Seattle Mariners

[The_Admiral]

I was talking in an omnibus baseball thread the other day about my desire to see the Mariners do something avant-garde for the sake of fitting in with the Seattle zeitgeist, letting go of the dated '90s uniforms of the unrealized Griffey era and the 13-year big sleep they've been in since. 

 

Bucfan56 came in with this snazzy recolor of the compass rose in Sounders colors, 

which I rather liked -- if not the idea of recoloring a dated logo I argued for scrapping, at least the color palette. So I batted around the idea of taking stuff from soccer and Japanese baseball, if not literally, at least in some vague conceptual way:
 

Quote

Let's say a modern number style (didn't the Blue Jays' original numbers come from soccer?), lowercase NOBS, maybe some sublimated stripes somewhere, an embrace of colors or patterns that usually don't show up in the majors (taking volt or the Sounders' green would check this box). As for Japanese baseball, their uniforms don't seem to be quite as conservative as ours. I'd like to get Seattle out from under the tyranny of block numbers and navy blue somehow; seems like as good a place as any.

 

 

So what I have so far is this:

- A color palette of marine blue, overcast, and volt.

- A few sublimated stripes borrowed from soccer shirts and also the 1995-1999 New England Patriots

- A script that recalls this long-forgotten secondary from the years between the trident and the navy/teal: 

- Drop-shadows that hint at elements moving northwest

- Racing stripes, which no one is doing anymore here but I think some Japanese teams still use

- Scan lines! I don't know what made me think this was in any way modern because no one even uses cathode-ray tubes anymore, but I wanted an unusual pattern like the D-Backs' dot matrix

- Lowercase NOBs, which I think I've seen in soccer but know I haven't seen in baseball

It's not done, of course. I do not expect acceptance or praise, but I just wanted to start getting the idea "on paper" just for the sake of doing it. I know it's garish and over-designed, but as I've said, part of having 30 teams is that not everyone has to be the Yankees. 

 

[timberwolf]

I actually quite like it. It just looks very minor-league ish to me. Not something I'd normally see in the big leagues. That being said, that option could be good.

[GriffinM6]

Capitalize any text on the uniform. That will make it much better. I don't mind what you have now, but it seems a little bit like a soccer jersey. 

[panthers_2012]

Good concept.  I personally don't like the volt color, but it's your concept, not mine!!

[Chazberg]

I'm a bit confused about your intentions with this concept. You repeatedly refer to the Mariners' current uniforms as 'dated' (a notion I happen to disagree with), but then openly state that you wish to give them flare to fit in with the city's current zeitgeist–the very definition of dated. So what you're saying you want to do is ditch one dated look for another dated look?

On top of that, you're cherrypicking some of the most dated design elements from recent history–the New England Patriot's sublimated stripes, neon green, lowercase letters et al. Nothing about this is avant-garde; it's just regurgitating old ideas.

 

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to intentionally crap all over this concept, I just don't really understand the point.

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, this would become dated eventually, at which point you replace it with something else. Some teams don't get to be timeless. Designers gotta design for someone, right?

 

I just wanted to throw some ideas out there. I've said before that I don't know what the Mariners should do, but they have to do something.

[Chazberg]

Any design can be timeless if it's good enough. The Yankees and Cardinals haven't stayed the course with their logos and uniforms just because they have a lot of success; they're just really good, simple designs that didn't make use of trendy colors or styles of the time. To me, if you start a design with the assumption that it will eventually be dated, then all you're doing is making something disposable, forgettable. This is unfortunately how most teams operate now; riding trends and tripping over themselves to copy each other until everyone looks the same, mostly in the name of merchandise. I think in an ideal world every team should aspire to be timeless–to find what makes them unique and embrace it.

 

IMHO Seattle's current uniform is a very well-executed design that doesn't strike me as being particularly dated–they use teal, yes, but they actually have some basis for doing so because their name involves nautical themes. I would argue the worst thing they've done is water down their look with excessive alternate uniforms and tweaking.

[mattb6]

I'd go with more of a Sounders type green than volt. 

[The_Admiral]

I went with volt so I could sorta recall the blue/yellow Mariners that there's some strange appetite for while also being modern.

[coco1997]

Any reason for the logo-less cap?

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, I haven't thought of one yet.

[IceCap]

Yeah, I echo the comment about replacing the volt with a Sounders or Seahawks-esque green. It would elevate it from an idea that has promise to something you could really build off of. The volt just leaves it looking a tad washed out.