MLB 2024 Uniform/Logo Changes

[Sec19Row53]

16 minutes ago, Klondyke said:

Why couldn't the Guardians just use the old stylized C and old font? Their logo is awful and it's not like this branding is really hitting well with that market anyways. I still see WAY more of the old "C" logo than the new one.

Because once they finally chose to move away from the old logo, they had to make a bigger change than just the logo (Chief Wahoo). It had to be secondary logos as well, which IMO led to the name change. I think they could have changed colorway, as @tBBP said (and @SFGiants58 has advocated as well). Maybe that was a line too far for them? Is there something at the stadium that would have made that difficult?

[SFGiants58]

My thought has been that the team wanted to play the new identity super safe, so they carried over the colorway/basic uniform pattern of the old set. The problem was that the old set’s color patterning was very navy-oriented (especially on the road uniform).

[crashcarson15]

The franchise that has worn navy and red consistently for 90-plus years shouldn’t have to change their colors because a bunch of people who aren’t fans of the team think so, thank you.

[Sec19Row53]

Just now, crashcarson15 said:

The franchise that has worn navy and red consistently for 90-plus years shouldn’t have to change their colors because a bunch of people who aren’t fans of the team think so, thank you.

Agreed. I'm not saying that they have to. This was an opportunity if they chose, and as I said, changing colors seems to have been a step too far. I'm ok with that.

[SFGiants58]

I’m arguing that they should wear red accessories at home and navy accessories on the road. Also, no more road cap and red text with navy outlines on the road.

[crashcarson15]

6 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Agreed. I'm not saying that they have to. This was an opportunity if they chose, and as I said, changing colors seems to have been a step too far. I'm ok with that.

Definitely not a direct reply to you, more the direction this conversation always seems to head here given enough time.

 

For the record: the Cleveland franchise did survey fans on the color scheme when it went through the name change a few years back.

[Silent Wind of Doom]

On 10/13/2024 at 3:35 PM, MJD7 said:

I agree with that to a degree. I do miss the days, even as recent as a decade or so ago, where each team’s primary logo was its own distinct thing, and not just their cap logo.
 

I do understand why  the change has happened though: with the main places that people view logos now being in social media profile pictures and TV scoreboard tickers, you need something that is simple & discernible in small sizes. With that in mind, I can see why those simpler logos might as well become the primaries. 
 

This all ties in nicely with what has been discussed about the Twins recently (I believe in the 2025 thread). If the “busier” logos are no longer feasible as the “primaries,” I do appreciate at least having them stick around in a more “corporate” capacity.

 

Yeah.  Thanks for reminding me I gotta get started over there too.  I had to disappear for a bit but I'd been replied to so I wanted to make sure to reply to that and the backlog wasn't bad at all so I caught up.

 

I feel like this is a matter of what is best for what use like the old Detroit Ds.  On a small scorebug, cap logos work.  But there are so many applications such as on a letterhead, on walls or columns at the stadium, or when there's a full-screen graphic of the matchup that a little bit of extra heraldic heft just hits better.

 

The idea of "We want to put all our chips in one icon for our brand" makes sense from a cold marketing eye, but it cheapens the brand by replacing expressions of your identity with simple strokes.  I'd even take putting an outline on it to differentiate it.  The Padres' brown SD CONSTANTLY gets lost in graphics because people just slap it on, not to mention how their identity is two colors and they only get one so it doesn't even represent the brand well or in an interesting way.

 

 

 

[The_Admiral]

2 hours ago, Klondyke said:

Why couldn't the Guardians just use the old stylized C and old font? Their logo is awful and it's not like this branding is really hitting well with that market anyways. I still see WAY more of the old "C" logo than the new one.

 

The hexagonal concave C -- that's one modifier too many. The sides buckling inward like stressed wooden beams is not aesthetically pleasing to me, nor is cursive that somehow has hard angles everywhere. 

 

I was a fan of the block C with the rounded-off inner corners that they wore in the late '80s. I thought that was distinctive. 

[MJD7]

13 hours ago, bbush24 said:

 

They're in a weird place where 4 of their 5 uniforms are very navy heavy

 

 

But then their primary home uniform is red heavy.

 

The Twins used to have a similar issue, but probably even worse (since the home script was primarily navy & they no longer had any red-brimmed cap):

 

 

 

 

 

The red jersey felt incredibly out of place, both in their uniform set and in the team's history.

 

(Side note: I'm very thankful for the 4+1 rule).

[damnyoutuesday]

2 hours ago, MJD7 said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

God our new uniforms are such an upgrade

[Silent Wind of Doom]

10 hours ago, leopard88 said:

That might look good, but I'm still partial to the orange script. I think it has always looked great on the road greys.

 

True.  It's just a matter of a way to have the cake and eat it too.

 

As for Cleveland and Minnesota, let the two charter franchises wear the colors they wore 120 years ago.  It's not like anyone mixes them up.  But Cleveland does look good with red undershirts.  They were mixing and matching a lot it seems over the last 12 years and then went straight navy now.

[PlayGloria]

I wish Cleveland would lean into the winged G-baseball logo a bit more. I really like that for some reason. I've seen a few concepts where people have added the wing on the "G" of the Guardians script as well. Seems like it gives the uniform a little more life and ties it into the logo. 

[fouhy12]

I don't have much to say about the new Guardians branding other than that I think they did a good job all around. The new name ties into the city, is unique, and also doesn't stray too far from the previous one. I like the new "C" logo and wordmarks, and the color balance works pretty well for me. They still look like the baseball team from Cleveland, but with something new and distinctive added. 

 

I don't mind the red at home, blue on the road dichotomy. That's something you see most famously with the New York Giants, albeit in reverse. 

[VampyrRabbit]

17 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

 

The hexagonal concave C -- that's one modifier too many. The sides buckling inward like stressed wooden beams is not aesthetically pleasing to me, nor is cursive that somehow has hard angles everywhere.

Along with being the only team with a cream uniform with blue and gold trim, the Brewers should be the only ones to have a cursive script with so many acute angles.

The problem I have with the Guardians home and road scripts is that they don't give off a monumental feeling. You've got this team that are named after these huge statues, but the script doesn't reflect that. Couple them with a cap emblem that looks like it's going to have a structural failure and you have a logo set that isn't bad, just really underwhelming.

[McCall]

2 minutes ago, VampyrRabbit said:

Along with being the only team with a cream uniform with blue and gold trim, the Brewers should be the only ones to have a cursive script with so many acute angles.

The problem I have with the Guardians home and road scripts is that they don't give off a monumental feeling. You've got this team that are named after these huge statues, but the script doesn't reflect that. Couple them with a cap emblem that looks like it's going to have a structural failure and you have a logo set that isn't bad, just really underwhelming.

The Brewers feature ONE jersey, a road alternate, with a script with acute angles. The Guardians have it on two jerseys, including their primary home uniforms and calls back at least somewhat to an era of their past identities, whereas the Brewers have never featured anything like this before.

 

Your verdict is rather flawed.

[VampyrRabbit]

41 minutes ago, McCall said:

The Brewers feature ONE jersey, a road alternate, with a script with acute angles. The Guardians have it on two jerseys, including their primary home uniforms and calls back at least somewhat to an era of their past identities, whereas the Brewers have never featured anything like this before.

 

Your verdict is rather flawed.

The Indians never had a script with anything like the number of acute angles that the new Guardians home script has, the Indians had scripts that were mostly curvy, while the Guardians is almost all acute angles.  Apart from a tail and the angle of the script on the jerseys, it looks pretty different to the scripts that the Indians had.

The Milwaukee script was partly inspired by the Milwaukee power tool company logo, and came out two years before the renaming of the Indians.

Personally, I think the Brewers power tool style script is a lot nicer and fits in with their brand a lot better than the Guardians home script does for Cleveland, and that I would like to see a new script/wordmark for the Guardians home.

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, VampyrRabbit said:

The problem I have with the Guardians home and road scripts is that they don't give off a monumental feeling. You've got this team that are named after these huge statues, but the script doesn't reflect that. Couple them with a cap emblem that looks like it's going to have a structural failure and you have a logo set that isn't bad, just really underwhelming.

 

The whole point of the Cleveland Guardians rebrand (good thing they stole it from @SFGiants58) was to come as close to the Cleveland Indians as they could while still making enough changes to justify buying all the new merchandise. They probably didn't want to get rid of the Indians script that had been serving them well for almost 30 years, so they kinda kept it but just gave it all these weird hard edges to make it look more unnatural than it already did. It's new, it's different, but not, so don't get too mad at us. 

 

Half-measures, they'll get you every time. I didn't want a whole Art Deco concept for the Tribe but at least it would have been thought out from top to bottom.

[SFGiants58]

10 minutes ago, The_Admiral said:

 

the Cleveland Guardians rebrand (good thing they stole it from @SFGiants58)

Hey, I was hardly the first person to come up with that name for them. But I’m glad they picked a name as good as that.
 

I did go way more into Art Deco for them/ripping off that old Senators black third: 

 

Well, Deco + flared serifs. I thought it’d be better to cut more ties from the old brand, but it’s entirely understandable why Cleveland played things relatively safe.

[McCall]

2 hours ago, VampyrRabbit said:

The Indians never had a script with anything like the number of acute angles that the new Guardians home script has, the Indians had scripts that were mostly curvy, while the Guardians is almost all acute angles.  Apart from a tail and the angle of the script on the jerseys, it looks pretty different to the scripts that the Indians had.

The Milwaukee script was partly inspired by the Milwaukee power tool company logo, and came out two years before the renaming of the Indians.

Personally, I think the Brewers power tool style script is a lot nicer and fits in with their brand a lot better than the Guardians home script does for Cleveland, and that I would like to see a new script/wordmark for the Guardians home.

The Guardians wordmark is a combination of the classic script and the past marks like the one below. The Brewers happening to copy a power tool company a couple years earlier does not give them "ownership" of the style.

[The_Admiral]

I don't think the Guardians script is in any way meant to recall the Camp Anawanna logo. If it is, they've had the good sense never to say so.