Mountain High School, so I saw him around the campus from time to time. I knew and interacted with his father much more than I did with Jaren, but even still, it’s pretty cool to see a kid I met and had seen around at my school years ago get drafted into the NFL. I’m super happy for him and his family, and rooting for him to get a shot to start for the Vikings down the road. With Cousins not getting any younger, that’s honestly not a bad situation for Jaren to find himself in.
  19. Well, in McShay’s defense, his criticism of Levis has actually been fairly consistent. I watched all of the ESPN+ mock draft specials, and McShay had some pretty vocal concerns about Levis in all of them. He had Levis at pick 4 in a couple of mocks more so because he thought that’s where he would go, rather than where he should go. IIRC, he had another mock where he had Levis as low as the late teens to Tampa Bay (can’t recall if that was with thier original pick or a mock trade-up a couple of spots, though). Kiper is the one who was singing Levis’s praises, I’d say even to an excessive extent. I remember him even saying at one point that he’d “throw all Levis’s 2022 film out” because he played hurt all year, which seems a bit irresponsible. I understand the general sentiment, but I would imagine playing ineffectively when hurt and probably aggravating his injuries to a worse extent would be a legitimate cause for concern.
  20. With regards to Levis, the Rams at pick 36, Tennessee at 41, Washington at 47, or even Tampa Bay at 50 make some sense. He could develop a year in any of those places (maybe longer if in LA). If he slides past all of them, however, then there must be a massive red flag somewhere. Turf toe, arrogance, too much mayo in coffee, who knows. Minnesota is another team I would think could be in the QB market as an heir-apparent to Cousins, but they don’t pick again until 87. I think Levis and Hooker will be gone by then, but if by chance one of them are still there, that’d be a great place to take a shot.
  21. Yeah, I think personally I still prefer yellow as a secondary color (in moderation though…enough to maybe even be a tertiary color to white), but I will say that I grew to really like thier red and silver combo a lot over the years in its own right. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the uniforms necessarily, but the color scheme itself really helped the Rockets carve out thier own thing and differentiate from the other red teams in the league. Thier color relationship to the rest of the league reminded me of how I easily tell a school like New Mexico, with thier cherry red/silver, apart from schools like Utah, Louisville, NC State, Wisconsin, etc.
  22. Oh wow, that’s a pretty significant downgrade. I didn’t expect them to depart from the original that far. The rainbow wheel was something I could always quickly associate and recognize as LaLiga, and this new logo really chucks that out the window.
  23. I always find myself kind of torn with the Broncos. On one hand, as a 90’s kid who grew up on the Utah side of Broncos territory, I was consistently exposed to the ‘97 rebrand and the success that immediately followed. Many people in my hometown were Broncos fans, so I saw hats and merch everywhere. Still do, actually. I was five when they rebranded, so to me, the current Broncos identity is really the only one I know and associate with a team that was as close to a hometown team as I know (though admittedly, I am not and never was a Broncos fan myself). I’d be perfectly fine with them continuing to wear it for many more years. On the other hand, I actually think the classic “D” look is a great look. I especially like the color scheme; I think royal blue and orange, when balanced right, is an excellent color scheme. The uniforms were really solid, classic, no-nonsense football uniforms too. In short, there’s a lot I like about the classic look, notwithstanding my stronger familiarity to the current identity. All in all, this may just be a long way of saying a blend of both worlds wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. The cyber horse logo in royal blue and orange, with a uniform akin to the classics, wouldn’t be a bad compromise to me. There’s aspects of both that I think are worth keeping and welding together, if that was ever an option the team wanted to pursue. In any case, it amazes me that the current identity has lasted over a quarter of a century. It really doesn’t feel all that long ago, and to be honest, it’s never looked terribly dated to me either. It has somehow, someway, stood the test of time in my opinion, despite how open it was about pushing the envelope back then.
  24. There are parts of the Rangers city connect I really like: I’m a fan of the TX logo, the color scheme, and the clever ways they integrated DFW baseball history into the uniform (the Winged Panther, the TX logo modeled after the Eagles’ “D”, the spur, etc.). However, the dark pants look extremely goofy and amateur, and are a huge knock for me. I also think the chest logo and numbers should switch sides, so the numbers are on the left and the logo is on the right. The layout as is looks a little awkward and strange. All in all, this is a case of really digging individual parts of what the Rangers did, but not really digging the way they put it all together.
  25. It’s pretty bothersome when you realize a good 7 or so of those teams shouldn’t be wearing black at all, in any capacity, let alone in the playoffs. Black makes sense for Miami and Brooklyn. I’m also okay with Atlanta, Sacramento, and Phoenix wearing it sparingly in the playoffs due to some historical precedence, though with Phoenix especially my preference would be purple. Memphis, Milwaukee, Boston, Golden State, Cleveland, New York, and LA Clippers are showing up to the wrong party here. They shouldn’t be in black whatsoever.
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