When will the OKC Thunder get a rebrand?

[The Giant Pacific Octopus]

This guy should be thier new mascot.

[Derek_52]

Seattle needs a team first. OKC should have a Thunder cloud with lightning or something.

[2001mark]

I'll just leave this here...

[RockyTopper]

The logo isn't downright atrocious, plus the team has had success while using it, so it will linger on for a little more while they continue to be a popular team with all-star players. When that's over, they might rebrand. It's just an utterly bland and inconsistent logo. Honestly if they dropped the "OKC" from the shield, shrunk the THUNDER text a tad, centered the shield and the basketball within the shield, dropped the two streaks going behind the shield, and incorporated some design within the shield (such as a lightning bolt), it would drastically improve the look. It still wouldn't be a wonderful design, but it would be a great improvement. Generic isn't necessarily the problem, it just needs more coherence.

[CitizenTino]

The logo isn't downright atrocious, plus the team has had success while using it, so it will linger on for a little more while they continue to be a popular team with all-star players. When that's over, they might rebrand. It's just an utterly bland and inconsistent logo. Honestly if they dropped the "OKC" from the shield, shrunk the THUNDER text a tad, centered the shield and the basketball within the shield, dropped the two streaks going behind the shield, and incorporated some design within the shield (such as a lightning bolt), it would drastically improve the look. It still wouldn't be a wonderful design, but it would be a great improvement. Generic isn't necessarily the problem, it just needs more coherence.

If you need to make five changes to fix a logo, it might be better to just start from scratch.

[chakfu]

What does thunder look like?

As an aside, that old Nets logo was really bad, although a little interesting - especially the first time I saw it in color and learned there were different blue and red halves, and I like how the red fills in the corners of the letters. Reminsicent of the islanders as words and a geographic shape slapped on a circle, but at least NYI has a hockey stick and a puck, and the whole circle could be a puck.

[RockyTopper]

The logo isn't downright atrocious, plus the team has had success while using it, so it will linger on for a little more while they continue to be a popular team with all-star players. When that's over, they might rebrand. It's just an utterly bland and inconsistent logo. Honestly if they dropped the "OKC" from the shield, shrunk the THUNDER text a tad, centered the shield and the basketball within the shield, dropped the two streaks going behind the shield, and incorporated some design within the shield (such as a lightning bolt), it would drastically improve the look. It still wouldn't be a wonderful design, but it would be a great improvement. Generic isn't necessarily the problem, it just needs more coherence.

If you need to make five changes to fix a logo, it might be better to just start from scratch.

Good point. I think the logo is salvageable in its current state (which is what I attempted to do in describing the changes I'd make), but in all a brand new logo would be the better move to make.

[chakfu]

The logo isn't downright atrocious, plus the team has had success while using it, so it will linger on for a little more while they continue to be a popular team with all-star players. When that's over, they might rebrand. It's just an utterly bland and inconsistent logo. Honestly if they dropped the "OKC" from the shield, shrunk the THUNDER text a tad, centered the shield and the basketball within the shield, dropped the two streaks going behind the shield, and incorporated some design within the shield (such as a lightning bolt), it would drastically improve the look. It still wouldn't be a wonderful design, but it would be a great improvement. Generic isn't necessarily the problem, it just needs more coherence.

If you need to make five changes to fix a logo, it might be better to just start from scratch.

Good point. I think the logo is salvageable in its current state (which is what I attempted to do in describing the changes I'd make), but in all a brand new logo would be the better move to make.

The logo would make a decent secondary. They should just create a new thundercloud based primary and relegate current logos to secondary marks.

[Sky High]

I've been saying this for years: OKC's logo is the worst in professional sports, and it's not even close. It is so incredibly half-assed. I honestly thought it was a joke when it was first unveiled. It's a disgrace to logos everywhere. Not a huge fan of the color scheme either. It's time to move on and never look back.

First post, by the way! Long time lurker. Good to be here!

[habsfan1]

I've been saying this for years: OKC's logo is the worst in professional sports, and it's not even close. It is so incredibly half-assed. I honestly thought it was a joke when it was first unveiled. It's a disgrace to logos everywhere. Not a huge fan of the color scheme either. It's time to move on and never look back.

First post, by the way! Long time lurker. Good to be here!

Welcome to the boards!

It's not a half-assed logo. It's a poor thrown together design for a team waiting to be named. Once the name was chosen, a script of the new name was slapped on top without concern for the logo or the brand in general.

"That placeholder they refer to as their logo with the "Insert Name Here" area at the top makes them the subject of so much ridicule, I just don't know how some people seemingly in charge just keep putting up with it."

Ridicule from where? This messsage board? I highly doubt they care what people on here think. They care about what people who buy their merch think. As long as people are buying it, then there's no reason for them to change.

I have no idea how strong their fan support is, but I'd imagine that they're just happy to have a pro team, and said team could wear trash bags and they wouldn't care.

I won't be counter-arguning your point about who has the final say, because it's accurate no doubt. But is their merch really flying off the shelves in quantities so large that they have no reason to change? I understand that they'd rather support an ugly looking team than no team at all. But I just have trouble imagining anyone entering a Sporting Goods store, head towards a rack that has OKC Thunder gear, take a look at a piece of merch with the OKC Thunder logo and think it's a good looking design and get the urge to buy it for that reason. Unless people just buy anything with their team logo, without care for aesthetics.

[TheRicSlick]

"That placeholder they refer to as their logo with the "Insert Name Here" area at the top makes them the subject of so much ridicule, I just don't know how some people seemingly in charge just keep putting up with it."

Ridicule from where? This messsage board? I highly doubt they care what people on here think. They care about what people who buy their merch think. As long as people are buying it, then there's no reason for them to change.

I have no idea how strong their fan support is, but I'd imagine that they're just happy to have a pro team, and said team could wear trash bags and they wouldn't care.

I won't be counter-arguning your point about who has the final say, because it's accurate no doubt. But is their merch really flying off the shelves in quantities so large that they have no reason to change? I understand that they'd rather support an ugly looking team than no team at all. But I just have trouble imagining anyone entering a Sporting Goods store, head towards a rack that has OKC Thunder gear, take a look at a piece of merch with the OKC Thunder logo and think it's a good looking design and get the urge to buy it for that reason. Unless people just buy anything with their team logo, without care for aesthetics.

That's exactly what people do.

[JPDesign]

It's not a half-assed logo. It's a poor thrown together design for a team waiting to be named. Once the name was chosen, a script of the new name was slapped on top without concern for the logo or the brand in general.

That's not accurate. I've spoken with one of the guys on the design team, and Thunder was always the front-runner.

What really hampered the project was a design by committee approach. (Ever heard of the camel analogy?) There were too many people that felt like they needed to give input since this was such a big moment for OKC, that it ended up producing this big generic turd.

I won't defend the design choices made, because you can certainly still do "generic" and be more attractive than how it turned out. But it was the case of the clients stripping all the coolness out of a project.

[Midway]

Should be fun if they ever release the logos that didn't make it past that committee.

[Sky High]

Should be fun if they ever release the logos that didn't make it past that committee.

I've always wondered if they'd ever show the unused options. I guarantee they're 100x better.

I've been saying this for years: OKC's logo is the worst in professional sports, and it's not even close. It is so incredibly half-assed. I honestly thought it was a joke when it was first unveiled. It's a disgrace to logos everywhere. Not a huge fan of the color scheme either. It's time to move on and never look back.

First post, by the way! Long time lurker. Good to be here!

Welcome to the boards!

It's not a half-assed logo. It's a poor thrown together design for a team waiting to be named. Once the name was chosen, a script of the new name was slapped on top without concern for the logo or the brand in general.

Thanks for the welcome! Glad to be here. I'm a huge logo enthusiast. Degree in graphic design. All that fun stuff. Been visiting this site/forum for years.