Raysox's States Baseball League 33/52 (DE, PA, IA)

[BurdBranding]

I still get overwhelming Rockies vibes from Colorado. I'll go further and say your concept is a better option for the Rockies than their current, but that doesn't seem to be your goal for this project. You mentioned a "purple mountain majesty" theme, maybe there's room for more than one purple? I think leaning harder into that inspiration with a lavender (similar to K-State's basketball alt) instead of green would truly separate your look from the Rockies all while sticking to your original approach. A google image search of "purple mountain majesty" would support my case. 

 

[ramsjetsthunder]

This whole thing is awesome. Is the template you're using custom?

[raysox]

Hello! Sorry I took a break. Had a week that I didn't really do much designing on this and was working on a different personal project. I want to keep chugging a long though. Even if this lost a little steam, I still have a few in the can for you all. I will take a look at editing the Texas and Hawaii ones to your suggestions too.

But moving on, this might be my favorite trio so far to share.

13/52 Michigan
I went in thinking "oh definitely a car themed one with Lions colors" but some Michigander friends made some suggestions. One I really liked was a forest green, cyan, and hunter orange color scheme. That would stand out very well in this. The logo is modeled after a chrome hood ornament, but to represent the whole state, I wanted to mimic a waterfall on the subtle use of gradient. The uniform is pretty simple and matches the Tigers, but I decided to only stylize the M so it stands out more. Not sure the inspiration but I think it looks really cool like this.

 

14/52 Virginia
This one might be the fastest from initial suggestion to finished concept there is. A friend from Virginia did a write up, but ended on the slogan "Virginia is for Lovers". It's an iconic slogan, and the V for Virignia would be the perfect spot to nestle in a heart.


15/52 Arizona
My go to for Arizona is always turquoise, copper, and black. This thinking goes back for nearly 15 years. But since I would also be making a different southwestern state that heavily features the color, I decided to go for the desert landscape looking garnet, sand, and orange. High on my priority was using native American style patterns on here, and made one that matched the angle of the A. The pattern worked well for a sleeve stripe too. 
 

[coco1997]

Glad to see this series back!

I love all three of these, but my favorite has to be Virginia. The heart within the "V" is super clever and the whole design feels very Major League-caliber. 

[MJD7]

You already know I love this idea, but I’ve been meaning to give more in-depth feedback on all the teams as I can since Twitter isn’t quite as conducive to that, so here it is:

• Florida: I said as much on Twitter, but I really feel like a Tennessee shade of orange (I know, ironic) would fit better for them. The highway inspiration is interesting, but if I’m not mistaken, don’t most states have green & yellow highway signs? I live in Florida as well so I honestly can’t remember. Meanwhile though, oranges are uniquely and quintessentially Florida, to where they even appear on the license plates (which maybe you could take inspiration from as opposed to the highway signs). I don’t know, that’s just my 2¢.
• Tennessee: Love it. I think a white front panel might work best for the home cap, but that might get you too much into Vols territory. Each of the options you presented look great, though.
• California: Looks great! Not much to say beyond that I like the unique color scheme combined with the traditional aesthetic.
• Utah: The logo & wordmark are both genius, especially the subtlety of the “U.” I would love to see a color scheme closer to the Jazz red rocks City jersey, though.
• Nevada: Similar to Utah, I love the cap state hidden in the logo.
• Georgia: One of my favorites of the series for sure, The inclusion of peach is a natural decision but looks gorgeous.
• Indiana: Love the checker-stripe pattern!
• Minnesota: You did my family’s home state proud! I love the color scheme, wordmarks, cap logo, striping, it all flows together beautifully.
• New York: A classic look for a classic state. I particularly dig the vertical sleeve stripes.
• Colorado: I like the color scheme, but there seems to be a disconnection between the cap logo & the wordmark. Personally, I prefer the wordmark, I’d be curious if you could create a cap logo based off of that.
• Texas: I know the wordmark is supposed to say “Texas,” but it’s difficult to read it that way because of the different colors. I know you want to avoid deriving too much inspiration from college teams, but I feel like Longhorns burnt orange would work great in some capacity for Texas, maybe.
• Hawaii: Love the colors & wordmarks!
• Michigan: Similarly, I dig the color scheme & font.
• Virginia: The “V-heart” logo is great, I wonder if the red could drift more towards pink for some extra uniqueness?
• Arizona: Perfect. Just perfect.

Sorry, I know that was a lot, but I wanted to be sure to catch up with all the teams so far. I’ll try to keep up more regularly from now on! Can’t wait to see the rest!

[raysox]

16 hours ago, MJD7 said:

You already know I love this idea, but I’ve been meaning to give more in-depth feedback on all the teams as I can since Twitter isn’t quite as conducive to that, so here it is:

Thank you so much for your feedback! Your WBC series and @Victormrey's series heavily inspired me to make this. I think in the case of Florida, I had done green and orange for many versions of a Florida themed team. I think wanting to do something different and clean was a big influence for the green/yellow look. I may circle back and do some alternates and that's definitely something i'll consider.

I have a few in the tank but i'll go ahead and post revisions.
 

Hawaii, good suggestion for the triangle pattern. I think I felt like it was too obvious but it looks good none-the-less.

 

Texas, fair points about breaking the horns from the vertical section. I got rid of the border and made the shading show the break between the horns and letter.

[chestnutz]

Perfect adjustments to Hawaii and Texas, those are both elevated to A+ in my mind. Really loving AZ and VA too, those color palettes are just freakin peachy (just obsessed with that pinkish hue on the red)

[raysox]

Louisiana 16/52
Something i'm conscious of is just having 52 letter logos, I want to incorporate more iconography if it represents the state as a whole (there's more to Washington than the Space Needle, ya know?). One easy way to do this is state animals. I wanted to do a Pelican for Louisiana, and playing with some fonts, I had the idea to tuck one in to the negative space of the L. Drew a lined version of the bird to match the font, and put fleur de lis to dot the I's on the full thing.

(This might end up being my favorite look in the whole series)

Arkansas 17/52
Arkansas doesn't have an insane amount to work with, like many states. But it does have a very nice flag. The flag is a wide diamond on red with plenty of stars. I felt like it could lean itself to a baseball identity pretty well. I used Clarendon and basically stole the AFC logo and put it on a diamond. Kept everything simple and clean. I also took a cue from the Angels city connect with a front number in a diamond.

 

Maryland 18/52
Guess what I did for Maryland.

You'll never guess.

 

it's so innovative.

 

Hope you like the Maryland flag! I mean, how could I not? In something that UM might wear, I took inspiration from a different UM. The University of Miami uses an old english M. Maryland's name comes from British Royalty, so I figured I could use my one old English font choice here.

 

For any map heads out there, I've been tracking these all in my files. I did have to remove some so I wouldn't spoil this thread's canon, but I can say we're officially sea to shining sea. 

[Shumway]

That Louisiana hat

[thesieve22]

Love this series, great work as always. For Maryland, what if you switched the underline on the jersey so red is on the right, black/yellow on the left, representing how their flag is opposite corners?

[sky1324]

That Louisiana set is probably my favorite in the whole show so far. Beautiful work, as always!

[PlayGloria]

2 hours ago, Shumway said:

That Louisiana hat

 

Agreed. I want it 

[AdobeDesignBG]

On 4/8/2023 at 9:17 AM, raysox said:

Out of the Park baseball is a powerful baseball management game, but I treat it more like an open world video game because I can't be normal and just have a vanilla save. During the World Baseball Classic, I set up a league where teams are based in countries, and can only hire players that are of the same nationality. The United States, Japan, Cuba all dominated - i'm sure you can imagine.

A few months ago, I saw someone on the dedicated subreddit post about setting up the same thing for US States. I've never done this, but I knew the concept worked. I just didn't want to manually fix the rosters. I did some research and figured out how to express fix the process and behold - the States League was born.
 

The team names and randomly assigned logos on OOTP are just awful. As a logo designer, I couldn't let this stay the case. As a crazy person, I went ahead and started making logos for teams to use in game. Each team will have a single set of jerseys and caps, since in game, they only preview the home uniforms and it's a little less work since it's a superficial mod. Thank you @MJD7 for the template!

FLORIDA 1/52

As a Floridian, I wanted to start here. Usually, my go to is deep green and orange, like the Miami Hurricanes. But I caught some inspiration driving around and really loved the green and yellow on our highway signs. They seemed bright, tropical, and iconic. I found a script font with a unique F, and crossed it off. 

 

TENNESSEE 2/52

This was the first team I thought of a logo for. One thing I didn't want to do is the easy route and simply match the colors for the most popular team in the state. Tennessee gives me orange vibes, unfortunately. But I wanted to bring in a lot of light blue. The logo is a T, made from the state shape, using the font Moonshiner, which is a play on the history of the state.

 

CALIFORNIA 3/52

California is by far the best team in this save. I don't need to sim to see that. I went classic for them, with inspiration from the flag. Red and brown is one of the most underrated color schemes, so I used red heavy, with two tone brown for the bear in the middle of a C. the uniforms are off white, and use a simple piping. Nothing too crazy. A few California people on twitter told me that royal blue and yellow would work better, but I politely disagreed since there are a billion blue and yellow teams in this. Also, going back to the team color thing, they'd look like Cal with the logo set i'd make.

 

Would love to hear what you think! I have 13 done and this thread will make me finish it all.

What hat template is this?

[chestnutz]

Echoing others, that LA set is a thang o beauty

[coco1997]

Louisiana - That cap is a thing of beauty! The fleur-de-lis are the cherry on top. I'd kind of like to see TV numbers in the same split style as the script. 

Arkansas - Great cap logo! Clarendon numbers work really well here, and the diamond around them is a nice touch. 
 

Maryland - Love the gothic lettering and the contrasting sleeves. I'm wondering if a white front paneled cap would help balance things a bit since there's so much white on the jersey but none on the cap. 

Also, thanks for adding the map in your latest post. It's nice being able to see which teams you've completed and which we still have to look forward to (and forces me to remember my U.S. geography). 

[raysox]

Thanks everyone! Gonna move along here and maybe look into updating Maryland

New Jersey 19/52
The fighting Mike Trouts have the same problem as the Angels. Top heavy with superstars and then some guys. I opened my twitter thread to suggestions and one I saw a few times was old navy and buff gold. I was inspired by looking at Georgia Tech baseball uniforms and their nice script with their move away from Russell Athletic. I put Jersey on the front too, so save me your "hat" jokes because I made a NJ monogram that fit together.


Ohio 20/52

I really was unsure what I wanted to do for this one, but it needed to be good since it's one of the remaining big states. I enjoy the iconic Ohio flag and thought to put it flying through an O for the cap. Then from there I mimicked the 1980s Cleveland racing stripe uniforms on a pullover.

 

New Mexico 21/32
For Arizona, I referenced how I always want to do turquoise for them but could use it for another state. I found this inline font I like and really liked it for New Mexico, and from there I arched the script and put the sun from their flag on the front to take inspiration from the Blue Jays. I added a little serif action to the cap logo just to add definition to the interlocking letters. The inline helped me show the shape of the letters too, because it did get a little muddy where they come together.

 

The next 3 have two of my favorite cap logos in this whole thing, fair warning!

[SpenserRM]

The LA hat and NM uniforms are just phenomenal. 

[jaytavo305]

The last batch was excellent, being from Jersey myself I was looking forward to that. I imagined a red and black scheme, or even red and green, I know it's obvious with the Devils but I think it really works for NJ. That being said now that I see that blue and gold it totally works just as well, I feel like it represents the state pretty accurately. Love the other two as well, cant miss with either one. 

[GriffinM6]

Knocked it out of the park recently! I especially love Louisiana and New Mexico. 

 

One idea for New Jersey, and it's that I think you could fit an outline of the state into some negative space between the two letters. I know you've done similar for other states, but I think it would be quite clever for NJ. 

[TheGiantsFan]

I LOVE these concepts, and there are so many clever designs in there (Louisiana is such a beauty)

 

Somehow I'm not sold on the New Mexico cap, though; the monogram just looks a little clunky to me . May I suggest just going with the Zia symbol on the cap instead of the monogram? If you really wanted to, you can also try tweaking the jersey colors to match New Mexico's turquoise license plates

 

Well done, my friend!