Gothamite

How intimidating can he be? He's wearing pants on his head.

Well, that's sometimes true, but often because the amateur designers aren't subject to the whims of the process.

Some concepts here are excellent but would never be approved by the teams, who do have veto power. Not to mention the manufacturers, who often have needs directly at odds with good design.

A lot of the worst designs are created not because of the designers' process, but because that process was shaped by the desires of the client and the manufacturer.

Yeah, but they can't make a thoughtful critique of anything, even the stuff they do everyday.

Wouldn't trust them to talk with any authority about tying their shoes.

I would like to have seen a nautical theme using shades of green. They could absolutely pull that off. But green and orange? Bad choice.

I don't think green and orange look good together. There's plenty that they could have done with either, but together it's a mess.

Love the seahorse. Fantastic.

The trident is inspired, but by comparison the anchor logo is forced. Trying way too hard to be clever, when the trident shows how it can be done seemingly effortlessly.

The color scheme is meh. Manages to be too bright and too dark all at the same time, which is an accomplishment.

But the real problem is the Photoshop wordmarks. Awkward in a straight line or with that goofy arch.

And the less said about the hideous Soviet jersey the better.

If you paid Connor Brandt, didn't you get exclusivity? I presume you would own it in that case, and he wouldn't be able to loan it out to anyone else.

The outer border would have to be purple.

I might also isolate the bat from the roundel so you could have a purple circle with white letters.

Yeah, that's nice.

I think the purple text might be a little too dark against the black, but that's a minor quibble.

Okay, that's worth a couple points.

I like it! All the new bats are great.

Are those bats dotting the "i"s in "Louisville"?

Monograms should never include the mascot's initials, though. Points off.

And how pathetic is it that teams are now introducing their flag-desecration unforms as part of the regular unveiling? Save it for a "special" announcement, boys. No need to foul the nest right away.

So close to being perfect. There's too much detail in the batter, but that's still some pretty good stuff.

Too much detail, and you can't have a white batter against a white star and white stripe. He really needs to be blue with fewer highlights.

And 1888? No. That's a Nationals-level of baseless pretention. A Texas League was founded in 1888, but you're not that league.

No, I think it's much better than the geometric bat they have now.

What a mess.

Pics of the actual home and road. The wordmarks aren't as large as shown on the mock-up.

I think the marks are too whispy to work well. They're great on paper but not substantial enough on a uniform. Good set, but not great.

Holy . Everything in that set is worse than the thing before it. A total fest.

Except that O-bolt cap logo. That's a thing of rare beauty, if a bit on the super-hero side. Doesn't belong with anything else there.

Wow. That's beautiful.

"Bees" is a great name.

I think they were on to something with the hive B, but this execution just doesn't work.

Nice monogram.

As one can see, the designers at Studio Simon simply followed the instructions given to them by the Crawdads ownership/management team: "update... without abandoning".

The only place where the crawdad in the new cap logo obscures the letterform any more than it did in the old cap logo is where the creature's antenna falls in front of the serif on the 'H', as opposed to behind it. That's the only change - and a slight one, at that - made to the relationship between the crawdad and the 'H'. Otherwise, the only changes made to the letterform are the stylization of the serifs and a slight tweak to the angle at which the crossbar meets the righthand stem.

Yes, it is faithful to the original. But the original was a bad logo, and their update is a bad logo as well.

Doesn't really matter whose idea it was to have a bad logo, just that they do.

Hickory Crawdads new logos:

Work of Studio Simon.

Very nice, but that "H" monogram is a mess. The crawdad obscures the letterform, and it doesn't read clearly as a letter.

Great. Hope they can do something really fun with the name.

I hope you're right; there's so much that can be done with the name.

Still miss the Beavers. They had gorgeous uniforms.

And this is just bad, even by Collegiate summer league standards:

The exclamation point is nice, but everything else is a wasted opportunity.

Okay, I could see that.

There aren't many possible ways to improve the logo, but that's definitely one.