MJD7

The Dodgers’ City Connect 2.0 is alright. It definitely looks better in the official reveal than it did in the leaks. I may have said this when it leaked, but the “funfetti” is actually the one element I definitively like, I’m glad they were bold enough to continue it to the pants instead of going dark, which would look too much like Texas’ CC. For some of the other bold elements of the set, such as the top-right front number and the NOB below the back number, I actually don’t mind them as much as I would’ve thought. Since these elements were so bold, I was expecting a Nike-speak style explanation for all of it, but I suppose it’s fine we didn’t get one. The biggest reasons why I’m “meh” on this uniform are the wordmark & the use of navy. The wordmark is fine, I guess, but it doesn’t really do much for me. I know part of the City Connect program involves developing new logos (or modifying existing ones), but I think this would’ve been a great opportunity to use the thinner Dodgers script that has never been on a uniform before. Although I wouldn’t replace the primary scripts, the thinner one would work great on an alternate like this. The use of navy is what really drags this uniform down for me, since it has never been a color the Dodgers have used, their regular blue would have worked so much better in my opinion. Overall, it’s at least better than the original, almost by default, by virtue of having at least some creative ambition.

Los Angeles Dodgers City Connect 2.0 The Dodgers' second attempt at a City jersey at least has some redeemable elements about it, so I tried just tweaking it. I went with the thinner "Los Angeles" script, dropped navy, & went with Dodger Stadium inspired stripes.

Yeah, I don't really have an issue with the abbreviation they chose, just that they used an abbreviation in the first place. Also, the Twins' City Connect doesn't look as bad in action. The blue pants just kind of ruin it, since they don't match the pattern on the jersey.

Here's how I would rank them: Amazing Angels: I’m a sucker for surfer/beach aesthetics, so this one really does it for me. I love the script, the stripes, the hat, the front number, all of it. White Sox: Love the dark set with pins. “Southside” works for me, it adds to the whole feel of it. The number font should be their full-time font. Rays: They clearly had the most fun with this, I love the sky-ray, the gradient colors, and the skater aesthetic. Great Rockies: I love adding pine green to the color scheme, as well as the mountain on the front. The rest of the elements have grown on me as well. Astros: The tequila sunrise gradient makes this one. The hat might be better than their regular one. The NASA font would be fun to incorporate into the main set too. Cardinals: They’re one team I’m glad kept it traditional. The city flag direction was predictable but also what they should’ve gone with, since it already is so similar to their brand. Blue Jays: I actually really like theirs. It feels like a cold winter night in Toronto, without going with the obvious Drake black & gold theme, or instead just embracing all of Canada. Diamondbacks: Keeping things simple & going with the sand color as the main focus was a great decision. Mariners: I didn’t love the black pants at first, but they’re alright, & everything else is so great, it’d be a wonderful basis for a rebrand in the navy & teal. Guardians: I love the darker “wine” color for Cleveland, & the return of racing stripes is awesome. I just don’t like the airport code “CLE.” Mets: This feels like New York to me, & the magenta color is a nice alternate brand for the Mets that ties in surprisingly well with the city’s baseball history. Good Braves: A fine update of the Hank Aaron throwback. Safe but it looks good. Nationals: The cherry blossom inspiration is a wonderful idea, but the pink barely registers as such & the gray is kind of an odd shade, especially on the matte batting helmets. Hopefully they keep the theme but embrace it more fully next year. Padres: I thought this one looked awful on TV at first, way too bright, but after seeing it in person & everyone wearing it at Petco earlier this spring, it just “fits” for San Diego. Pirates: The black & gold looks great as always, the airport abbreviation just strikes again. The batting helmet knocks it do a bit too. Rangers: I like this one mostly because of the uniqueness of the dark pants (paired with a light jersey, at least) & the logo on the opposite side of the chest as it typically is. Red Sox: It might not feel like a Red Sox jersey, but it is so quintessentially Boston, it’s hard to deny the Marathon’s importance to the city. Wear it that weekend, but not much more than that. Reds: I appreciate their honesty that they were going for something modern & didn’t feel the need to justify it with an explanation. The all-black with the bright red looks cool. Tigers: I like the Motor City stripe, I just wish they added the tiniest bit of orange. Meh Brewers: This one is growing on me, but still leaves a lot to be desired with the hat & the lack of powder blue pants. Cubs: This one is fine, it just doesn’t really do much for me beyond the cool wordmark. The cap is really nice though. Royals: Similarly, this one leaves me a bit uninspired. Navy & powder blue is one of my all-time favorite color schemes (as evidenced by my profile picture), I guess it just doesn’t fit the Royals. I love the logos though. Giants: This one could be great if the fog was executed better & the awesome “San Francisco” script was on the front of the jersey. I can’t rank it any higher because of the emptiness those two elements give the jersey. Marlins: A lot of people love this one, but I can’t get past the fact that it is inspired by a team from Havana, not Miami, & I’m bitter that the Marlins made themselves yet another blue & red team unnecessarily. Bad Dodgers: They clearly wanted no part in this early on, & it was just incredibly bland and uninspired. Orioles: No clear tie to the city & an uninspiring design, failing the two main components of the City program. Phillies: My main gripe with this one is that the font looks more like AC/DC than it does a Revolution-era document. The colors also make it feel nothing like a “Phillies” uniform. The hat is cool I guess. Twins: I’m so sad my team missed the mark. Like the Rams, banana yellow doesn’t feel like a sunset, nor does it feel like Minnesota. The jersey pattern looks nothing like water, & the solid blue pants clash with it so badly. At least the hat logo is cool. Overall, as I've said before, I was really pleasantly surprised by the City Connect prgram, at least for the first round. Here's to hoping designs don't continue to downgrade over time, like the NBA has. I also made a separate thread for rankings of the first batch of City Connects, using a tier generator I made, feel free to add your own ranking there!

Here's my personal ranking of the first batch of MLB City Connects: You can make your own list at using this tier creator I made, let's see your rankings!

Thanks! That wasn't the direction I intended on going in when I first started, but there definitely is a nice bit of synchronicity there.

I'm a little surprised no team has taken advangtage of those increased sales and made primary sets out of them. The Heat's Vice jerseys and the Jazz' red rocks jerseys especially seemed like perfect opportunities to do so. MLB's City Connect program has been more recent, but the Guardians, Rockies, Astros, Angels, & Rays could all afford to transfer elements into their main set, or just straight-up adopt them as regular alternates and go from there.

I’ve talked about this before on here, but the Bucs’ throwback is a rare scenario where it’s not necessarily better than the primary set, but it’s a wonderful and refreshing switch-up once a year. The bright and sunny creamsicle orange contrasts wonderfully with the darker, more menacing red & pewter. The creamsicles wouldn’t really work as the primary set because the away jersey isn’t nearly as appealing as the home orange, whether you do red or orange numbers. I don’t think a red alternate in the creamsicle colors would work all that well, either. I’m not the biggest fan of throwbacks in general, because I usually agree with your general sentiment, but part of the appeal of throwbacks is not that they are necessarily “better” than the main set, but it’s a kitschy and fun way to channel some nostalgia to an earlier time. Although I wouldn’t mind if the Seahawks moved to royal & kelly full-time, but they’re another team that comes to mind that could work having the throwback once a year. Although I prefer midnight green for the Eagles, kelly green would be fine once a year too. I’ve wondered about this, myself. The proliferation of City-style “clash” sets is definitely the trend, at least in the NBA & MLB right now, & might be trickling into the NFL with Houston (& honestly the Vikings’ white-out in a way, too). I’m not sure how much staying power this has, as straying too far from the primary brand seems like a risky proposition to continue delving in. I was intrigued when the Texans said each of their 4 jerseys would be a different design, but they didn’t really follow through on that as much as I expected, as the white & red jerseys were still essentially color swaps of one another. I’m wondering if other teams in all sports might go more ambitious with a similar approach.

A little bit. Even for uniforms that weren’t any good (Jaguars, Bucs come to mind), I probably tuned in when I otherwise might not have. In those cases, it was a little bit like not being able to look away from a train wreck.

I agree, but for the opposite reason, of getting to see alternates of other teams that I’m not a fan of. Since I don’t really watch many games that aren’t the Vikings (my team) other than primetime, that’s a great place to show off those alternate looks I otherwise would probably miss beyond the occasional highlight. I like alternates during primetime because it adds a bit to the “special event” feel of it. This might get me booed out of this thread, but if a team has a “black-out” uniform or something similar, I’d much rather them wear it during a primetime game than on a random Sunday at 1:00. It just looks better in that context to me.

Thank you very much! To help answer your question, here is a little bit of a preview of what I've been working on lately: I'd probably just keep the updated state outline logo for the cap, as it's easily my favorite brand element to come out of the City Connect. I normally don't like hat & sleeve logos repeating, but this a unique instance where I like the logo so much I want it to be used wherever I can manage. I also employed designer Cameron Guzzo's idea of using the button at the top of the cap to represent the North Star, which sounds a bit silly but I like how it looks.

Minnesota Twins City Connect I tried limiting myself to design elements the team actually used: I was intrigued by the "mint" Northern Lights color only used on the cap, the wavy stripes, and the "10,000 Lakes" wordmark, so I elevated those to be the main elements of the set.

It saddens me to report that there’s not much I like about this… The logos are alright (the cap logo is probably the best part), but beyond that… I saw the leak of the socks last night, and the decision to go with yellow was a baffling choice. I suppose it is technically an historic team color since it was used as the trim on the old Minnie & Paul logo, but I doubt that's why they chose it, & using it to this extent feels odd, & repetitive of other teams. It's funny, baseball had a lack of blue & yellow as a color scheme before the City Connects, but now it feels overdone. Most of the blue & yellow uniforms did need to use that color scheme to accomplish what they wanted to (Red Sox, Mariners, Brewers), but the Phillies & Twins didn't need it. It feels like no coincidence that those two are both among the bottom of the City Connects for me. Back to the Twins... the water teasers had me excited, but the pattern they went with looks nothing like water to me, beyond being blue. Between this & the Timberwolves recent City jersey, it seems like Nike is unfortunately not very adept at making a water pattern. Not continuing it to the pants makes it even worse. Interestingly, the 3 navy teams in the AL Central added royal blue for their City Connects, and the one royal team went with navy. Not an ideal strategy for setting teams apart. Beyond that, I don't think I have much else to say. At least the primary uniforms are still among the best in the league. If anything, they already had a perfect City Connect: The first jersey to say "Twin Cities," and literally connecting the two cities with the flags. There's not much else you need.

I remember loving your last Angels concept, and this one may be even better! The Halos are a great candidate to drop navy & go all-in on red & gold, and incorporating the darker red more to balance against those bright colors is a genius way to pull it off. I love your interpretation of the PCL x Disney mashup, as well, I'm honored I could provide the inspiration! As always, I can't wait to see what you have next in store!

I honestly don't mind the Vikings' Winter Whiteout uniform. It's fine for one game a year. The silver looks better as an "icy" accent than it did on the leaked graphic. The one thing I don't like is the helmet stripe, but everything else is perfectly serviceable. I like the "icicles" in the numbers, and the isolation of purple & white (with silver accents) looks really nice.

I’m loving the direction of this so far. It definitely seems like they’re going with a Mississippi river or 10,000 Lakes theme.

As far as I’m aware, Nike’s “4+1” rule doesn’t preclude the use of the occasional throwback, just that those 5 primary jerseys are the only ones that can be worn regularly, with entire lines of merchandise surrounding them. That’s why the Rays were still able to wear their throwback gradients every so often, before they dropped the road gray to make room for it in the main set, so that they could wear it more frequently & make additional merchandise surrounding it. Also, with all of the production issues affecting the main jerseys currently, and the excitement over City Connects, I imagine throwbacks are simply not high on the priority list. But I don’t think things will remain that way permanently.

I don’t believe it is, that shirt has been up for a while now. I would also be surprised if they go with something so similar to their regular “Twin Cities” home alternate color-wise.

It's based on the subway line, but I don't see anything on the reveal page mentioning the night as part of the inspiration. I get that the "night mode" theme has been prevalent in other sports (Lakers "Hollywood Nights," Colts "Indiana Nights"), but I find it hard to fault MLB when this is their first time going that route. I get that there have been a lot of dark monochrome uniforms, especially this year, but there have been plenty of bright City Connects as well, such as the Padres (which may even be too bright), Red Sox, Giants, Brewers, Braves, & Angels.

I was referring to City Connects, as the posters I was replying to were. I don't believe the Mets' City Connect referenced the nighttime at all, even though it's the City That Never Sleeps. Their regular black alternate is probably a reference to the nighttime, but that's not monochrome black. Same goes for the Marlins, their City Connect definitely isn't inspired by Miami nightlife, although it could be. Their regular black alt is, though, you're right.

Toronto Blue Jays City Connect I really like the Jays' City uniform! I just wanted to try it in their regular font and color shades.

What other team has expressly used the “nighttime” as inspiration for their dark uniform? Sure, we’ve gotten a lot of dark monochrome uniforms, especially this year, but I believe this is the first one to explicitly say that the nighttime city lights were part of the inspiration.

As I expected, Toronto’s City uniform looks better with the proper lighting of the full reveal. I honestly don’t have any glaring issues with it, the one minor thing that bugs me is that the “double stripes” are all different widths on the cap, sleeves, and pants. The skyline is a bit on-the-nose for a City Connect, but there aren’t really many cities that have a unique skyline, yet Toronto does because of the CN Tower, which is right outside of the stadium, so I think it works. I also wish the undershirt & socks were royal blue, but red doesn’t look bad.

A concept I had from some years ago

I understand more of what you’re saying now, that your main issue is with the home script. I get that, I’ve mentioned here before (it might’ve even been while discussing with you) that the script can look kind of thin in action sometimes. I noticed that early on, but it hasn’t bothered me as much lately. I think the script looks especially beautiful in digital applications. I tried adding an outline myself to the script after the rebrand, and it just didn’t work at all, in all honesty. (As an aside, it’s also worth a reminder that that script almost certainly stemmed from @SFGiants58’s Twins concepts, since we saw his version appear in social media graphics around 2019-2020, seemingly hinting at the eventual rebrand. So, thanks for getting the ball rolling on my favorite Twins brand ever!)