A Ray of Hope: The Tampa Bay Baseball Overhaul

[IceCap]

Technically Florida's climate/weather is considered "sub-tropical"

[jgiff17]

are we really looking this deep into the names of teams now days?! i mean come on look around the country most of the nicknames make no since...so if they want to call themselves the tampa melons who cares as long as the unis are nice and the team is good people will get behind it...by the way all the concepts are great and i seem to really like the gulf coast tropics. (gruden runs the GULF COAST OFFENSE by the way and he resides in tampa last i saw! )

[BallWonk]

I really like your color scheme, and the name, but that cap logo is really tough to decipher at first, and "Gulf Coast," though technically accurate, is semantically wrong as most people associate the "gulf coast" with New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, that neck of the woods to the north. I see "Gulf Coast Tropics" and I'm picturing Gulf Shores, Alabama, not Tampa Bay. I've never bought into the theory that a vague location makes a team more appealing, because most people understand that teams are named after the city in which they reside. So maybe Tampa Bay Tropics? St. Petersburg Tropics?

I'd have stuck with "Tampa Bay" except that we've recently seen on these boards the best "TB" cap logo that is humanly possible. I can't compete with perfection, so "GC" it is. They're on the Gulf coast, and they're the only big-league team on that whole stretch of economically and demographically growing coast. Unless you count Houston, which I think is more of a Texas team than a regional Gulf team. There's a big market to be tapped. Which is why, contrary to my own personal preferences, I left the team name on the road unis. I think that the team, in order to prosper, needs to try to develop a wider regional following, sort of like how the Braves are the default team for a large swath of the South.

I'm not a big believer in the theory that the cap logo has to be easy for someone who's never seen it before to decipher. What matters is whether it's attractive and distinctive. Color and shape count more for my judgment of a cap than penmanship.

And "Tropics" isn't a geological assertion. They play in Tropicana Field, for heaven's sake. There's a culturally tropical vibe down along the whole Gulf coast. I mean, gosh, it's not like there are any penguins in Pittsburgh, or pirates for that matter.

[TBGKon]

That Tropics concept is great, I'm not too sold on the name though, maybe call them the Parrots

[IceCap]

How about Golf Coast Sharks? The colour scheme is great, just replace the pariot with a shark in the primary logo.

[NDwas]

Just a reminder:

Contest ends: March 5, 2006 11:59 PM

[Survival79]

There's a culturally tropical vibe down along the whole Gulf coast.

Not to flame, but have you ever been to the Gulf Coast? Particularly the Florida Panhandle?

Look, I really like your concept, I just don't think it would work in Tampa Bay. I've heard the "well, there are no bears or bulls in Chicago..." arguement, but you have to remember this is a team that already has a nickname that most fans don't associate with the area. The last thing the team wants is for fans to say "we don't even live in the Tropics!"

[BallWonk]

There's a culturally tropical vibe down along the whole Gulf coast.

Not to flame, but have you ever been to the Gulf Coast? Particularly the Florida Panhandle?

Look, I really like your concept, I just don't think it would work in Tampa Bay. I've heard the "well, there are no bears or bulls in Chicago..." arguement, but you have to remember this is a team that already has a nickname that most fans don't associate with the area. The last thing the team wants is for fans to say "we don't even live in the Tropics!"

Not having lived in Tampa, I can't speak to what locals think about it, I guess. But lots of stuff in that part of Florida is called "tropical." Businesses, residential developments, and so forth. But maybe that's only a facade that the Tampa area puts on for the tourists, and when we leave y'all are like, "Heh, silly Northerners, thinking this is tropical. Why, don't they know Florida is practically a subarctic tundra?" Plus, there are palm trees. Palm trees = tropical, at least to people who live in climates without palm trees.

Say, by way of distracting people from the apparently offensive name "Tropics" (who knew?), what about the "Tampa Bay Typhoons" concept? They're only "typhoons" if they're in the Pacific Ocean! There has, by definition, never been a typhoon in Tampa Bay, and there never will be. Someone alert the name police!

[BigShoop]

HERE IS MY ENTRY FOR THE "TAMPA BAY CRUSADERS". ENJOY!

That has a real "Royals feel" with Padres colors, but overall, I like it.

[KeeperEUSC]

But seeing as Crusaders are religious warriors, I find it hard to see how they fit into the Tampa scheme.

[snetsrak43]

[therocheapproach]

You'll have to go back to the 3rd page or so to see the original. I changed the "Rays" logo so that the ray tail wasn't cutting off the bottom of the letters as much, and put a more modern touch on the entire logo design - I offset the circle graphic on top to resemble a wave with a baseball in the pipe. The most noticable change are the colors. Yes it's the same as the Miami Heat, but no MLB team has this color combo (Houston is close, but not the same). Let me know which version you prefer.

[ltravisjr]

What the heck, it wasn't what I envisioned, but I just don't have much time these days. Presenting the St. Petersburg Sails:

LT

[The_Admiral]

Hey, that's really, really good.

[TwoRsAndTwoLs]

Had a feeling there'd be a rush of concepts late. My problem is that I don't really have a lot more ideas as to what to do with mine (except maybe make it bigger so that you guys can see it better).

That said, Roche, I like what you've done with the Rays design.

DblDown, aside from BigShoop's comments, the wordmark looks kinda "Rockies" to me.

[BallWonk]

I feel a little funny commenting after having entered my own design, but here goes.

First off, your TB logo remains not just the best TB logo that's humanly possible, but one of the handful of best intertwined-letter cap logos I've ever seen. It's insanely good, and until the team adopts your logo it will by definition have a second-rate logo.

You've also got a nice wordmark with that "Rays" thing, and the ray itself is nicely done. I admit, as grand as your TB logo is, I'd almost rather see your "Rays" wordmark on the home uni.

That said, I see your current line of design as a huge step backwards from the designs you presented some weeks ago in your original thread. Redskins colors? Huh? And though I see where you're going with the ball-in-the-wave thing, it's a wave of red so dark as to be bloody. That's just macabre. I don't know whether manta rays have maroon or dark red flesh -- I always thought they were black, but it's not like I've ever been closer to one than the pages of National Geographic -- but even granting that there's something ray-like about the maroon, you've limited yourself to just the fishy reading of the name. The great thing about the direction you were going before was that the team continue to use the manta ray as part of its identity -- mascots, graphic bugs, scoreboard imagery, and so forth -- while also incorporating the more "sunny" connotation of the name "Rays."

My critique is mainly about color. I just don't see the colors you've chosen working with the identity you're trying to create, at least not after seeing several different versions of your work with various other color combinations that were some of the best sports-team designs of any kind I've ever seen. These Redskins colors just seem to be to be working against the rest of the work in your concept. There's something about these colors and your concept that make me think of the Celtics switching to orange.

[steiny_ramone]

I don't think I have ever worked so hard on a concept before. I just discoverd this thread a few days ago so I had to work quickly to put something together. Anyway, here is my concept, the Tampa Bay Captains. The primary logo doesn't actually appear in the set (a la the yankees uncle sam logo) so the wordmark is used on the home and road jerseys. The wavy wordmark and nameplate represents, well, waves. C+C please, and I guess vote for it too please.

PS: the primary logo is the wheel from the Seattle Pilots logo

[1stDownCreative]

i actually live in orlando, and go to tampa and the clearwater area all the time.

what do i think of when i hear tropics?

sand, palm trees, hot with a breeze. all in tampa.

[therocheapproach]

Ball Wonk-

Thanks for the Crit. I have been going through color combos left and right and can't come to one I like yet. Your absolutely right about the colors not fitting the direction of the logos. I think I had it right with the navy, lime and beige.

[PhilaLogos]

You'll have to go back to the 3rd page or so to see the original. I changed the "Rays" logo so that the ray tail wasn't cutting off the bottom of the letters as much, and put a more modern touch on the entire logo design - I offset the circle graphic on top to resemble a wave with a baseball in the pipe. The most noticable change are the colors. Yes it's the same as the Miami Heat, but no MLB team has this color combo (Houston is close, but not the same). Let me know which version you prefer.

That is a sick concept, but really, ditch the color scheme and go back to the blue/lime. The other scheme not only fit the name (devil rays, aqua sort of colors) but the teams status as a modern expansion team. This color scheme is too plain and boring for the Rays, and I think if you tried the other one it would be a 10/10.