Updating Pre-Superbowl NFL Team Logos (Helmets for Racine, Toledo & Buffalo)

[tigers]

24 minutes ago, Wildcomet said:

So I decided to go ahead with a possible rebrand of Duluth to a non-indigenous name, since it's pretty likely if the team made it to this point they would not have kept the name. So I'm going to introduce the Duluth Nevers!

 

The name honors the team's history, as Hall of Famer Ernie Nevers played for and was an owner of the team for part of their time in the NFL. The logo puts an N front and center, with the ends wrapping around behind the letter to connect in a never-ending loop. I also decided to swap the light purple color out for a silver/gray color. 

 

 

In addition, I'm going to share out my concept for the old Detroit Heralds. I kept the DH being the main focus of the logo, but enclosed the H in the D so that it would feel like one graphic instead of two, and I worked a horn with a banner hanging down into the H to give it some character related to the identity. I added a blue to the logo, as that just feels like a good fit for a Detroit franchise to me given other teams using similar colors.

 

 

 

 

This logo somehow for me makes me think of a Wooly Mammoth.

 

[Wildcomet]

On 4/13/2022 at 9:59 PM, tigers said:

 

 

This logo somehow for me makes me think of a Wooly Mammoth.

 

I can kind of see it now that it's said. The way the ends of the N shift from white to darker colors does give a mammoth tusk impression now that I'm thinking of it. Maybe an unofficial mascot similar to the bulldog for the Cleveland Browns? Thanks for checking it out!

[Wildcomet]

And we're back with the final team, the 1950 era Los Angeles Rams.

 

I didn't want to just assume it would be modernized in the way it was in real-life, so I approached it as trying to make a modern rendition of the 1950 era logo directly. I decided to try to use the blue to give the design some more depth in areas and try to make the ram horns feel more round, as in the original they come off kind of boxy to me. I also tried to give the Ram face a more pronounced appearance.

 

 

To sum the series up, I decided to put together this graphic imagining what the NFL's primetime schedule would look like if all these teams survived to the modern day. It seemed like a fun way to put every logo in one display. This also includes the updated 1961 Packers logo I did in another thread that inspired this series of logos.

 

 

I hope everyone has enjoyed this! I may return to this with some helmets, I'm not sure if there's any interest in that but a couple of the teams are calling to me to make a helmet for them so this thread may continue, but I'm not sure yet. C & C is always appreciated, and if people want to see it continue to helmets please let me know. Thanks and enjoy!

[Darth Brooks]

On 4/10/2022 at 6:35 PM, Wildcomet said:

Greetings! Time to share the next design, the Milwaukee Badgers!

 

The general concept behind this one to me was pretty strong; but whether it was the picture I could find or the actual logo but it definitely needed to be cleaned up a bit. My main changes were to the wordmark; I have it a more modern font that I felt worked well with the overall design of the logo, while giving it an outline to match the Badger itself. I wasn't sure if that light yellow in some places was due to age of the image or part of the design, but I decided to make those parts the same eggshell color I used on the rest of the light areas. 

 

 

 

I always thought the Badgers logo looks oddly modern. It's hard with these old teams finding where the logo comes from (Dayton,  the Jeffs and Oorang are exceptions) If your still doing these I'd love to see your take on Providence Steamrollers.  

 

THIS is the logo,

 

 

Have fun with that.

 

BTW, if you plan on doing the Buffalo All Americans, this was their logo. It came off a team letterhead.

 

 

It was based on an illustration from a book.

 

 

Good stuff.

 

[jbird669]

Don't forget the Pottsville Maroons, who were the TRUE 1929 Champs.

[Darth Brooks]

On 10/17/2022 at 11:25 AM, jbird669 said:

Don't forget the Pottsville Maroons, who were the TRUE 1925 Champs.

 

[jbird669]

21 hours ago, Darth Brooks said:

 

You are correct, typo on my part. Thanks for catching it. 

[Wildcomet]

On 10/15/2022 at 5:32 PM, Darth Brooks said:

BTW, if you plan on doing the Buffalo All Americans, this was their logo. It came off a team letterhead.

 

 

It was based on an illustration from a book.

 

 

Good stuff.

 

 

Thanks! I'd been kind of trying to think of any art projects to get going, was in a bit of a lull with that, so when I saw this post I decided to give the Buffalo one a try. I may attempt something with the Providence logo, but it's not what I started with.

 

The reference drawing helped a lot, and it's what I worked with more than the logo itself. I enhanced the illustration to better show the contours on the buffalo and based my work off that. I altered the legs and profile a little bit to up the aggressiveness a bit. I couldn't find any firm references to the All-Americans colors, but I took the color scheme from their later Buffalo Bisons identity to use here. I added some curved lines in the black fur portion to try and convey the sense that it's fur and not just some black mass, and also give it a sense of movement like it's charging. I tried to add the streaks in some parts more than others to help sell where the lighting would hit it. I hope you all enjoy, and I'll keep taking suggestions on teams to work with if anyone has one.

 

 

[jackkmart]

On 10/25/2022 at 2:15 PM, Wildcomet said:

 

Thanks! I'd been kind of trying to think of any art projects to get going, was in a bit of a lull with that, so when I saw this post I decided to give the Buffalo one a try. I may attempt something with the Providence logo, but it's not what I started with.

 

The reference drawing helped a lot, and it's what I worked with more than the logo itself. I enhanced the illustration to better show the contours on the buffalo and based my work off that. I altered the legs and profile a little bit to up the aggressiveness a bit. I couldn't find any firm references to the All-Americans colors, but I took the color scheme from their later Buffalo Bisons identity to use here. I added some curved lines in the black fur portion to try and convey the sense that it's fur and not just some black mass, and also give it a sense of movement like it's charging. I tried to add the streaks in some parts more than others to help sell where the lighting would hit it. I hope you all enjoy, and I'll keep taking suggestions on teams to work with if anyone has one.

 

 

 

This is pretty nice but I think you could get away with simplifying the shading on the buffalo's fur above his head a little.  Apart from that this is a pretty unique logo and a nice modernization of the original 'logo', if you can call it that. Not exactly the easiest source material to work with, but well done regardless.

[Wildcomet]

On 10/26/2022 at 3:36 PM, jackkmart said:

 

This is pretty nice but I think you could get away with simplifying the shading on the buffalo's fur above his head a little.  Apart from that this is a pretty unique logo and a nice modernization of the original 'logo', if you can call it that. Not exactly the easiest source material to work with, but well done regardless.

 

Thanks! I may come back to it and give that a try. I put more of the shading there to show the lighting as being brighter there, but it could possibly be simplified a bit while still showing that.

 

Until then, I did decide to take a crack at that Providence logo... not going to lie, this logo just confuses me and may have been the hardest for me to work with out of this whole series, but I did my best to give it an honest modernization without just switching the logo to something else entirely (though I may come back later and do a different logo for them, similar to what I did with Duluth previously). I tried to change the shading to give the design some depth, and add a bit more of an edge to some of the features. I stuck with the original two colors, adding a 3rd didn't feel necessary here and if this team were to live to the modern day the logo's simplicity would likely be considered a selling point.

 

 

[Wildcomet]

So I'm just realizing that I'd made a few helmets for this series but never got around to sharing them, so let's do that! Since many of these designs were inspired by an era of leather helmets, I gave myself a decent amount of artistic license for what a modern helmet could look like, but in some cases where it made sense (like the team is still around today) I did keep the real life in mind.

 

I'll do a couple at a time so the posts don't get too long...

 

Akron Pros - Nothing too crazy here, the AP logo on the sides with a triple stripe based on the logo outlines down the middle.

 

 

Chicago Cardinals - Given this was one of those teams from the era of leather and from my research had about this shade of leather for their helmet, I thought this would be an occasion where it'd be fitting to give the modernized helmet a leather texture pattern on the shell. I changed the shell color a bit from the dark red in the cardinal I was originally going to use to be closer to their leather helmet in color, then added the triple stripe and the modernized logo on the sides.

 

Dayton Triangles - I decided to let the Triangles have a geometric pattern cover their shell; the front is a triangle inspired by the logo, but filled in solid. 

 

The next few helmets will be posted in a little while. Hope you all enjoy!

 

 

[Wildcomet]

Back with some more of the helmets. Hope you all enjoy.

 

Detroit Heralds - I took the H part of the logo I designed and made that the helmet logo, while extending the line for trumpet to the back of the helmet where both sides would connect.  The graphic in the front over the facemask is the banner from the logo upside down.

 

Duluth Eskimos - Since this logo was already depicting what was essentially a spherical shape with the igloo, I thought it would work very well to make it an oversized graphic that would cover most of the side of the helmet.  Given the size of the logo graphic, the rest of the helmet was kept to the background midnight blue color.

 

Duluth Nevers (Eskimos rebrand) - This was for the version where the pressure to avoid team names based on groups of people got to Duluth; the rename was based on player/owner Ernie Nevers. The front graphic is inspired by the parts of the logo where the white shifts to gray to midnight blue. 

 

I'll have some more to post later on. Hope you enjoy!

[Wildcomet]

Here's the next batch I had prepared. Might be a little longer from this one to the next, won't be on my computer as often haha. Enjoy!

 

Green Bay Packers - Now I know in real life the Packers used the G logo even when they had the original version of this as a logo in 1961, but what would be the fun in making the same helmet they have now? That said, aside from using my modernized '61 logo on the helmet this is pretty much the Packers helmet of today. Too classic to mess with.

 

Los Angeles Rams - Similar to the Packers, the Rams' dark blue shells and ram horn helmet graphics are iconic, so I kept that motif and the white face mask from around that era and subbed in the updated version of the ram horns from my modernized logo.

 

Milwaukee Badgers - Had this franchise endured I could picture them adopting a helmet style not too dis-similar to the University of Michigan, which is what inspired this idea here, to take the badger head markings from my modernized logo and enlarge them to wrap around the front and sides of the helmet.

 

I have two more from my stuff I had made previously. I may also try to get a helmet together for Buffalo and/or Providence.

[Darth Brooks]

I like the Badger helmet. I did a version of one but what you did didn't occur to me.

[Wildcomet]

Here are the last of the helmets I had previously done for the Racine Legion and Toledo Maroons, as well as one I worked on this weekend for the Buffalo All-Americans. It worked out that two of these teams had very similar color schemes, but I tried to give their helmets some distinctive differences.

 

Racine Legion - I removed the R from my logo and put a star into the shield since letters don't typically work well on helmet logos. I also put the chevron pattern from the logo's wreath as the center stripe. As a way to still incorporate the R portion of the logo, I decided to have the Legion adopt the tradition of putting stickers on players helmets to represent big plays they make, etc. and used the R logo for the sticker.

 

Toledo Maroons - I didn't see an issue with this letter-based logo on a helmet since both the letters T and M are symmetrical (though this logo isn't quite) and can work on either side. I decided to give their logo a wider silver stripe that tapers off as it goes towards the back, with a shorter white one inside of it.

 

Buffalo All-Americans - For this one, I took the horns from my logo reshaped them slightly and enlarged them to make them the primary graphic on their helmet. I made the facemask orange to match with the majority of the face on the primary logo. Since they are named the All-Americans, I decided to put a row of stars down the center of the helmet; I tried white first but it was just too much contrast, so I went with orange.  I also attempted to gloss finish this one, but given that it's the only black helmet it may be hard to tell without another to compare it to.