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If I could use another example of trees and local imagery found within MLS:

 

The Revolution has begun heavily weighing on the New England flag that contains a Pine Tree. This is an extremely local symbol that features a tree that is found in high abundance throughout the country. It's a fricken pine tree.  HOWEVER, the Revolution have made a point to come forward and give the actual meaning to tie in the usage by the club

https://www.revolutionsoccer.net/supporters/the-flag-of-new-England

 

They weigh heavily on the historical meaning of the flag, that it represents the region as a whole, and has come to symbolize the supporters as well.  They don't skirt about it saying the red is for whatever and the shape of the tree is meant to invoke dumb nonsense.  It's straight and to the point. This is the FLAG of NEW ENGLAND and it has a long history in the region because of the past 200 someodd years of history.  They even make reference to the Battle of Bunker Hill, a very important battle early in the Revolution!

 

If honestly that was the same justification used by PSV to justify the tree on the crest "Stephen F Austin signed a treaty under the Treaty Oak that still stands majestically in the city that bears his name" (I can Nike-speak too, can I be paid thousands of dollars to do this?) then a lot of the blandness and status-quo aspect that was thrown out there wouldn't exist because it gives actual meaning to it, not faux marketing speak that means nothing overall. 

 

As said before, you could replace "Austin" on the crest for nearly any other city and the meanings given behind the design choices and jargon used to justify the choices could still be true.


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57 minutes ago, Gothamite said:

 

And yet you're advocating for a "Austin Mudbats"?

 

No, that's not fine.  That's terrible, and would be a huge downgrade from what Precourt is trying to do.

 

 

That was a joke. I'd not be cool with Mudbats either, but I'd applaud their attempts at trying something different besides Blank FC. 

 

The more I think about the more I think they should've gone with a pirate theme or Austin Thieves, but they'd never do that because nobody wants to be the villain in their own story. Anthony Precourt probably sees himself as a civic hero to Austin because he runs away whenever someone reminds him that he lied and stole this team from a different city. 

 

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its not just an oak tree to them like Lions is to Detroit. it means something more there, not only in city history but as a symbol for the things they were trying to communicate. togetherness, growth, roots, or whatever. i think there's certainly a discussion to be had about those things and if they're really the right things to communicate, but the oak tree as a symbol of all that works really well, i think. 

 

this was never about the aesthetic. of course, its the most basic of shield shapes, i never praised that— it's about the idea, the oak tree itself as a concept, as a symbol for the team. you know that logo design (especially crests in this game) is not about the surface level polish, it's about the ideas and putting forth something that is already meaningful. someone once said "good design is thinking made visible" and thats what i admire about the logo. not what it looks like but what it is and the concept behind it. its very easy to say "we're the Lions" and you draw a Lion and that's your logo; its a whole other level to distill a description of a city, a team, or the unity of the two into a single symbol. what i admire isn't the look of the logo, its all the things behind why they arrived at it. 


And I can't admire generic adspeak copy for a tree logo with base-level obvious justifications like "the tree symbolizes the roots within the community". Well of course. That's first pass, junior copywriter stuff. It's made even worse when we're literally watching the team being uprooted from a different city which means the main justification for the logo, the roots, is provably false. This franchise doesn't exist in a vacuum and while Austin may have a ton of oak trees the very idea behind the symbol of this franchise rings incredibly hollow (tree pun intended) when we are all watching them disrespect their roots. When you think about it, a tree might be the least appropriate symbol for that owner and his team. 

 

It gets worse when you dive a bit deeper - Roots of a tree symbolizing strength, growth, and the bond between club and city, I've seen that before in a Columbus fan TIFO that said "respect your roots". Precourt's used club and city before in social media graphics for season ticket holders, and The Crew's new logo in 2014 had equally flowery language about heritage and city and history to explain the decisions in that mark so he's done this before.

 

The ideas behind the design would be easier to stomach if it were an expansion team, but it's not. 

 

 

PvO6ZWJ.png

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I’ve stated earlier that this logo would work better for a Cleveland or London, Ontario-based team. Both of those cities are known as “the Forest City,” and the city of London even has an oak tree on the flag. 

 

And I stand by that. The historical significance of the oak tree to Austin is clearly not intended, and besides. I could easily play the John Oliver game. 

You know, post a picture of an oak tree and give the history of the famous oak where Stephen Austin negotiated the city’s boundaries, only to go “that’s not the Austin oak, this is.”  

 

Becauss it’s an oak tree. It’s one of the most common tree types across North America and Europe. Even a famous oak tree is still just an oak tree. 

 

You want a weird, locally significant logo for a team from Austin? Design a logo around a violet crown. 

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43 minutes ago, Pharos04 said:

If I could use another example of trees and local imagery found within MLS:

 

The Revolution has begun heavily weighing on the New England flag that contains a Pine Tree. This is an extremely local symbol that features a tree that is found in high abundance throughout the country. It's a fricken pine tree.  HOWEVER, the Revolution have made a point to come forward and give the actual meaning to tie in the usage by the club

https://www.revolutionsoccer.net/supporters/the-flag-of-new-England

 

They weigh heavily on the historical meaning of the flag, that it represents the region as a whole, and has come to symbolize the supporters as well.  They don't skirt about it saying the red is for whatever and the shape of the tree is meant to invoke dumb nonsense.  It's straight and to the point. This is the FLAG of NEW ENGLAND and it has a long history in the region because of the past 200 someodd years of history.  They even make reference to the Battle of Bunker Hill, a very important battle early in the Revolution!

 

If honestly that was the same justification used by PSV to justify the tree on the crest "Stephen F Austin signed a treaty under the Treaty Oak that still stands majestically in the city that bears his name" (I can Nike-speak too, can I be paid thousands of dollars to do this?) then a lot of the blandness and status-quo aspect that was thrown out there wouldn't exist because it gives actual meaning to it, not faux marketing speak that means nothing overall. 

 

As said before, you could replace "Austin" on the crest for nearly any other city and the meanings given behind the design choices and jargon used to justify the choices could still be true.

 

i love that! that flag is a very meaningful symbol that carries a lot of pre-loaded history and connotations with it. but it's not about a pine tree, or local pine trees, that is only one part of the whole here. the pine tree itself is nothing without the rest of the flag. the comparison with Austin and NE here isn't oak tree to pine tree, its oak tree to flag of new england. 

 

i also agree with @McCarthy the copyrighting is as bad as you expect (and copywriting is a whole other topic i would love to tear down. its straight garbage what is written for logo releases) for the Austin logo, but you have to look past all the BS written by a copywriter; what is really the message there? what are they really getting at? because thats what makes up the design: togetherness, growth, roots, unity... which is captured by the oak tree. but does that start stepping on the toes of what Columbus has done before and say something negative about the moving of the team? yea, if so, thats a very interesting discussion. that makes me start  to second guess the direction and what they wanted to communicate, and thats a discussion i think we should have more often here. to hell with kerning and fonts and shield shapes! what does the message of the logo mean within the entire franchise history? 

 

GRAPHIC ARTIST

BEHANCE  /  MEDIUM  /  DRIBBBLE

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Knowing little about Austin, outside of the broad generalities, I had never known that bats were such a thing there. I would've loved to see a logo inspired by Valencia's in La Liga, which has always been one of my favorite classic soccer marks. 

191_-valencia-primary-.gif

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I hate to start this in multiple threads but the American name vs. European name thing will never ever die. It's like the pro/rel argument for more reasonable people. I think everyone can agree that the Burn and the Wiz were unfortunate but that's an argument against going full-trendchaser, particularly at an aesthetically weird time like the late 90s. Certainly a better MLS has coincided with the Generic FC era, but at the same time the Timbers and the Sounders haven't really suffered from using an American style name, and who the hell knows what a Sounder even is. LA Galaxy are still clinging to that 90s singular noun corniness and yet they remain a model franchise, recent struggles notwithstanding. The mighty Real Salt Lake in Barcelona colors in Utah, or whatever Sporting Kansas City is trying to say, is just as cringeworthy as the xtreme 90s, just in a different way.

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39 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

Knowing little about Austin, outside of the broad generalities, I had never known that bats were such a thing there. I would've loved to see a logo inspired by Valencia's in La Liga, which has always been one of my favorite classic soccer marks. 

191_-valencia-primary-.gif

 

Hard agree from me, but I think the explanation offered in this thread is that, despite bats being cool as hell and relatively unique as an American sports brand, they're too well-known outside of Austin, or something. So instead we have the Fightin' Trees.

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5 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

The only reason I can fathom as to why the historical significance of oak trees to Austin wasn’t mentioned was because the design team didn’t know about them. And only discovered the happy coincidence after the fact. 

I agree with this 1000%.

 

My whole reaction to the tree is the connection to the importance Austinites' place on the environment and green spaces, parks, lakes, etc. inside the city.  That's the entire connection of this logo to the city. Besides 'keeping it weird', Austin is engaged in a political battle with the rest of Texas on just about everything. The roots thing? A horrible explanation and the design element that works the least.

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On this American v. European names debate, I wondered — purely as a thought exercise — whether we're too hung up on the idea of a nickname and not hung up enough on the inclusion of a city name. I mean, there are a half dozen or more clubs in London, but not one references the city's name in their brand.

 

The one common denominator among MLS clubs is the city name's inclusion. That's logical, and I'm not advocating for changing that, but I wouldn't blanche at a new franchise breaking from that convention and coming up with an alternative. Why couldn't Cincinnati have been Queen City FC? Why couldn't Austin be Violet Crown FC?  Atlanta could've been Southern Empire FC or somesuch nonsense. Or, if a location is absolutely necessary, I like the idea of drilling down a layer further to pull out a distinctive neighborhood name, like the Everton district of Liverpool or the Queen's Park section of London. That's why I love what SKC did with their USL side in naming it Swope Park Rangers. 

 

I'm probably just doubling down on the European naming conventions. But if the bigger offense is repeating the same Euro-centric names — and I'm not saying it is — I say why not go wildcard?

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4 minutes ago, Ice_Cap said:

Violet Crown FC

 

If you really want to shake up the "status quo."

 

I did an image search and found this sweet logo:

crownlogo.png

 

Bonus: it makes more intrinsic sense than Green Trees FC.

1 hour ago, ShutUpLutz! said:

and the drunken doodoobags jumping off the tops of SUV's/vans/RV's onto tables because, oh yeah, they are drunken drug abusing doodoobags

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30 minutes ago, gosioux76 said:

On this American v. European names debate, I wondered — purely as a thought exercise — whether we're too hung up on the idea of a nickname and not hung up enough on the inclusion of a city name. I mean, there are a half dozen or more clubs in London, but not one references the city's name in their brand.

 

The one common denominator among MLS clubs is the city name's inclusion. That's logical, and I'm not advocating for changing that, but I wouldn't blanche at a new franchise breaking from that convention and coming up with an alternative. Why couldn't Cincinnati have been Queen City FC? Why couldn't Austin be Violet Crown FC?  Atlanta could've been Southern Empire FC or somesuch nonsense. Or, if a location is absolutely necessary, I like the idea of drilling down a layer further to pull out a distinctive neighborhood name, like the Everton district of Liverpool or the Queen's Park section of London. That's why I love what SKC did with their USL side in naming it Swope Park Rangers. 

 

I'm probably just doubling down on the European naming conventions. But if the bigger offense is repeating the same Euro-centric names — and I'm not saying it is — I say why not go wildcard?

Wasn't there even some rumor that something like that was on the table? Or did I imagine that? I remember one of the early rumored names for NY2 (the eventual NYCFC) being Empire FC which could have been really cool as well. One issue with Queen City for Cincinnati in my mind is that there are a bunch of places that call themselves the Queen City, including Charlotte, a potential MLS expansion city.

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40 minutes ago, Red Wolf said:

Wasn't there even some rumor that something like that was on the table? Or did I imagine that? I remember one of the early rumored names for NY2 (the eventual NYCFC) being Empire FC which could have been really cool as well. One issue with Queen City for Cincinnati in my mind is that there are a bunch of places that call themselves the Queen City, including Charlotte, a potential MLS expansion city.

 

You're right. I was only using that as a hypothetical. So Charlotte could be Queen City FC, or whichever city took it first. 

 

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46 minutes ago, GFB said:

We must have wildly different definitions of what constitutes as a “sweet logo” 

The pic DG posted isn't a great logo in and of itself, but it's a far more interesting concept then a tree that you can find almost anywhere across two continents.

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1 hour ago, Ice_Cap said:

The pic DG posted isn't a great logo in and of itself, but it's a far more interesting concept then a tree that you can find almost anywhere across two continents.

 

Is it though? A soccer ball masquarading as part of a crown? I feel like we see the “something round is actually a ball” concept all the time in soccer, baseball, and basketball logos. That is also the literal concept of the FC Cincinnati crest. Personally, I find an oak tree with 11 leaves to be just as interesting conceptually as a soccer ball/crown hybrid.

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16 minutes ago, GFB said:

Is it though?

If the goal is to make something "weird" because Austin is "weird," then yes. Again, one of Austin's nicknames is "the City of the Violet Crown."
That's a weird nickname for a city in the middle of Texas to have. How'd they get it? I have no idea, but I bet the story's interesting. You could certainly do something with a violet crown-centric logo that's unique to MLS. Whereas...

 

18 minutes ago, GFB said:

Personally, I find an oak tree with 11 leaves to be just as interesting conceptually as a soccer ball/crown hybrid.

...an oak tree is just dull. It's a logo you could use for a team nearly anywhere.

Here's a map of forested regions across the world, with each region's major tree species broken down. Just check out how many include oak trees. They can be found across North America, Europe, Asia, India, and Oceania. And that's not even taking into account cities that plant them where they don't grow naturally. Oak trees are ubiquitous.

The one historical tidbit that could have justified the oak as a symbol was left off, leading me to believe the designers were unaware of it.

 

So yeah. If the goal was to make a weird and unique logo because Austin is weird? Then the violet crown route would have been the way to go. If the goal was to use a static image that would work for almost any locale in the Northern Hemisphere? Well mission accomplished, I guess.

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Ice_Cap said:

It's a logo you could use for a team nearly anywhere.

Here's a map of forested regions across the world, with each region's major tree species broken down. Just check out how many include oak trees. They can be found across North America, Europe, Asia, India, and Oceania. And that's not even taking into account cities that plant them where they don't grow naturally. Oak trees are ubiquitous.

 

For the record, I think an oak tree is a fine symbol for a club.  The symbolism is powerful and appropriate. 

 

I do agree, however, that there’s nothing particularly “Austin” about it. That’s my only objection to this part of the conversation, that we’re trying to retcon some local significance to a symbol obviously not chosen for that. 

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