MLB 2023 Uniform/Logo Changes

[LMU]

Now taking the field… the FIGHTIN’ FLORENCE PuGHS!

[bowld]

[Brave-Bird 08]

PGH isn't even the airport code. I simply don't understand why they went with that. 

[McCall]

I either abbreviate/refer to Pittsburgh as PIT, PITT or BURGH. Never PGH. Looks weird.

[coco1997]

48 minutes ago, LMU said:

Now taking the field… the FIGHTIN’ FLORENCE PuGHS!

I had the same thought.  But apparently she's a West Coast gal:

 

 

If they wanted to use a Pittsburgh native for inspiration, they could've gone with Keaton:

 

[adsarebad]

Holy crap , these make Cincinnati and Baltimore look good! 

 

Nah,  no they don't, they all 3 suck major league ****

[CS85]

10 minutes ago, bowld said:

 

This uniform needs more Ps.

[adsarebad]

51 minutes ago, LMU said:

Now taking the field… the FIGHTIN’ FLORENCE PuGHS!

 

 

Are they saying Pugh you or pgh you?

No mister Burns, they are saying ......... eh, well, i have no idea to be honest

[spartacat_12]

It really bothers me that the P on the wordmark doesn’t match the P on the cap/sleeve. 
 

I still don’t love the dark pants, but I guess there’s precedence with the Pirates. 

[maz]

I called the "PGH"

 

Around here, that's how it's abbreviated everywhere. It's the "official" abbreviation (although I know the airport uses "PIT"). So I get how it "connects" to the "city" and all, but as for the rest of the uniform...

 

Holy "meh," Batman. I have always said, being boring and safe is better than being garish and ugly. But this is a batting practice uniform with a pattern half sublimated onto it.

 

Then again, this team showed a ton of promise only to let us down on the field after a few months anyway.

 

EDIT: The more I look at it, the more it grows on me, but still... I was hoping for more.

 

[tBBP]

Okay, so...for all y'all who don't know, "Pgh" is the actual shorthand Pittsburghers use and have used since well before I first moved there back in '03--shoot, to this day even I still use it sometimes. It's purely a local thing. (So there's your "City Connect"ion.) Now that we done got that out the way...

 

51 minutes ago, bowld said:

 

I'm cool with the fade effect in the jerseys--it's a good bit reminiscent of the Three Sisters in certain settings of sunlight. That they used their three little symbols to achieve the gradient fade is definitely a Nikeism, but in this instance at least it's tasteful. As for the symbols themselves, well...read about all of the design stuff here: City Connect | Pittsburgh Pirates (mlb.com)

 

I will say this: I can appreciate how deep into the details they (Nike) went with the research, and what symbols they chose to appropriate for this. (Well, except for the whole "check" thing--that's a dang square. I know where they got it from: the heraldic term "chequy", otherwise defined as a "checkerboard" pattern.) But that custom font is all kinds of booboo...there's just no way around it. They could have gone full-on Germanic a la the Motre Bame Brewers and it would have made far more sense than...that. But eh well...that's what they got.

 

(I may snag me a cap while I'm there this coming weekend...)

 

[PlayGloria]

5 minutes ago, tBBP said:

Okay, so...for all y'all who don't know, "Pgh" is the actual shorthand Pittsburghers use and have used since well before I moved there--shoot, even I still use it sometimes. It's purely a local thing. (So there's your "City Connect"ion. Now that we done got that out the way...

 

 

 

You can do that for literally every major city though. MIA for Miami, CLE for Cleveland. Slapping PGH on the front is just lazy. 

 

At this point, I wish it was just an alt uniform rollout and drop the City Connect BS. The City Connect aspect seems like it is causing every one of these uniforms to have some cheesy element. In reality, I actually like this set a lot. Change that PGH on the front and this would be a killer alt uniform for the pirates. The PGH just downgrades the entire thing IMO

[GriffinM6]

As a fan of the team, I'm pretty meh on it. It looks like a modern version of the late 70s uniforms, which is fine, but I'd rather them have just replaced the black road alt with a throwback and then done something completely different with the CC. Honestly, a steel/charcoal/gunmetal grey uniform with yellow as the main secondary color would've slapped. I do really like the font though, and wish they had used it on the hat as well. 

[tBBP]

13 minutes ago, PlayGloria said:

 

You can do that for literally every major city though. MIA for Miami, CLE for Cleveland. Slapping PGH on the front is just lazy. 

 

I don't disagree about that last part, but you may also be missing the greater point: that PGH across the chest is for THEM (the city denizens), not everyone else. (To be real, there could have been cheesier alternatives, such as "the Burgh", which would have been even worse, so all in all it's probably better they went the way they did.)

 

I'm not the biggest fan of all these new Nike-helmed one-offs myself, as they effectively fucntion more (to me) as  billboards to satisfy their own creative agends than something purposefully for the teams; however, I also try my best to be as objective as possible, as a graphic designer myself, to understand as much as I can about why certain design decisions were made (i.e. the research and development part), which is why I try to dig into whatever explanations/infographics I can find on all these new designs (and sometimes I find inspirations from digging into those details), and when the design is more focused on the city/team itself, it's highly obvious to me. All of which is to say I completely get where the PGH thing came from...it also helps that I lived there for seven years, my daughter still lives there, and I can understand all the references.

 

9 minutes ago, GriffinM6 said:

As a fan of the team, I'm pretty meh on it. It looks like a modern version of the late 70s uniforms, which is fine, but I'd rather them have just replaced the black road alt with a throwback and then done something completely different with the CC. Honestly, a steel/charcoal/gunmetal grey uniform with yellow as the main secondary colors would've slapped. I do really like the font though, and wish they had used it on the hat as well. 

 

Given Nike's overwhelming love of all things anthracite, I honestly don't know how they didn't try to shove some of that into this design. (Or maybe they did and the Pirates just wasn't having it--I don't know.) That said, I'm also glad they didn't, and just kept it to the core colors of black and yellow. 

[coco1997]

I don't think there's anything necessarily "bad" about these uniforms, but I can't help but think they look like something myself and a bunch of other people on the Concepts forum could have whipped up in about 10 minutes.

 

Pittsburgh also seems to have gone Atlanta's route of using their City Connect design as a way to skirt around Nike's 4+1 rule and keep a throwback-type alternate in their regular rotation. 

[VampyrRabbit]

It's good, but there were a lot more possibilities that the team could have gone with. If any CC could have been sleeveless, it was this one, and instead of just the single black line for the trim, it's a shame they didn't go with black/gold/black for the Pittsburgh flag, that seemed like the obvious thing.

 

I also kind of wished that they had put Pirates on the placket like in 1912 or Pittsburgh, though that might have been a problem on the modern Nike template.

 

[8BW14]

I like it. Fauxback-y and contemporary. The sublimated details are thoughtful, although they will disappear on TV or from the stands. Coulda been worse.

 

edit: also, pillbox hats would have been awesome, but they probably wouldn’t sell as well.

[maz]

54 minutes ago, tBBP said:

Okay, so...for all y'all who don't know, "Pgh" is the actual shorthand Pittsburghers use and have used since well before I first moved there back in '03--shoot, to this day even I still use it sometimes. It's purely a local thing. (So there's your "City Connect"ion.) Now that we done got that out the way...

 

Exactly. The amount of apparel and merch with "PGH" you see in one day is plentiful. You almost never, ever see "PIT". Around here, only the University of Pittsburgh is "Pitt". So to say "P-I-T"  out loud sounds like an incomplete Pitt chant. To say it like "Pitt" sounds like the college. So when analysts, athletes, etc refer to Pittsburgh as "Pitt" I always get a kick out of it.

 

 

[damnyoutuesday]

2 hours ago, coco1997 said:

I had the same thought.  But apparently she's a West Coast gal:

 

 

If they wanted to use a Pittsburgh native for inspiration, they could've gone with Keaton:

 

If they wanted to base a uniform off of a Pittsburgh native, they should have either done Mr. Rogers or Mac Miller

[monkeypower]

I'm whelmed by the Pirates set.

 

I visited Pittsburgh last fall and really enjoyed it so I was looking forward to seeing what they could come up with.