QCS' MLB Concepts (I guess this is a series now? Cleveland Spiders added 8/14)

[sky1324]

Hey, everyone! Today I decided to work on something that had been in my mind for while, a concept based on the idea that Charlotte was granted an MLB expansion team in the late '70s/early '80s and this is how they looked in modern times. I wanted to work on the classic Expos/North Stars/Atlanta Flames style of logos, clean, simple, and bold. Of course, this team would've been formed before the NBA's Hornets, meaning the teal revolution might not have been started in the 90s and possibly leading the entire sports world down a different aesthetic path. Either way, here's the logo sheet!

 

 

Like I said, the primary is clean and bold, a basic hornet shape in yellow and black. The secondary is the hornet in a roundel with "Charlotte Hornets" spelled around it in the vein of the Astros or Athletics. The throwback logo is from the 1957 Charlotte Hornets, who won the Southern League that year and featured a large hornet's nest on their jerseys. (The image I used to create the hornet's nest as well as excellent reference material comes from this site, my go-to for some fun facts about Charlotte baseball.) The primary shows up on the caps, while the wordmark is a simple rounded font I found fitting for the rounded logo. 

 

 

The home and road jerseys are pretty simple. As is Charlotte tradition, the home uses pinstripes, while the road forgoes them in favor of the "bee striping", a pattern that will be seen on every other modern jersey. It consists of a yellow block on the sleeve with three black stripes, just like the primary. The number font is a classic block, though I initially wanted a rounded number font to match everything else. On the sleeve of the home is the secondary, while the primary alone graces the road. The pants striping on the road is yellow/black/yellow, while the socks maintain the three black stripe motif. 

 

 

The two alts are essentially color swaps of the road, with some slight adjustments. The home alt is yellow and features a modified secondary for better legibility. This logo and the white striped pants are the only places where yellow touches white outside the MLB logo. The road alt is black with no outlines, mostly forgoing white except on the secondary. 

 

 

This is where it gets fun. The all-yellow is a fauxback/throwback/I haven't really decided yet, taking inspiration from the Rays' fauxback (which I adore, by the way). It features an entirely yellow jersey, from the hat to the socks. It's a pullover, and the three-stripe motif runs while here, found on the pants, "belt", sleeves, and collar. The socks this time are yellow with black stirrups, continuing the wild trendy look of the alt. The numbers are Futura Condensed ExtraBold, while the wordmark and NOB are Bauhaus 93. The wordmark features a "dropped" s with a hornet speeding out from it, leaving a white trail behind him. The throwback is a complete reaction of the 1957 SL champions Charlotte Hornets, at least, as close as I could get. It's a bit difficult to determine colors when every picture is in black and white. The Ebbets Field Flannels 1956 replica helped a bit, but I wanted to throw back to the champs, so I needed to do a bit more digging. As far as I could tell, the team (who was a Senators farm team at the time) used navy and red, though the red wasn't what Washington used. The cap was a Tuscan-style C, I believe outlined in white, while the jersey forgoes a wordmark for a massive hornet's nest, plastered right over the heart. The socks were hard to place, but I settled on plain navy. The belt I also assumed was navy, as well as the pinstripes. In what was a bit of a lucky break, it seems the number font matched what I was already using. The #3 is in honor of Harmon Killebrew, a Hall of Fame who played for the Hornets in '56 en route to a Hall of Fame career with the Senators/Twins. 

 

So, what do you think? C&C Appreciated!

[raz]

Love it but really feel there should be a second cap, maybe black with yellow, with a secondary "C" logo of some sort. 

[_DietDrPepper_]

This is interesting! I like the idea but I think your still a couple tweaks away from a stellar concept. First off, I'd swap the highlighter yellow for an athletic gold. I think the shade is far too bright and looks really slapdash. As for the logos they aren't awful but the seem generic and weak. I like the roundel idea and I think it'd be a much stronger primary, but I'd say play with the hornet logo itself a bit, maybe make less vertically dominated and wider, and play with the colors a bit. The white background in the roundel is painfully amateur. I think using a C logo would be an upgrade over the hornet on the caps. I do really like the yellow caps however. If you wanted to try and fit both the C and the Hornet into a logo, one of my favorite all time logos, the Cincinnati Stingers logo, does this extremely well. I think that team in general could be a good leaping point for a lot of this identity. Finally, that fauxback script is rough, the hornet coming from the tail of the S isn't a bad idea but the execution just is lazy. Instead of lowering the S, just edit the font to extend the bottom curve down below the rest of the letters. Then I'd come up with a different hornet logo (just to better show that it's a "throwback", I'd also come up with a different C logo possibly) and put it below the H in the script, and make an indication that the hornet is flying from the S to the H. Your current indication looks like a giant stinger from afar, which doesn't look the best. I'd look to the Baltimore Bullets logo from the 60's to get a good idea of what a small thing would look like traveling at a high speed.

Finally a more nitpicky criticism, the nest logo seems a tad too big on the throwback. 

 

Now onto what I like, the uniforms! I think black and yellow is a wonderful color scheme, but it's really interesting to see you make yellow the primary and not black like most teams with that identity. It really helps the team stand out in a good way. I like the yellow caps and if the yellow alternate is anything like the A's one, I know I'll like it too, although like @rjrrzube said, a black hat would look great on the alternates. Which I think would be a good place to put the hornet logo if you make a C logo for the primary caps. Finally, both the fauxback and the throwback are great. I love the red and blue throwback, that uniform is gorgeous. The fauxback looks good too, but benefited with some of the things I mentioned before, along with a black cap, I think it could look even better. 

[SEANL]

I really enjoy this concept and the uniforms are great!! I am conflicted over the ball cap design.  On one hand, I agree with some of the comments that a primary letter logo would look nice and sharp on the hat you have.  On the other hand, I think our opinions are shaped by the homogenization of MLB teams caps.  With the exceptions of the Orioles and Blue Jays all ball teams have letters for primary/cap logos.  I think MLB would benefit from some more creative caps and teams using multiple hat designs is hopefully the future.

 

Overall, I like the simple hornet you have designed.  I think legs would help, and I also think you're missing a second wing on each side.  For the roundel, maybe play with adding to the white background. Honeycomb? Checkered? Crowns? Incorporate the throwback logo into the roundel, somehow sublimated? I don't know I am just spit balling here.

 

This is a fun concept, excited to see it evolve too.

[sky1324]

8 hours ago, rjrrzube said:

Love it but really feel there should be a second cap, maybe black with yellow, with a secondary "C" logo of some sort. 

Thanks! I agree, a black cap would look better with the black alt. 

7 hours ago, _DietDrPepper_ said:

This is interesting! I like the idea but I think your still a couple tweaks away from a stellar concept. First off, I'd swap the highlighter yellow for an athletic gold. I think the shade is far too bright and looks really slapdash. As for the logos they aren't awful but the seem generic and weak. I like the roundel idea and I think it'd be a much stronger primary, but I'd say play with the hornet logo itself a bit, maybe make less vertically dominated and wider, and play with the colors a bit. The white background in the roundel is painfully amateur. I think using a C logo would be an upgrade over the hornet on the caps. I do really like the yellow caps however. If you wanted to try and fit both the C and the Hornet into a logo, one of my favorite all time logos, the Cincinnati Stingers logo, does this extremely well. I think that team in general could be a good leaping point for a lot of this identity. Finally, that fauxback script is rough, the hornet coming from the tail of the S isn't a bad idea but the execution just is lazy. Instead of lowering the S, just edit the font to extend the bottom curve down below the rest of the letters. Then I'd come up with a different hornet logo (just to better show that it's a "throwback", I'd also come up with a different C logo possibly) and put it below the H in the script, and make an indication that the hornet is flying from the S to the H. Your current indication looks like a giant stinger from afar, which doesn't look the best. I'd look to the Baltimore Bullets logo from the 60's to get a good idea of what a small thing would look like traveling at a high speed.

Finally a more nitpicky criticism, the nest logo seems a tad too big on the throwback. 

 

Now onto what I like, the uniforms! I think black and yellow is a wonderful color scheme, but it's really interesting to see you make yellow the primary and not black like most teams with that identity. It really helps the team stand out in a good way. I like the yellow caps and if the yellow alternate is anything like the A's one, I know I'll like it too, although like @rjrrzube said, a black hat would look great on the alternates. Which I think would be a good place to put the hornet logo if you make a C logo for the primary caps. Finally, both the fauxback and the throwback are great. I love the red and blue throwback, that uniform is gorgeous. The fauxback looks good too, but benefited with some of the things I mentioned before, along with a black cap, I think it could look even better. 

Wow, thanks for the comments! I might tweak the shade of yellow, I wanted to avoid athletic gold because that's what the WFL's Hornets wore (according to TruColor) and I wanted to make these Hornets visually distinct. I'll play around with it and see what I like. As for the hornet, I want to strike a balance between simplicity and detail, but I'll add the second pair of wings and legs and see how that looks. I'll put together a C logo, but I actually like the hornets on the caps and I'd rather keep it for the most part. As @SEANL said, not many MLB teams have a cap that's not just a letter logo, and I was heavily inspired by the Orioles in putting this design together (I even considered a tri-color hat). As for the fauxback, you're absolutely right, I'll touch that up. I guess what I should've explained better in my original post is that my idea was that the team didn't change much, keeping most of their original identity intact, but a fauxback doesn't really need to be held to that, huh? I'll play around with it. Maybe I'll use the current hornet for the fauxbacks and make a new one for the rest of the set. I realized how much it looks like a stinger as well, I'll play around with it. As for the throwback, they actually were that big, very visually distinct. (This image is from 1956 but the jersey didn't change and it best illustrates how large the nest was. In fact, it might be too small.)

Yeah, I'm glad I went with yellow as the primary, I was careful not to tread on Pirates' territory. I'll definitely add a black cap for the black alt, but the hornet won't go on it. It disappears too much on black and loses the boldness that I like about it. The black cap will be where the C goes, fitting for the road alt. I'm glad you like the uniforms! I figured they'd be visually distinct from the MLB while also having a classic feel to them. The throwback does look great, Charlotte has had some very good-looking baseball uniforms.

1 hour ago, SEANL said:

I really enjoy this concept and the uniforms are great!! I am conflicted over the ball cap design.  On one hand, I agree with some of the comments that a primary letter logo would look nice and sharp on the hat you have.  On the other hand, I think our opinions are shaped by the homogenization of MLB teams caps.  With the exceptions of the Orioles and Blue Jays all ball teams have letters for primary/cap logos.  I think MLB would benefit from some more creative caps and teams using multiple hat designs is hopefully the future.

 

Overall, I like the simple hornet you have designed.  I think legs would help, and I also think you're missing a second wing on each side.  For the roundel, maybe play with adding to the white background. Honeycomb? Checkered? Crowns? Incorporate the throwback logo into the roundel, somehow sublimated? I don't know I am just spit balling here.

 

This is a fun concept, excited to see it evolve too.

Thank you! I agree, I'd like to see some more variation in MLB caps, like the ray for Tampa and the like. I'll update the hornet, adding those wings and legs should help balance it out horizontally, my initial idea was to be as basic as possible but I think adding those details will make it a better logo. I'll also do some things with the roundel, I've got a couple ideas in my head for it.

[mvk]

I think there’d be a lot of pushbacks from the Pirates if this was late 70’s / early 80’s.  But good design and execution.

[sky1324]

7 hours ago, mvk said:

I think there’d be a lot of pushbacks from the Pirates if this was late 70’s / early 80’s.  But good design and execution.

The Pirates wouldn't like another yellow and black team, but sharing colors isn't unheard of in MLB and the emphasis on yellow over black should help assuage those concerns.

 

Alright, I've taken your comments into consideration and this is my result! I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted the team to look like, which basically boils down to this image:

Take the original, beloved, and simplistic logo (my original hornet), pretend like it went through some awful redesign in the 2000s like the Black Jays, then come out in the 2010s with a modernized version of the original with a slightly tweaked logo and new colors. With that in mind, here we go!

 

 

EDIT: The primary has been tweaked slightly. View the original here.

The new primary is a roundel inspired by the original roundel, but with a new honeycomb pattern (thanks @SEANL!) and a different color way. The new yellow is closer to gold, but I love how it works with the black and I'm glad I changed it (thanks @_DietDrPepper_!). As you can see, I also updated the hornet, with the proper second pair of wings and legs, hopefully giving it more horizontal balance. A new winged C is the secondary, it finds itself on the secondary cap. The tertiary is the new hornet on its own, which also acts as the cap logo. As you can see, the old hornet and old yellow survive in the fauxback, which helped to connect the "two eras" of Hornets baseball. I also did a bit of touching up to the presentation itself, moving a couple things to line up better. 

 

 

EDIT: The wordmarks have been tweaked along with the primary. View the original here.

The home and road haven't changed much, just replaced the banana yellow with athletic gold, while updating the shoulder patches to be the primary and replacing the cap logo.

 

 

EDIT: Wordmark on yellow alt tweaked, along with the new primary. View the original here.

The alts got touched up as well, with the white pants flipping the striping to avoid having gold touch white. The black alt receives the new black "C" cap as well as new black socks that swap the striping pattern. You can think of the C cap like the Orioles' "O's" cap, something worn only with the black alt, while the "C" itself can be found on merchandise and in the stadium signage. 

 

 

Now for the jersey that received the most changes: the fauxback's wordmark was changed to better illustrate the speed of the hornet and look better. The "h"'s gap is in the shape of the hornet's wing, which fills it nicely. The "s" is extended as an underline to connect with the hornet and act as a "speed line" for the bug, creating the illusion of movement. That same hornet can be found as the cap logo (I tried it with a winged C but it didn't work very well). The old "banana" yellow remains, creating the idea that when the logoset was modernized the colors were darkened, as is tradition. The '57 throwback wasn't changed. 

 

There you have it! An updated Bees set that would fit right at home in the majors. While obviously any new Charlotte MLB team couldn't be called the Hornets in our timeline, I think provided that opportunity this would be a good way to go about it. What do you think? C&C Appreciated!

[_DietDrPepper_]

Fantastic tweaks, a little bit goes a long way here. Although I do still have 2 more little things I think would finish this off. The primary logo is much improved, the hornet looks much better now, but the honeycomb pattern in the roundel isn't doing it for me. Its not bad per se but I don't think it fits in with the MLB much. I say swap it for a black yellow background, similar to the Astros logo or put a baseball in its spot, similar to the Jays. I think the proportions are a bit off as well, the black circle should be bigger so the text can be seen better and the hornet should be shrunken. Look at the Astros logo for example, I think the proportions between all those elements are really nice. Secondly, I meant to write this before, but yellow clashes heavily with white and grey, I'd swap the texts on the home and away to a thicker black outline, or even just a black text (as close as that's cutting to Pittsburgh, I think it's necessary) on the alt, I'd swap it for a black text outlined in white or just a black text. 

Also, this is just a personal grievance, but despite your yellow looking much better, I still think it could be darkened a tad, to almost a goldenrod possibly. That could help with the scripts too. 

All in all though, a great update! 

[qckgnc]

I love the big logo on the throwback, the entire set is nice. I feel like some CLT blue (that's what I'm calling process blue from now on) would be cool to tie it into the real major league teams, specifically the Panthers, but I'm not sure how or where it would go. I really like the logo on the cap, a honeycomb "C" would have been cool if it wasnt already taken so I like how you were able incorporate the hornet into the "C"

[sky1324]

2 hours ago, _DietDrPepper_ said:

Fantastic tweaks, a little bit goes a long way here. Although I do still have 2 more little things I think would finish this off. The primary logo is much improved, the hornet looks much better now, but the honeycomb pattern in the roundel isn't doing it for me. Its not bad per se but I don't think it fits in with the MLB much. I say swap it for a black yellow background, similar to the Astros logo or put a baseball in its spot, similar to the Jays. I think the proportions are a bit off as well, the black circle should be bigger so the text can be seen better and the hornet should be shrunken. Look at the Astros logo for example, I think the proportions between all those elements are really nice. Secondly, I meant to write this before, but yellow clashes heavily with white and grey, I'd swap the texts on the home and away to a thicker black outline, or even just a black text (as close as that's cutting to Pittsburgh, I think it's necessary) on the alt, I'd swap it for a black text outlined in white or just a black text. 

Also, this is just a personal grievance, but despite your yellow looking much better, I still think it could be darkened a tad, to almost a goldenrod possibly. That could help with the scripts too. 

All in all though, a great update! 

 

I agree, the tweaks make the whole set much better. I have a couple more tweaks to make based on your feedback but I think it's mostly done. As for the roundel, I tried your suggestions:

The problem is the hornet should only be placed on light backgrounds, otherwise the legs and antennae don't show up and it loses the effect of being a hornet. I wasn't a huge fan of the Astros-style triple circle, it felt a bit plain. The white baseball is certainly eye-catching, but it seemed derivative and I wanted to minimize white overall. My favorite is still the honeycomb roundel, especially with the slight tweaks I made to let the words breath more. As for it fitting into the MLB, I mocked that up as well (well, the National League, because that's where I'd want the team to be):

I think it fits just fine, especially when compared to the skyline baseball and fishball that other teams use. It's not often an MLB uses an icon without a letter at the forefront, so I wanted to do something different. I'm sure with time it would become natural, it could be one of those "quirky" logos MLB uses. 

 

The hardest thing to do when making the set was to differentiate it from the Pirates, but their emphasis of black made my life easier. As for the shade of gold, I like where it is. If you want I can mock up the set with a darker shade, but I'm satisfied with this shade. I've tweaked the wordmarks on the home/away/alt, as well as swapping the roundel out for the new version.

 

1 hour ago, qckgnc said:

I love the big logo on the throwback, the entire set is nice. I feel like some CLT blue (that's what I'm calling process blue from now on) would be cool to tie it into the real major league teams, specifically the Panthers, but I'm not sure how or where it would go. I really like the logo on the cap, a honeycomb "C" would have been cool if it wasnt already taken so I like how you were able incorporate the hornet into the "C"

 

Thanks! I like the name for process blue, I think I'll start calling it that too! I would've loved to get blue into the color scheme but I couldn't justify it with a black/yellow scheme. If anything, it would probably work best on the black alt in place of the yellow words/stripes, but that would be a one-off special jersey most likely. It took me a moment to figure out what team used a honeycomb C until I turned around and saw it on my Hornets banner and thought "duh". I like the winged C, it feels like the black cap would be popular with fans. 

 

Ninja edit: I also mocked up the logosheet in NBA Hornets colors just for the heck of it. It's certainly different, I wouldn't mind something like this.

[NashConcepts]

Awesome job .  I’ve been trying to do something like this myself for quite a while, but haven’t had the resources to do so.  I was just thinking about how perfect a white panel (yellow crown) and black brim might look, especially with the yellow alternate jersey. Feel free to disagree with me, but that’s my 2¢.

[sc49erfan15]

I think you've got a great start - you've done a good job of having a yellow and black baseball team and not having it look like the Pirates.

 

As for the "Expos/North Stars/Atlanta Flames style of logos, clean, simple, and bold" - the primary logo isn't incredibly detailed, but I'd look at reducing it even further. The distinguishing mark of those logos, at least to me, is that they have thicker strokes and not a lot of detail. They're very simple, and in some cases, abstract - we're still not in 100% agreement on what exactly the Expos logo even is. 

  

 

I guess I'm hung up on what the WFL Charlotte Hornets logo looked like - this logo, to me, is very similarly-designed to those above. 

 

 

Maybe something like that, except using the top-down view you have? Other WFL logos, WHA logos, Nordiques, Golden Seals, expansion Mariners, etc. could be good sources of inspiration.

[sky1324]

6 hours ago, YankeeBaseball0934f said:

Awesome job .  I’ve been trying to do something like this myself for quite a while, but haven’t had the resources to do so.  I was just thinking about how perfect a white panel (yellow crown) and black brim might look, especially with the yellow alternate jersey. Feel free to disagree with me, but that’s my 2¢.

Thanks! I thought about a tricolor cap was well, but I prefer how the hornet looks on the yellow and the way the colors interact without white, since it's only used in absolutely minimal capacities. That said, I mocked it up anyway!

I tried two styles, one with a black brim and one with a yellow brim. The black brim isn't bad, but I personally prefer the original two-color cap. I could certainly see the black-brimmed cap being an alternate cap, but it almost like I'm just directly copying the Orioles and while they look great, I'd rather the Hornets look distinct.

 

3 hours ago, sc49erfan15 said:

I think you've got a great start - you've done a good job of having a yellow and black baseball team and not having it look like the Pirates.

 

As for the "Expos/North Stars/Atlanta Flames style of logos, clean, simple, and bold" - the primary logo isn't incredibly detailed, but I'd look at reducing it even further. The distinguishing mark of those logos, at least to me, is that they have thicker strokes and not a lot of detail. They're very simple, and in some cases, abstract - we're still not in 100% agreement on what exactly the Expos logo even is. 

[snipped for space]

 

I guess I'm hung up on what the WFL Charlotte Hornets logo looked like - this logo, to me, is very similarly-designed to those above. 

 

 

Maybe something like that, except using the top-down view you have? Other WFL logos, WHA logos, Nordiques, Golden Seals, expansion Mariners, etc. could be good sources of inspiration.

Thank you! The Pirates made it hard for me to figure certain things out, but once I settled on the heavy black outline style, I knew the emphasis on gold and the striping would be enough to separate it from the Bucs and make the Bees visually distinct.

 

As for the logo, I'm in a bit of a pinch here: my original logo (which is still on the fauxbacks) is about as simple as you can have a top-down hornet: antenna, head, abdomen, wings, thorax, stinger. It's possible I could merge the abdomen and thorax, but I really don't think it can get much simpler. One of the original problems with that logo was how it filled space, needing the second pair of wings and the legs to balance it horizontally when it was so vertically dominated before. The '70s style of logo design is my favorite, I love it created timeless designs so well (sometimes not so well, but I digress). 

 

The WFL's Hornets logo is probably about as good as this style of hornet logo could look, being simple, clean, and filling space well. The way it fits on the helmet is just amazing, it's one of my favorite logos of all time. My challenge, then, was to take the exact same color scheme, name, and style, and make it distinct. I decided to use a top-down view of the hornet, which would provide enough separation from the Grid-Bees for me to explore my own ideas for the name. The WHA's Stingers also served as inspiration, but again, I wanted to avoid the side view. I simply couldn't figure out a way to balance the '70s style, readability, and visual balance, so I went for the latter two and sacrificed a bit of my original intent to make a better concept. 

[NashConcepts]

I guess it's the same thing-  probably where I got my inspiration.  Nice job nonetheless!!

[mvk]

21 hours ago, QCS said:

The Pirates wouldn't like another yellow and black team, but sharing colors isn't unheard of in MLB and the emphasis on yellow over black should help assuage those concerns.

 

Yes, but at the time, the Pirates were heavy on the yellow and pinstripes.  Perhaps a darker gold or even orangish shade would work to differentiate.

 

Again, really nice concept and the logo/design definitely fits in.

[sky1324]

5 hours ago, YankeeBaseball0934f said:

I guess it's the same thing-  probably where I got my inspiration.  Nice job nonetheless!!

Thanks! The WFL logos are pretty great, I love just enjoying them and their simplicity.

 

1 hour ago, mvk said:

Yes, but at the time, the Pirates were heavy on the yellow and pinstripes.  Perhaps a darker gold or even orangish shade would work to differentiate.

 

Again, really nice concept and the logo/design definitely fits in.

That's true, the Pirates did wear pinstripes in the late '70s. However, they switched by 1980 and if we imagine the Hornets as an early-80s team (despite the lack of real-world expansion during that time), the distinction between the teams should be enough to make it work, especially given how the Pirates shifted away from gold in the late '80s and didn't use pinstripes again until the late '90s. That said, an orange-gold color intrigued me and I mocked it up on the logosheet. Then I combined it with a maroon, and I went ahead and mocked up the whole thing.

 

 

This is closer to an actual hornet's colors, and it looks really good, much better than I expected. The new gold works great with black as well. I'm really conflicted now, I have multiple great options and I can't decide which is my favorite.

[_DietDrPepper_]

I still think the roundel has its problems, namely how the proportions still seem a bit small and the honeycomb makes it all a bit busy, I actually really liked the direction of the mockup you did without it, if only you didn't have the yellow ring in the middle of the black one and filled out the wordmark in the open space. But I think that gold is exactly what I was thinking when I meant a darker athletic gold, it looks great. Although I think making the maroon more red would be for the best, it looks brown right now which is knee deep in San Diego's territory

[teeray01]

I think the roundel is fine. Would be cool to see the burgundy/gold combination in MLB.  Are you planning to do any other teams?  Would love to see more from you.

[sky1324]

2 hours ago, _DietDrPepper_ said:

I still think the roundel has its problems, namely how the proportions still seem a bit small and the honeycomb makes it all a bit busy, I actually really liked the direction of the mockup you did without it, if only you didn't have the yellow ring in the middle of the black one and filled out the wordmark in the open space. But I think that gold is exactly what I was thinking when I meant a darker athletic gold, it looks great. Although I think making the maroon more red would be for the best, it looks brown right now which is knee deep in San Diego's territory

 

Looking at it again, I agree, especially on the jerseys. I reworked it to feature larger letters, but I kept the honeycombs as a way to fill space. As for the shade of maroon, you're right, so I have five options prepared.

 

 

I have the primary in black, my original maroon, a lighter shade, an even lighter shade, and the WFT burgundy. Personally, I really like the black, but I think the lightest shade also could look very good and would be unique in MLB. 

 

1 hour ago, teeray01 said:

I think the roundel is fine. Would be cool to see the burgundy/gold combination in MLB.  Are you planning to do any other teams?  Would love to see more from you.

Thanks, that means a lot! As of now, I don't have plans for more teams, but I might do some others. Your profile picture made me think I might do a Cleveland Spiders team, but for now it's just the Hornets.

[teeray01]

Cleveland Spiders would be cool.  I'm originally from North Central Ohio which is Cleveland territory for the MLB, NFL and NBA and Columbus for the NHL and MLS. There is a lot of talk about the Indians rebranding.  Would love to see your take on the rebrand.  Good work so far!  I like the black version, but I like the lightest burgundy version the best.