Sportslogo design pet peeves

[Ark]

I can't stand when teams have yellow as a color, but call it gold.

[Morgan33]

I don't see anything wrong with referring to yellow as athletic gold

[chcarlson23]

It's to make them sound fancier... 

One of My pet peeves is when hockey team don't include tail stripes... Sometimes it's ok, especially when it's a historic throwback, like the Gophers last outdoor game sweater. It didn't have the stripes, because it was historically accurate. Other jerseys work too, Like the Lady Liberty sweater. But other than those, I don't get the point... During the reebok edge transition, a lot of teams lost their tail stripes. Reebok said it was because they wanted players to tuck in the jersey. Most players didn't, and now the NHL doesn't allow it... SO WHY ARE THE TAIL STRIPES STILL MISSING???

[Sport]

Good topic. I think we've done it before, but it's usually a good discussion. 

 

Here's mine: 

- the compulsion NBA teams feel to cram a basketball into their primary logo. 22 out of 30 teams use either a ball or a rim or a net or sometimes both. It's easily the sport with the highest inclusion of equipment from that sport in their logos. (MLB has 13, NHL has 5 or 6 depending on where you fall with the Hurricanes puck/eye, NFL has 3). Get better, basketball!

- the NBA's silly rule that a primary logo must feature the full city and nickname of the team. Results in logos like this  being listed as the "primary". 

- Roundels can work really well and look really good, but there is a ton of them being used as primary logos right now. Especially in the American League.

- the Carolina Panthers deliberately choosing to never use a keyline on their logo drives me nuts. 

- how the Golden State logo's outline is uneven. 

- the Bafflers: Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Hawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns, Tampa Bay Lightning, Colorado Avalanche. In other terms - why do you choose to look awful? 

- how the White Sox changed their road pants for no reason so it no longer matches the sleeve stripes on the gray road jersey

- how the Brewers dropped pants striping altogether so it wouldn't clash with the once in a while navy and yellow alternate, but will always clash with their white home jersey. 

- NFL teams who wear monochrome combinations that were never designed to be worn together - Chiefs all red, Bears all navy, Titans all navy/white/light blue, etc. Wear the uniform as it was intended. 

- NHL teams still wearing their dumb edge templates. 

- the Minnesota Wild wearing 3 different uniforms. 

- how the Atlanta Braves and Oakland A's insist on wearing pointless, unnecessary road hats with their road uniforms when their home hats are classics that look better with the road uniform anyways.

- the St. Louis Cardinals wearing red hats on the road. Sometimes. Either go all red all the time or, my preferred option, go back to wearing the navy blue hats for every road game. Don't do both. 

- The trending towards flat design, and minimalizing logos has given people this attitude that any sort of logo with some detail is bad. I prefer simpler logos, but that's not the only avenue towards solid sports logo design. Detail and complexity can work and look great if executed well. See: Sterling's Manitoba Moose. 

- make everything matte. Lets get some shimmer back in sports! Penguins, why is khaki better than that dazzle gold you used to wear? Patriots, why are flat grey pants better than your old silver pants? 

[WavePunter]

glaringly bad striping inconsistencies... i dont mind when obvious/necessary changes are made (for example: if the saints had white pants and the striping was Bk/Gld/Bk, where the helmets are Bk/W/Bk), but one that always bugged me was the browns previous white pants... helmets were orange with Br/W/Br, then pants were white with O/Br/O.. should've been Br/O/Br to keep consistency w/ brown as outside stripes.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

• bevels
  
   
• drop-shadows (all but the Lakers; it figures that the only team that looked good with that feature has dropped it!)
   
• faux-3D, for example: 
  
  I love the Nets' overall aesthetic from that period; but the logo should not have tried to simulate a 3-D shield that has been rotated.  This just distorted what was a beautiful wordmark:   .

[chcarlson23]

25 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

• bevels
  
   
• drop-shadows (all but the Lakers; it figures that the only team that looked good with that feature has dropped it!)
   
• faux-3D, for example: 
  
  I love the Nets' overall aesthetic from that period; but the logo should not have tried to simulate a 3-D shield that has been rotated.  This just distorted what was a beautiful wordmark:   .

I think that the Rangers use it very well... They have a beautiful uniform set.

[MCM0313]

13 hours ago, Ark said:

I can't stand when teams have yellow as a color, but call it gold.

Hear, hear! There's nothing wrong with the word "yellow," people! 

[logo-maker]

For starters...

- "Click-and-fill" color blocking or templates (recent hockey jersey design and some football)

- Inconsistent striping (unless historically accurate)

- Teams that go with "state" or "city" based designs that fall really far from the team's identity (Team Colorado (for the Avalanche and a lesser extent the Rapids*) or Team Columbus (for the Crew*)

_{*Soccer teams tend to get away with it more due to having "clash" kits that don't have to have stay within the regular color scheme.}

[VikWings]

22 hours ago, McCarthy said:

Good topic. I think we've done it before, but it's usually a good discussion. 

 

Here's mine: 

*- the compulsion NBA teams feel to cram a basketball into their primary logo. 22 out of 30 teams use either a ball or a rim or a net or sometimes both. It's easily the sport with the highest inclusion of equipment from that sport in their logos. (MLB has 13, NHL has 5 or 6 depending on where you fall with the Hurricanes puck/eye, NFL has 3). Get better, basketball!

- the NBA's silly rule that a primary logo must feature the full city and nickname of the team. Results in logos like this  being listed as the "primary". 

- Roundels can work really well and look really good, but there is a ton of them being used as primary logos right now. Especially in the American League.

- how the Golden State logo's outline is uneven. 

- the Bafflers: Arizona Diamondbacks, Atlanta Hawks, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Cleveland Browns, Tampa Bay Lightning, Colorado Avalanche. In other terms - why do you choose to look awful? 

- how the White Sox changed their road pants for no reason so it no longer matches the sleeve stripes on the gray road jersey

**- NFL teams who wear monochrome combinations that were never designed to be worn together - Chiefs all red, Bears all navy, Titans all navy/white/light blue, etc. Wear the uniform as it was intended. 

***- the St. Louis Cardinals wearing red hats on the road. Sometimes. Either go all red all the time or, my preferred option, go back to wearing the navy blue hats for every road game. Don't do both. 

 

I agree with all of these but have some notes on the ones marked with *

 

* - The NBA also has a rule that at least one logo in a teams set must include a basketball, that's why you see that.

** - I think some monochrome looks can be decent when done right, but they must wear contrasting socks. I think the Panthers are the only team that does this anymore when they go mono. It baffles me that other teams don't.

*** - I don't mind this as it keeps the navy hat around, but I would actually flip flop it and make navy the primary and wear red against other navy hat teams (I think this option is actually what won the fan vote they did, but they just completely ignored it and did what they wanted.)

[TheRealPepman]

- BFBS

- "Marketing-inspired" jerseys (St. Pat's Day, Cancer Awareness, Christmas, etc.)

- NBA: When center line and three-point lines have different colours, example)

- Wearing colored jersey at home (I'll give NHL a free pass, since some of the teams' coloured sweaters, like NYR, CGY, MTL, etc. look awesome)

 

[JosiahWVU]

-Cut off NFL striping

-BFBS

-Camo(except Army)

[wildwing64]

Blatantly stolen and altered versions of existing team logos that were probably found on Google.

Oh but we didn't know any better!!!

[chcarlson23]

1 hour ago, PepMan33Conde said:

- BFBS

- "Marketing-inspired" jerseys (St. Pat's Day, Cancer Awareness, Christmas, etc.)

- NBA: When center line and three-point lines have different colours, example)

- Wearing colored jersey at home (I'll give NHL a free pass, since some of the teams' coloured sweaters, like NYR, CGY, MTL, etc. look awesome)

 

The Rangers? Definitely. The Habs? Absolutely! The Flames? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO... That pile of hot steaming piping mess, with random color splotchs that are just thrown on there, not to mention the ridiculous Alberta and Canadian flags as shoulder patches. The Flames have THE WORST sweater in the NHL, and maybe all time. It's not that I only like SUPER traditional designs, but those are awful. even other awful jerseys like the Avalanche are better than the Flames. 

No way that this

(Notice the piping, underarm pit stains, half side panels, striping that doesn't wrap all the way around, and the stupid flag patches...) 

compares to these...

 

[Gothamite]

On March 8, 2016 at 11:29 PM, Morgo said:

I don't see anything wrong with referring to yellow as athletic gold

 

The term "Athletic Gold" should not refer to yellow.   It should refer to a darker shade, mostly yellow with some orange in it.

 

It's the difference between these two:

 

 

My pet peeve is when people keep insisting that the two are interchangeable, but wouldn't say the same about sky blue and teal. 

[pianoknight]

One of my pet peeves is when a design element is specific to one team, but then gets adopted by copycats/knockoffs.  High schools and smaller colleges doing it is one thing (budget, no outfitter sponsorship, etc) but when it's done on the pro/major college level it's a little absurd.

 

Case in point - I believe Bowling Green was the first to adopt this wing pattern:

 

And then FAU and others snatched it:

 

 

I get that FAU doesn't have the same budget as FSU or Florida, but c'mon - neither does Bowling Green and they managed to get a fresh look.

 

[WSU151]

Bowling Green, FAU, Eastern Michigan, and Eastern Washington all had the adidas wings on the sleeves starting in 2012 (per a UniWatch article from that year).  Bowling Green wasn't the first.

[MCM0313]

As McCarthy mentioned, the trend toward making NFL and NCAA football teams wear flat matte helmets and pants is pretty annoying. It's bad even when it's a non-metallic color, but when it's a metallic color it's downright aggravating. 

 

I HATED, and still hate, most of the design trends of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but at least they were okay with metallic colors. (Obviously the Bucs' 1997 change was an upgrade; any others I feel can be argued.) Tampa added pewter; the Rams switched from yellow to a nice harvest gold. The Edmonton Oilers went metallic too, albeit sort of copying the Denver Nuggets' color scheme. The Colorado Buffaloes hadn't yet gone from their bright gold to dull gold. The Saints were somewhere in the middle, instead of today's dullness. Even the 49ers had bright gold helmets and pants for the first and only time in their history.

[oldschoolvikings]

On 3/9/2016 at 5:05 PM, Gothamite said:

 

The term "Athletic Gold" should not refer to yellow.   It should refer to a darker shade, mostly yellow with some orange in it.

 

It's the difference between these two:

 

 

My pet peeve is when people keep insisting that the two are interchangeable, but wouldn't say the same about sky blue and teal. 

 

I think the "yellow isn't gold!" crowd is just hung up on the idea that the term "gold" must only be  applied to metallic golds like Notre Dame and the 49ers.  Which is dumb... no one gets hung up in worrying about the fact the Ohio State calls their colors Scarlet and Gray, and the Detroit Lions call theirs Honolulu blue and silver. 

 

But, whatever... if it makes you happy, call all these colors yellow...

 

 

[TheRealPepman]

On March 9, 2016 at 2:57 PM, chcarlson23 said:

The Rangers? Definitely. The Habs? Absolutely! The Flames? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO... That pile of hot steaming piping mess, with random color splotchs that are just thrown on there, not to mention the ridiculous Alberta and Canadian flags as shoulder patches. The Flames have THE WORST sweater in the NHL, and maybe all time. It's not that I only like SUPER traditional designs, but those are awful. even other awful jerseys like the Avalanche are better than the Flames. 

No way that this

(Notice the piping, underarm pit stains, half side panels, striping that doesn't wrap all the way around, and the stupid flag patches...) 

compares to these...

 

I was talking about this...