NBA 2K16 Team Concept: Quebec Basketball Club

[Asterix777]

Long time lurker, first time poster here. With all the team customization options available in NBA 2K16, i decided to try my hand at creating a team identity. i settled on Montreal as my city (Because Seattle is too mainstream) and took spirit from European soccer to design my identity.

the team's official name is Qeubec club de basket in French, which translates to Quebec Basketball club in English (I don't know french, so if i'm wrong please correct me.) for the logo, i decided to create a badge more than a logo, and took inspiration from the Quebec flag.

Looking for C&C, but my design skills are pretty limited and i can't draw stuff well on the computer (Or in reality for that matter). when the game comes out ill introduce more logos, as well as a court and uniforms.

[TrueNorth13]

In all honesty here, there's way too many fleur de lis'. Tone it down a bit with those and see where it's at after. Maybe even try to incorporate a basketball into it. Just an idea.

[Asterix777]

kinda what i'm thinking too. i enjoy the idea of the quebec flag but the fluer-de-lis in the stripes just looks great.

[FlyingLamprey]

I'm assuming you drew some inspiration from the flag of Quebec. It's a good choice, but as TrueNorth mentioned, it feels way too oversaturated with fleur-de-lis in both the shield area and the cross. You could go two ways with this - keep them in the shield or in the cross. If you keep them in the cross, the shield could be freed up for something different - maybe the plants featured on both the flag and seal of Montreal? http://i.imgur.com/28yYiB6.png(link added instead of embedding due to size of image). This could also probably mean a name change from Quebec to Montreal, which I feel may be for the best - for some reason it just feels weird to me to have a team represent all of Quebec, especially give its size, and when I first saw the title of the thread, I thought this was for a team in Quebec City. If you kept the fleur-de-lis in the shield, you'd have more room to spell out the team's name. That's another thing I noticed. The name is very strange - Quebec Club de Basket. If it were a soccer team's entry into a basketball team, like they do in Europe, I'd believe you. However, I'm not really a fan of it in this setting. American basketball clubs have a different naming system, and if you lined up this team with the rest of them, it'd stick out. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to the individual (personally I don't like it). If I were in your position, I would try to find a nickname for the club, that name changing based on whether you keep Quebec or Montreal. I don't really have a great idea for a name (maybe Hiboux de Montreal? the snowy owl is the provincial bird), but I'd imagine that a good name could be easily found. Besides all of that, it really is an interesting concept - you almost never see Montreal considered for NBA expansion (they don't even have a team in the NBLC), so it's nice to see a take on it. I'm also a sucker for royal and gold, but maybe you could inject a little red (Habs and Expos both use(d) it, so why can't they?) to make it different enough from Golden State, or at least make sure the uniforms you make are different. Can't wait to see where you take this, Asterix!

[Burmy]

^What he said...it'd be a good look for a Quebec City team.

[Asterix777]

Edit 1 (probably of many): Replaced fleur-de-lis with basketballs.

Still wondering if i want to put other images in. my thoughts are either Maple Leafs or, as FlyingLamprey eluded to, the images on the flag of Montreal. if we're going radical, we could adjust the color of the Quebec striping and put the Montreal flag in two corners.

As for naming, i'm still unsettled on whether to make it Quebec or Montreal. Being the American that i am, i thought Montreal was the capital of Quebec, and i'm sure labeling the Montreal team as a Quebec team may have a larger marketing impact. I think for now i'll stick with Quebec, notably because unless a large expansion happens, there probably wont be another NBA team in Quebec, so i'm ok with labeling a team for the entire region. for the actual naming, it's important to note Quebec Club de Basket is the french term, so almost everyone outside of Quebec would use Quebec Basketball club, which comes off much better. quite a few MLS teams follow that principle, with Real Salt Lake, NYCFC, and Orlando City the ones i can think of. the snowy owl is a great idea, but could probably be best used as an unofficial mascot among supporter clubs, like the Eagles for Man City, and Red Devils for United. Owls could be the unofficial nickname. I thought about taking inspiration from French clubs and using Olympique Quebec, but i think Q.B.C. works just fine for now.

i like the suggestion for implementing red, and being a canadian team, i'll probably try to do that. appreciate the suggestions, Lamprey, and glad you're excited. after this, i have a few more ideas.

[Asterix777]

Edit 2: Added Montreal flag (without symbols) into corners, and it turned out really well. i like this a lot.

[SSmith48]

Could you make a jersey mockup (like with just text and a plain jersey)? Normally a team in the NBA would have text as a focal point or have a prominent position, due to its location on the uniforms. I think that the text here may be to small or to spaced out to be very noticeable or nice looking. Overall, though, you have a great start.

[Asterix777]

Here's the Wordmark. The Quebec is what you'll see on the Jerseys

[sportsherald]

For what it's worth, the correct way of expressing "the Québec Basketball Club" in French is "le club de basketball du Québec" if you represent the whole province, and "le club de basketball de Québec" if you represent its capital city. Its French abbreviation, either way, would be CBQ. While the French in France may call basketball "basket", les Québecois usually call it "basketball."

Your design is looking more and more like a soccer club badge. I like soccer club badges myself, but it may not be seen by everyone as appropriate for basketball.

The symbolism of the crosses may become an issue, too. The white cross on blue from the Québec flag was inspired by French military flags, while the red cross on white is the St.George cross used by England. That red cross was put in the Montréal coat of arms during a period of English dominance, but putting the fleur de lys in the upper left position of honour seems to have sufficed to make the flag version very popular with all. With that background, reducing the white cross to a partial outline and using the red St. George cross alone could raise some sensitivities.

[Asterix777]

sportsherald, thanks for sorting the name out for me. Quebec club de basket was what i got from google translate, but i wan't very trustworthy of it. also, thanks for pointing out the disparity of the crosses. personally, i really like the hollowed out Quebec flag, so i kept it in this design, but i did add the icons of the montreal flag. i also decided to use the Canadian flag in the top-right corner, and i'm unsure of whether i should keep it. other than that, this looks like the final primary design.

Maybe i didn't stress this enough, but i'm trying to make this look like a soccer badge. the outline and crest shape is taken from Atletico Madrid, and i envision this as a soccer-like club branding in a region geared more towards soccer and hockey.

[the_grateful_ted]

I like the version before this one more. At this point it's getting far too cluttered

[Asterix777]

personally, i don't think its too busy, but i get why someone could get to that point. This is where i'm stuck, because i can't symbolically take out some things, and no matter what i take out, it messes up the whole look. i may just have to design a more simplistic secondary logo.

Edit: this is my best attempt at simplification

[Bomba Tomba]

I think the Pelicans won't allow the fleur.

[Asterix777]

Doubt it. firstly, i don't think teams can limit or restrict certain design images for only themselves. Secondly, the fluer-de-lis originated in France, and went first to french Quebec before New Orleans. thirdly, the fleur features on the flags of both Quebec and Montreal.

[timberwolf]

I think you have to stray away from this design. Quebec has a boatload of history and imagery that could be depicted. France! The Citadel! The Ramparts! Maybe tie a basketball in with a citadel shape and the Q outline it all. It's got potential, though!

[wquarton]

Fair enough if you're going for a soccer-y look, because you've definitely accomplished that. But yea, honestly it doesn't seem very basketball-y to me. And to me, the most recent one seems to have far too many elements, especially the bottom left. I know it's your design and you want to do it your way, but you kinda gotta expect people to be honest with you about their thoughts on it if you bring it on here. If you're gonna stick with the crest shape you need to trim some of the fat.

Personally I think it'd be cool to have the CBQ between half of a fleur de lis and half of a basketball, somewhat similar to what canada soccer does. If you must stick with the crest, I'd do two fleur de lis and two basketballs opposite each other and just CBQ in the center.

I don't mind the fleur, although I like some of the other ideas people have mentioned, perhaps having the shape of the crest the shape of the citadel or something.

Anyways, just ideas, you asked for feedback so I thought i'd just ramble for a bit and hopefully some of it helps. I understand you wanting to include everything symbolically, but I feel sometimes too many symbols kinda takes away from the one(or two) right ones.

Cheers.