Cleveland Indians Unveil New Uniform, Cap for 2019

[spartacat_12]

On 5/7/2019 at 5:02 PM, -Akronite- said:

 

I like this design a lot, and I'd like our uniforms to be closer to that 1948 look the cap is based on. However, this wouldn't work.

 

1) Native imagery is likely to be avoided altogether. They will be playing with fire to even use feathers IMO.

2) The wishbone C doesn't work for a new logo, people know what teams they associate it with at this point.

3) The feather crossing the wishbone C in navy, red, and white is WAY too close to the Twins unfortunately.

 

If the Braves & Blackhawks can use tomahawks, and the Chiefs can use arrowheads, I can't imagine people having a big issue with feathers (the old Hank Aaron-era Braves pulled it off alright).

 

I definitely agree with your other two points. Despite historical precedence for Cleveland using the wishbone C, the Reds, Twins, and Bears using it already is more than enough teams using it. It's especially tough for the Indians to stand out without Wahoo, considering for whatever reason C seems to be the letter most used in logos among the major North American leagues (I counted 16 logos [primary or otherwise] that use a C).

 

I think their best bet would be to use a rounded, serifed font (like below), and incorporate a feather somehow.

 

[The_Admiral]

Those fonts belong on term papers, not baseball uniforms. The Brewers and Rockies are bad enough as it is.

[-Akronite-]

26 minutes ago, spartacat_12 said:

If the Braves & Blackhawks can use tomahawks, and the Chiefs can use arrowheads, I can't imagine people having a big issue with feathers (the old Hank Aaron-era Braves pulled it off alright).

 

The difference being that none of those designs would be new creations in 2019, where the circumstances are a lot different in regards to racial sensitivity. But I don't want to drift into banned topics.

[wyopokes2]

I'm personally a huge fan of the designs GV Artwork puts out. I think it fits the history of the team without being over the top.

[Cujo]

On 5/3/2019 at 5:08 PM, crashcarson15 said:

 

 

 

 

If the 70s Braves mated with the Cincinnati Reds

[Marlins93]

10 minutes ago, wyopokes2 said:

I'm personally a huge fan of the designs GV Artwork puts out. I think it fits the history of the team without being over the top.

 

This works for me!

[Gothamite]

Oh, man.  The absolute worst thing they could do would be some sort of deliberately primitive, crude letterform.  Fits the Noble Savage thing too on the nose. 

[The_Admiral]

Yeah, that's too close to the crappy '70s uniforms.

[_DietDrPepper_]

It’s an arrow head? Look at the writing on the side, not crude, not native, it’s similar to the older c but it’s not, I for one think it’s not bad, it looks good

[Gothamite]

The rough outlines on that "C" are very crude.  Deliberately so.  Pass.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

6 hours ago, wyopokes2 said:

I'm personally a huge fan of the designs GV Artwork puts out. I think it fits the history of the team without being over the top.

 

This is a fine take on the best logo the team has ever had. Though I would prefer a traditional outline that hugs the entire letterform.

 

5 hours ago, Gothamite said:

Oh, man.  The absolute worst thing they could do would be some sort of deliberately primitive, crude letterform.  Fits the Noble Savage thing too on the nose. 

 

The interpretation of woodworking as crude or primitive has got to be one of the worst misreadings ever.

 

That logo and the associated wordmark are evocative and respectful without being appropriating or demeaning.

 

 

If the team is going to retain the nickname (as it surely is going to do), then this sort of branding would be ideal. This script — on a buttondown jersey, of course — would be much better than a generic cursive script that could equally well say any other team name.

 

[Gothamite]

3 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The interpretation of woodworking as crude or primitive has got to be one of the worst misreadings ever.

 

So you claim.   But you’ve never been able to give another interpretation for the uneven strokes of the letterforms.

[crashcarson15]

4 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

If the team is going to retain the nickname (as it surely is going to do), then this sort of branding would be ideal. This script — on a buttondown jersey, of course — would be much better than a generic cursive script that could equally well say any other team name represents literally every era of success the Indians have had in the last nearly 100 years.

Since winning the World Series in 1920 and finishing second in the AL in 1921, there's only three Indians teams that have been remotely competitive and haven't worn a script jersey — they finished 3 GB in 1926, 1 GB in 1940, and 5 GB in 1959.

 

Broadly, since 1920, the Indians have been good in three eras — the late '40s-mid '50s when they won 2 pennants and a World Series; the mid '90s-early '00s when they won 2 pennants; and this run now, where they have 1 pennant. There's a common thread about those identites.

[Sport]

They 100%, inarguably used that typeface in the 70's to evoke a crude and primitive aesthetic associated with Native Americans at that time. That's why they chose it. Period. Which means it's not an option today and would cause all the same problems as Chief Wahoo. It's not an elegant solution to their Chief Wahoo problem, it perpetuates their Chief Wahoo problem. BUT on top of that whole hornet's nest, the 1970's chunky wordmark also fails Uniform Goal #2 (Goal #1 is legibility) in that it looks completely :censored:ing ugly! That it's so often brought up as "why don't they just use this again????" is one of the more baffling stances that is taken on these boards. 

 

 

Keep the current script wordmark, go back to using the script Cleveland on the roads, come up with something without native imagery that is less purposely boring than the block C. There's a middle ground between Chief Wahoo and Being Completely Devoid of any Identity At All. 

[Glover]

Just stick with the block C. It ties into the team history, it isn't offensive, it is fine. The Cubs have a round C, why can't the Indians have a block C? 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

3 hours ago, Gothamite said:

7 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The interpretation of woodworking as crude or primitive has got to be one of the worst misreadings ever.

 

So you claim.   But you’ve never been able to give another interpretation for the uneven strokes of the letterforms.

 

I have consistently given the same interpretation: woodworking by hand. 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, crashcarson15 said:

Broadly, since 1920, the Indians have been good in three eras — the late '40s-mid '50s when they won 2 pennants and a World Series; the mid '90s-early '00s when they won 2 pennants; and this run now, where they have 1 pennant. There's a common thread about those identites.

 

You have a point there. The current script does have a long history with the team. So that alone qualifies it for retention. I see that I should not have called that script "generic". As good as the 70s script is on its aesthetic and conceptual merits, one could argue that the Indians' current script is tied to the team as strongly as the Cardinals' script is tied to that team.

 

But the cap is a must.

 

 

That cap logo can work with any wordmark. While many cap insignias come from the same font family as a team's wordmark, they absolutely do not have to. See the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals, Reds, Tigers, Twins, and, most recently, the Diamondbacks.

 

If the Indians had retained the woodworking cap logo since its inception, it would today be right up there with the iconic cap insignias of the Tigers and Cardinals. (And the team would not have had a Wahoo cap. If Wahoo had remained a secondary logo and an occasional sleeve patch, then quietly phasing it out would have been much easier.)

[The_Admiral]

24 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

I have consistently given the same interpretation: woodworking by hand. 

 

 

 

All those summer camps have fake Indian names, you ding-dong!

[BeerGuyJordan]

18 hours ago, -Akronite- said:

 

The difference being that none of those designs would be new creations in 2019, where the circumstances are a lot different in regards to racial sensitivity. But I don't want to drift into banned topics.

This. Cleveland really is in a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation. Even the term Indian would be a hard sell today. I'm not opening that statement up for debate, merely stating facts. It's a term that is mainly still in use because the US government keeps it on official agency titles (BIA, IHS, etc), but most of the people it is used to describe don't identify as such, and some even openly reject the term in favor of Native American, Indigenous Peoples, First Nations, or simply their tribal affiliation. Now I don't personally know any NA people lobbying for Cleveland to change the name, but it's here because it's a relic of a time where something like Chief he-we-do-not-name would fly. That leaves Cleveland in the unfortunate place where every branding move they make is under a microscope.

There's certainly an argument to be made that they might be better off just making a clean break and rebranding. I'm not arguing it, but I see the justification. It would be unfortunate to break with more than a century of an identity. No matter which side of the argument you're on, it's hard to not admit that the identity has become problematic/constraining for the management.

[SFGiants58]

At this point, it’d be less trouble to change the name to Spiders, Guardians, or another non-Native American name.

[Gothamite]

59 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

I have consistently given the same interpretation: woodworking by hand. 

 

 

Which is deliberately primitive.  So... what I said.