My Ideas for a Milwaukee Pro Soccer Team - Updated Smelting Milwaukee Logo

[Wildcomet]

Hello everyone!

 

I recently read about a new stadium/concert venue being announced in Milwaukee with an expected completion date in 2024. Part of the article and follow up news pieces have mentioned plans to bring a Pro Soccer team to Milwaukee. Thus far they have not said what league, but since the stadium will seat about 8,000 people it's not going to be MLS.  USL Champions League or the NWSL seem like the best bets to me. The news got me thinking about what the team could look like and it brought me back to a concept I first developed and posted a few years ago; Cream City FC. It was conceived as part of a series imagining what sports teams in various leagues could look like if they were owned by the Bucks and used similar brand traits.

 

Having had a couple years of separation and no need to tie it directly to the Bucks' branding I decided to take another shot at this concept. I give you the updated Cream City FC!

 

Cream City is one of Milwaukee's nicknames and I think it's best one. Given the name 'Cream City', I had to have a cream color featured in it. I paired that with navy and sky blue colors based on the Milwaukee People's Flag and white.

 

EDIT: You can see a larger post of the final Cream City FC logo designs in the last post of Page 1, and all the uniforms together on the first post of Page 2.

EDIT 2: My most recent design for the 2nd concept- Smelting Milwaukee FC- can be seen here. Posts for that concept start on Page 2.

 

As noted in the branding sheet, the center of the roundel is based on the side of a wooden beer barrel, with the blue seal around the edge and the soccer ball where a tap would be.  The design above the ball (which is of course basis for the secondary logo) is a combined reference to both Milwaukee's 414 area code and the distinctive architecture of the Milwaukee Art Museum. I mirrored the 4 on both sides of the 1 to create wings similar to the museum's design.

 

[MilSox]

I can appreciate the references to beer kegs and the museum, but neither of them are obvious to me in the way you excecuted them.

 

It seems to me that if you're gonna go all in on Cream City that some sort of brick pattern should be incorporated.

[Hawkeye15]

I love the color scheme. But I think the logo is too busy as is and perhaps the features are too abstract. I could not tell initially that the center logo was a 414.  And some of the features clash. Is it a keg? Is it a barrel? I will be eager to see a new version, because I think the idea has promise.

[Wildcomet]

Thanks for the feedback so far!  I took both comments in and decided to streamline the primary logo concept. While the museum, beer industry, cream bricks are all related to Milwaukee they aren't related much to each other, which I agree cluttered the identity a bit.  I took NicDB's suggestion on focusing more on the cream bricks that the Cream City nickname came from, and created an homage to that People's Flag that is popular in the area, using the bricks as the stripes in the bottom half of the circle and the soccer ball for the top half.

 

I kept my concept for the secondary logo, but did some adjustments to try and make the 4's and the 1 a bit more pronounced and smooth it out a bit. I think it's an improvement, but I'll wait for you all to tell me if it's working better (my brain knows what it's meant to be so its harder for me to see why it doesn't work haha).

 

[MilSox]

I've gotta be honest... I probably wouldn't have gotten the nod to the people's flag had you not pointed it out. 

 

But I was thinking, what if you filled the entire roundel wth cream (and only cream) bricks to serve as the background for a cool CC monogram?

[Wildcomet]

9 hours ago, NicDB said:

I've gotta be honest... I probably wouldn't have gotten the nod to the people's flag had you not pointed it out. 

 

But I was thinking, what if you filled the entire roundel wth cream (and only cream) bricks to serve as the background for a cool CC monogram?

 

Before doing the People's Flag inspired interior I actually did experiment with a full cream brick interior and trying to put something over it, but the iterations I tried were feeling too busy. If what I came up with isn't working (I thought it is, but that's why we share designs to see if others agree haha) I may give it another try. Something I hadn't tried yet was a CC monogram; I'll give that some thought. I'm also giving some thought into possible uniforms based on what I have so far so I may have some of those to share soon too.

[MilSox]

On 5/27/2022 at 10:13 AM, Wildcomet said:

 

Before doing the People's Flag inspired interior I actually did experiment with a full cream brick interior and trying to put something over it, but the iterations I tried were feeling too busy. If what I came up with isn't working (I thought it is, but that's why we share designs to see if others agree haha) I may give it another try. Something I hadn't tried yet was a CC monogram; I'll give that some thought. I'm also giving some thought into possible uniforms based on what I have so far so I may have some of those to share soon too.

 

100 percent. Sorry if I'm coming off as too critical, but I feel like there's a pretty good chance that Cream City is actually gonna be what the team is called. I feel like you have the elements of something good here. But I'd kove to see you come up with something the entire city can rally around.

[Wildcomet]

On 5/29/2022 at 2:47 AM, NicDB said:

 

100 percent. Sorry if I'm coming off as too critical, but I feel like there's a pretty good chance that Cream City is actually gonna be what the team is called. I feel like you have the elements of something good here. But I'd kove to see you come up with something the entire city can rally around.

 

No it's all good, the ideas are good to help get a design to the best place it can get to be. I'll admit I was feeling really good about that last one but it's always good to improve if able so its appreciated. I've been playing with a few different tweaks of varying degrees from where the primary logo currently is so I'll probably post a few options at once for the primary at some point to get opinions on the best way to go.

[Wildcomet]

As promised, I have both a selection of 6 different options for a primary logo combining and tweaking various elements, and some uniform concepts to share!

 

Option 1 is the primary logo from the last share-out for easy comparison. Options 2 and 3 both keep the same general concept, but in both I altered the blue bricks into solid blue layers to make the cream bricks more distinct, and in 3 specifically I made the bricks slightly larger and the blue layers thinner.

 

Options 4-6 all switch out the half-brick/half-ball design for a full cream wall with CC monogram. 4 & 5 share a monogram design while #6 has a separate concept. In #5 I wanted to try out extending the brick pattern to the outer layer since that is also cream colored, so that is the only difference between 4 & 5. What led to #6 is not wanting to lose the ball imagery from the logo; both the Bucks and the Brewers work the shape of the ball itself into their logos, so I wanted to maintain that theme into this logo and the font I used for one of the C's was wide enough to work with the idea. I put the other C behind it in #6 to not obscure the soccer ball pattern.

 

 

The uniforms were made using Owayo's 3D Product Designer (I do not have a soccer template); I imported my colors and logos into the site and selected the uniform patterns from their selection. I made these using the logos from the last share-out I did, but they won't change the uniform concept much on their own. I used the line patterns to create a block pattern along the front of the chest and around the legs of the shorts, as well as on the left sleeve. The primary logo is on the left chest and right shorts leg, and the secondary logo gets a spot on the right sleeve.

 

[vtgco]

Those jerseys look pretty nice; that striping pattern is a nice unique element!

I like the asymmetry, but I'm not really sure about the left shoulder design; maybe it wants to be a horizontal sleeve cuff stripe instead.

I guess it's not an issue if you're considering this for USL Championship rather than MLS, but it gives off major Philadelphia Union vibes with the colors and vertical stripe.

 

As for the logo, I'm not a fan of the inclusion of the soccer ball on your other versions, and versions 1-3 don't really read as the People's Flag to me without the sun.

Your version 4 is the best version so far. The bricks are well-integrated there, and the CC monogram feels like a good direction. I think the 414 logo makes for a good secondary, so good call on switching to that. I'd like to see the CC monogram and 414 in more closely-matching fonts though.

 

That said, I like the barrel theme and would be curious if that could be expanded upon again. One option could be to bring back the wood and incorporate curved bricks (sorta like this @MDGP Revs concept) in the outer ring of the roundel. Another option would be ditch the roundel in favor of a barrel-shaped crest, maybe with the bricks instead of the middle wooden band.

[Wildcomet]

Thanks for the feedback vtgco! Between you and NicDB I think this is moving in a real nice direction now.

 

I was thinking USL Championship based on the size of the stadium being built, that said I have to claim ignorance to the Philadelphia Union look so any similarities would be a coincidence (I don't watch MLS really).

 

That feedback helps me see how it doesn't work for others; I'd looked at it so much that I was struggling to see any issues with the resemblance, haha. I did try with using a sun instead of the ball but within the roundel it just came off as a large negative space so I think I'll take the primary in the monogram direction moving forward. I'm going to try both a 414 logo redesigned with that monogram font, and some monograms based on the roundel text & 414 logo font. My next post will likely have another several designs for people to look at for both the primary and secondary. Once those are hammered out I'll go back and take another look at the uniforms.

 

I do think something cool can be done with the wood barrel theme, but I think if I bring that back it may be for a separate design based on the name "Brew City FC" which is something I initially was going with before switching to Cream City. I'm feeling at this stage both the brick and wood barrel work well as main themes for a design, but combining them muddled both looking back on the first design I posted here.

[Wildcomet]

Good day everyone!

 

Here's another set of logo concepts for Cream City FC.

 

This time I have four variations on my primary, and two variations on the secondary logo. #1 is what was mentioned as the top logo from my last share-out and is the basic concept I'm going with at this time. 2, 3 and 6 are all variations of the concept based on the same font that is used in the outer roundel and initial secondary logo concepts. I thought it would be good to show a couple different uses and modifications on that font to get opinions on it, or if I should continue with the font style I used last time. 

 

#5 is a touched-up version of my current secondary "414" logo design (modified the 4's a bit more, smoothed out some lines, etc), while #4 takes the same concept but executes it using the same font as the monogram in #1. It's kind of a rough draft right now, but essentially I am looking to determine which font to base both elements on so they can pair together and feel like a more cohesive branding package. So even if #4 needs to be tweaked it should be enough to judge which direction to take both in. My personal top choices right now are pairing 5 and 6, but there are aspects of the others I think work also. I hope to hear all your thoughts!

 

[Brian in Boston]

From this latest batch of designs, I’m partial to #1 as a Cream City FC primary logo.

 

As for the secondary marks, I prefer #4.

[packerfan21396]

I feel like of all the 414 iterations, the serif one in number 4 feels the most connected, I'd probably make the 1 skinnier though, it's a bit strong to me.  As for CC monogram, how would a Chanel type monogram look like to mimic the 414?

[vtgco]

I'm definitely loving the arrangement/composition of the tall and squat Cs in versions #2 and #6! I wonder if there's a serif font that would work with that arrangement but pair better with alt logo #4. Maybe something like Covington Bold?

 

#4 looks excellent; a definite improvement over your previous version. I'm curious if it would still read properly as 4s if there were blue gaps between the cream stripes. I also agree with @packerfan21396 that a slightly skinnier 1 might be nice.

[Wildcomet]

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

 

I took what people seemed to think were the better overall designs (1 & 4 as a pair), and some of the suggestions made and came up with this set of primary and secondary logos. I feel like this is definitely an improvement over the last primary/secondary combo I put together, and they are feeling like a better, more cohesive set now to me. Hopefully others agree (but if not I can take it, haha).

 

The primary continues to use the Bodoni font-based monogram, but I added some spacing similar to logos 2 & 6 in my last share-out, and better defined the edges of the letters. I also added a slice of the sky blue to give a bit more depth between the two letters. I feel like this little element works well in tandem with some changes made in the secondary. I'm feeling like this monogram could work as its own secondary logo but I didn't think it needed to be added to the sheet in that manner since it can be seen in the primary.

 

The secondary got some noticeable changes. I agreed about the 1 being too big in that first draft so I condensed that digit and tweaked it a bit from there. I also added some depth elements; the sky blue underneath the numbers & the bottom of the soccer ball, and the thicker inside edges of the 4s. I also made the line widths more consistent in this version.

 

 

Thanks again, the C & C is always appreciated! Depending on the reaction this gets, I'll either keep developing these logos or return to the uniforms if the logos are good to go.

[vtgco]

Love the white/cream 3D beveling effect on the 4s! The sky blue drop-shadow is fine but I'd make the 4s' stems lower so you don't get that awkward step in the sky blue beneath the "wings," as you called them.

 

The primary logo is also improved by the gaps, though I wonder if it'd look good with the white C's serifs not extending inside the blue C.

One more thought; maybe it would look good to reduce the empty roundel space with "Cream City FC" on top and "Milwaukee WI" on the bottom (perhaps in a slightly smaller font size?)

 

Anyways, thanks for considering my nitpicks : P

You're absolutely right that this look has gotten way more cohesive! Definitely really close to completion here; good work.

[MilSox]

NOW you've got something that makes me think of the MAM! 

[Wildcomet]

Thanks for the feedback! As mentioned I've been wanting that 414 logo to remind people of the MAM so I'm glad it's working now. I have been wanting to work on the text in the roundel after getting the center figured out, so I think the next post I do will include any new tweaks to these logos along with uniforms to show off the entire team identity. I've kept experimenting with the uniform designer I used last time so the uniforms will be getting a new design, but retaining the striping elements I used last time to make the brick-style pattern and the general color scheme (navy blue home, white away with sky blue/cream accents on both). They're nearly done so I'll likely be sharing them tomorrow.

[Wildcomet]

I have both some slight logo updates and revised uniforms using the new logos to end the weekend with.

 

The significant update on logos here is updating the primary roundel's middle ring with larger letters, improved spacing between letters as well as between the words & lines, and reorganizing the words to give it better symmetry and smaller negative spaces. I made a small tweak to the 1 on the secondary logo, but it is otherwise unchanged.

 

 

The jerseys got a bit of a redesign, as I swiped out the asymmetrical vertical brick stack for a symmetrical pattern of rows of bricks.  I thought this would fit better with the brick pattern along the shorts (their maker had an option to put the pattern just on the jersey sleeves, but the jersey just looked too plain that way and I couldn't combine it with other patterns). The secondary logo is now on both sleeves. The shorts are basically the same design as before. The one other change I made to the kits is a blocks pattern throughout both the shorts and jerseys (its showing better on the away kit but it's on both). I also made a new template for showing them to have room for the back of the uniforms this time.

 

 

I hope everyone enjoys the updated primary logo and the new kits! Thanks for checking them out!