Variations and inconsistencies in team branding

[wildwing64 1,648]

The Ducks logo talk in the NHL thread got me thinking about something odd that I always noticed with the Mighty Ducks logo.

 

So here's the mark, as we know it, in full colour as it once appeared on the white jersey and as present across the team's branding.

 

 

But then we have this other variation where the thick, black border has been removed. I believe this was how it appeared when it was first unveiled in '93. It was also the crest on the white Starter Replica jerseys (as seen in D3 The Mighty Ducks, towards the end of the film).

 

 

Weirdly, there's also another variant. I've seen this more often in older NHL videogames. A minor change to the logo where, for no apparent reason, the "cheek" under the other eye has been removed:

 

 

Anyone else noticed oddities like this before?

[Dynasty 2,236]

Wow, the middle logo looks a bit cleaner than the main one. I actually like that.

 

As for other logos? I saw two Eagles' logos where one is with a silver outline and one where there is no silver outline.

 

 

[hockey week 962]

The Flyers logo is ALWAYS shown with an outline

 

 

but on the jerseys, there is no outline and never has been

[BringBackTheVet 16,605]

The Flyers is one of the best examples of this.

 

Their jersey crest is actually a different logo than their primary mark.  The wings are slanted rather than curved, and there's no outline.  

 

I do believe they used the primary logo as a jersey crest in the very early days, but for at least the past 40 years, they've used two different logos.

[Gothamite 21,538]

I never noticed that.   

 

It's like the Yankees, who have three versions of their interlocking "NY". 

 

There's the cap version:

 

 

The jersey version:

 

 

And a print-only version that they don't use on any uniform but is featured on the vast majority of promotional materials. 

 

 

[IceCap 21,117]

I never really minded two of the Yankees' three NY's. The jersey version is just a thicker version of the cap version. It helps it stand out against the home pinstripes.

It's the print version that baffles me. It doesn't need to be different. A midnight blue version of the cap logo would work just as well. It's also the worst one. It's overly wonky. It has no reason to exist, and it can't even make up for that fact by being any good

[BringBackTheVet 16,605]

Except that I'm not sure the Flyers actually acknowledge it anywhere officially.  Could be wrong about that though.

 

I noticed it as a kid and haven't unnoticed it since.  I'm not sure if the sweater logo appears anywhere else.

[BringBackTheVet 16,605]

1 minute ago, Ice_Cap said:

I never really minded two of the Yankees' three NY's. The jersey version is just a thicker version of the cap version. It helps it stand out against the home pinstripes.

It's the print version that baffles me. It doesn't need to be different. A midnight blue version of the cap logo would work just as well. It's also the worst one. It's overly wonky. It has no reason to exist, and it can't even make up for that fact by being any good

 

The Y on the cap and jersey version are pretty different. It's more than just a thickness thing.

[IceCap 21,117]

I never noticed that the Y on the jersey version flares out and up. Good eye.

[mightyduck 67]

2 hours ago, wildwing64 said:

The Ducks logo talk in the NHL thread got me thinking about something odd that I always noticed with the Mighty Ducks logo.

 

So here's the mark, as we know it, in full colour as it once appeared on the white jersey and as present across the team's branding.

 

 

But then we have this other variation where the thick, black border has been removed. I believe this was how it appeared when it was first unveiled in '93. It was also the crest on the white Starter Replica jerseys (as seen in D3 The Mighty Ducks, towards the end of the film).

 

 

Weirdly, there's also another variant. I've seen this more often in older NHL videogames. A minor change to the logo where, for no apparent reason, the "cheek" under the other eye has been removed:

 

 

Anyone else noticed oddities like this before?

Can honestly say I never caught this, and now I can't stop seeing it!

[Gothamite 21,538]

28 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

Except that I'm not sure the Flyers actually acknowledge it anywhere officially.  Could be wrong about that though.

 

I noticed it as a kid and haven't unnoticed it since.  I'm not sure if the sweater logo appears anywhere else.

 

The Yankees don't acknowledge it officially, either.  The style guide shows the print logo as the cap logo (as does this site). 

 

 

The cap logo never appeared on any merchandise until a vector version was traced and uploaded to Wikipedia. Then all of a sudden it started showing up on tshirts and the like, but even now its use is infrequent and largely unacknowledged.   Officially, that hideous print logo is the cap logo. 

Edited March 10, 2016 by Gothamite
Uploaded screenshot

[Crabcake 1,698]

The Dubs' logo is not a perfect circle:

 

And the Tigers also have two Olde English "D" logos. 

There is the uniform one:

 

And the cap one:

[Bmac 801]

Not the biggest inconsistency in the world, but the Twins M logo graphic is different than what appeared on the cap. Having done embroidery work in the past, it's surprising how much some of the official graphics vary from the files New Era uses. Obviously the logos need to be adjusted sometimes for ease of embroidery, but it always intrigues me.

 

 

[chcarlson23 1,176]

The Wild had this logo as their main logo until a few years ago at least according to this site. 

 

The only place I've seen this logo is a collectible puck. Everywhere else has the logo without the wordmark above it. 

[wildwing64 1,648]

14 minutes ago, chcarlson23 said:

The Wild had this logo as their main logo until a few years ago at least according to this site. 

 

The only place I've seen this logo is a collectible puck. Everywhere else has the logo without the wordmark above it. 

 

They used this one on the NHL website, when they had the team logos across the top. The Wild logo included the text, even though it was impossible to read at that size.

 

12 hours ago, hockey week said:

The Flyers logo is ALWAYS shown with an outline

but on the jerseys, there is no outline and never has been

 

That's really strange, can't believe I never noticed that before.

[Jungle Jim 835]

There were at least three licensed Bengals helmet logos used in the 1960s and 1970s, and for reasons I'll never know, none matched the actual helmet.

 

 

When the striped helmets debuted in 1981, the first official logo did not have an accurate striping pattern.

 

They later got it closer to accurate:

 

 

[GriffinM6 1,216]

I was just discussing this in the college baseball thread. Baylor sports teams don't know what colors to use. They even had three different suppliers for the big three sports at one point. What the hell are this school's colors? Seriously, have some brand cohesion! 

They wear old gold on their football uniforms, but proceed to have athletic gold on their field?

 

Then they don't even wear school colors sometimes.

They used to wear this for basketball, now they wear this...

Which doesn't even have the forest green that they use in all other sports and has Nike's volt. Ugh.

Then they wear UA for baseball. 

 

[DC in Da House w/o a Doubt 3,506]

I think it's safe to say Baylor has adopted all variations and shades of green and gold/yellow as their colors.  

 

Any of these are fair game for them at this point:

 

 

(And these)

[leopard88 2,861]

17 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

The Flyers is one of the best examples of this.

 

Their jersey crest is actually a different logo than their primary mark.  The wings are slanted rather than curved, and there's no outline.  

 

I do believe they used the primary logo as a jersey crest in the very early days, but for at least the past 40 years, they've used two different logos.

 

I also just noticed that the orange dot/circle is a bit bigger on the jersey logo.  The bigger dot looks better to me because it looks less like a bullseye.

 

17 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

 

 

I tried to delete this quote, but it couldn't do it.  Please ignore.

[guest23 1,130]

I guess you could call examples like the tigers and yankees branding inconsistency but there's a simple explanation which is simply the historical application of the marks and the fact that the logos were originally drawn by hand. The biggest difference for the hat logos was the move away from hand cut felt logos to embroidery while embroidered jersey logos remained consistent for some time but also deviated somewhat when you moved from flannel to double knit. So while it's easy to point out that they weren't the same, given the technology available at the time and the multitude of vendors a close match of marks often sufficed.  Now there's really not an excuse as to why many of these organizations have not adopted true design standards and settled on a single mark for their official merchandise, communications and other properties. That's just being lazy.

 

This is pretty common across many branded businesses that have to apply their marks across a variety of media (packaging, print, online, physical display etc). You aim for consistency but over time the designs can deviate quite a bit if an organization does not have an internal branding group that enforces such standards.