Philadelphia Phillies concept

[VitaminD]

Somewhere along the line in this thread on color combos we'd like to see, ProvidenceRI raised a point that got my interest.

I feel that every city should adopt a color set, and have the major sports teams use these colors.

While it would be a logistical nightmare to assign every city in the country its own set of civic colors unique enough that those colors alone could identify if a sports team was of a given city, and would mean dozens of teams giving up storied histories and associations to certain colors, the teams in the city of Pittsburgh pulled off the feat, beginning with the Pirates' conversion to black and gold in 1948.

That said, I took a stab at doing such a feat in another city. Using the colors of the Philadelphia flag:

I overhauled the Phillies' uniforms. A couple words about this...

1. No pinstripes - the thin red ones come off as pink; you can imagine what sky blue or gold pinstripes would look like. ! Besides, it was time for a change.

2. Yes, I know it looks like UCLA. Played the hand I was dealt.

3. No alternates - not only because I don't like them, but my choices weren't so great. I guess sky blue could work, but athletic gold alts aren't happening in this concept.

4. I realize there are some discrepancies between outlining on the home and road set. I tried a gold outline on the numbers of the home whites, and it wasn't visible. So it's out. And for what it's worth, on the roads the gold and sky blue look like green from far away. Hopefully that's a monitor issue and would look different in real life.

5. Striped socks are a must. Pants will be worn high.

6. Black belts... and black shoes. Again, the choices I had were dismal (sky blue or gold shoes aren't happening).

7. The sleeve striping is intentionally thicker than normal piping, and meant to reflect the city flag.

All that said, have at it folks! C&C appreciated.

[Coast2CoastAM2006]

I wonder what the Flyers, 76ers and Eagles would look like in this concept

[snetsrak43]

I may have to try Chicago, using their flag colors

For the Cubs not much would change. The other teams would.

[leopard88]

Not bad at all. Quick question -- since you kept the P in the current font, why did you use a basic block font for the "Philadelphia" on the road set?

[eRay]

those dont look too bad, but if this color concept was done for every city wouldnt the cubs and white sox look similar? same with the yanks and mets?

[leopard88]

those dont look too bad, but if this color concept was done for every city wouldnt the cubs and white sox look similar? same with the yanks and mets?

That is one of the many problems with the idea of standardizing city colors (which VitaminD points out -- "logistical nightmare" was the phrase used). You also get into issues about which teams change and what to do in cases where colors just aren't appropriate (do the Reds wear black and orange or do the Bengals wear red?).

[BallWonk]

Not bad (and it would have the added bonus of ceding the "mostly red" niche to the Nats in the NL East).

My attempts at constructive criticism: Thicker-than-normal blue, yellow, and blue sleeve piping makes this look like a faded Brewers jersey. What about running even thicker piping down the shoulder from the collar to the sleeve edge, as the Phillies did with their classic powder blue unis back when they actually looked good? The same thick piping could run down the pants, too.

Second, the cap is coming up a little dry for me. What about a yellow P with a white outline? Even more radical, why not take the dark brown from the city coat of arms and add that to the mix so that you have one dark color and two light ones instead of two light colors? Then you could have a yellow P with a brown outline on a blue cap, and you'd have much better contrast and visibility.

[sc49erfan15]

Solid concept, if the "city color" thing were to be implemented, this is something close to what they should wear.

I agree with BW, I'd like to see the same piping on the collar and down the pants. Maybe a gold bill on the cap, too? I love the sock stripes, but it would be ultra-sweet if they matched the piping with white-blue-gold-blue-white striping.

Most of that's nitpicky though, good work!

[Moser316]

I like where you're going with this, especially considering the color palette you had to work with. I would like to see the striping continue on the pants, and another attempt at yellow trim for the home numbers (for :censored:s and giggles, if nothing else). I might also try a yellow cap logo trimmed in white, because I'm not really digging either logo choice.

Otherwise, nice work...

[Shumway]

Like Leopard said, I'm not sure of the font for the road jersey. I'd love to see a script in there, to keep the Phillies' tradition. I like the overall design of the uniforms. I love the striped stirrups for the socks.

With the colors you had to work with, it looks pretty good. It doesn't look "right" to me, just because there's no red, but for the project at hand, great work.

[oddball]

Philadelphia in blue and yellow. The first thing I think of is the Boston Braves when they went to blue and yellow. Then again, didn't Philadelphia go to blue before and weren't they called the Blue Jays once? Nice idea. Would work for UCLA.

[BBTV]

Same c/c I posted for the other Phillies concept floating around here.

The current "P" logo just doesn't work well as a chest logo. The reason for this is the "tail" on the top left of the P (not sure if that would be considered a serif, or just decoration.) It effectively "shrinks" the P in half width-wise. I think if you take the swirl P for example, the entire "patch" is a P (the very left edge of the patch is the very left of the P.) With this one, the vertical staff (for lack of a better term) is actually in the middle of the patch, which just makes it look awkward to me.

Also, I'm not digging the Cubs numbers. If you are going to this type of look, I'd rather see the oversized block numbers they used back in the Ashburn / Roberts days.

The idea of standardizing city team colors is a good one. I've though about it too, but it's too tough to pick a scheme. Using the city flag is a pretty objective way of deciding it, but our flag just sucks. Honestly, I always thought Phila's colors were dark-royal / yellow (think Frankford Yellowjackets) until CBP opened and I saw that they put the UCLA flag (sans crest) in the outfield.

[VitaminD]

Thanks all.

C2CAM - I stopped at the Phillies because I felt extrapolating this to the other teams in the city would get monotonous. There's not much to do to the Eagles or Flyers' uniforms (that is, the wings on the helmets stay and other than their font, the Eagles don't have a lot of distinctive elements - so you'd have a standard-issue football uni in powder blue and gold; the Flyers would keep the Flying P, and also have very little to distinguish themselves... besides wearing orange and black), so I didn't. The only other team I considered was the 76ers, and having a team named for the year of the American Revolution in something other than red, white and blue felt funny, even moreso than seeing the Phillies in these colors.

Leopard - I went with block letters on the fronts because a script "Philadelphia" can be difficult to read. Shoehorning that many letters, with connectors, onto the front of a jersey sacrifices legibility. Also, the only time in history the Phillies wore anything besides "Phillies" script or a "P" (swirly, block, Old English) was at the turn of the last century, when they wore block "PHILA." on their jerseys. And I have always HATED "PHILA." on sports uniforms. So I opted for the block letters. I was also trying to get away from the script and see what else I could do.

BallWonk - a couple of great suggestions. I thought about the "racing stripes" from the collar to the sleeve hem, but I was never crazy about them when the Phillies had them, so that's a boyhood preference showing up here. As for the cap, adding a white outline didn't accomplish much. If I were trying to sell this, I'd probably just go with the gold "P" for home and road instead of copying the Tigers' cap designs. The dark brown is interesting and unique, but Philadelphia's flag is often flown without the crest, leaving the powder blue and gold as the principal "Philadelphia colors", were this convention to be adopted. And the color on the crest that draws my eye is the purple of the dresss more than the brown, but I wouldn't add purple to this mix.

49erfan - A gold bill could actually work, now that you mention it. Usually I'm not a fan of light colored bills, but since the rest of the cap is a light color, I guess gold isn't a bad idea. And the sock stripes can be fixed, when I get time to revise this.

Moser - I was thinking about modifying the numbers with San Diego Chargers' style outlining - number, light outline, 2nd outline in the same color as the number. That would sharpen up the gold since it wouldn't be directly against the white. I may put the stripes on the pants, but I made them so thick I didn't want them to look like football pants (especially since I will mandate the cuffs be worn high to show off my striped socks!).

Shum - I know what you mean about the lack of red. But I've been hoping the Phillies would bring back more blue into their look. Their 1948 caps are still my favorites, and they tried the royal caps until the players voted them down (they lost every time they wore them, IIRC). Granted, it isn't royal, but it's a start.

BBTV - I agree that the current "P" probably isn't the best choice. But considering I trashed most of what they have now - pink pinstripes, red/white/royal scheme, goofy numbers, script wordmark home and road - I needed some tangible link to the team's identity, and I tried the "P". The alternative was the "P" inside a gold Liberty Bell, which I thought looked worse.

BTW, they're not Cubs numbers. It's Forgotten Futurist with modified "1"s, because I the USC/Chicago Blackhawk-style "1"s with the perpendicular upper serif, more than could be rational. If I could have found a decent mockup of the Whiz Kids comically-oversized numbers, they'd be there. (Paging eriqjaffe...)

Thanks again to all - there are some great ideas I'd like to work into this, hopefully before next week.

[VitaminD]

Thanks again to everyone for their suggestions. As you'll see below, I was able to incorporate many of them into the 2nd edition. I tried out each suggestion, and kept those that I thought improved the look.

Changes:

CAP - dumped the white "P"; made gold "P" the logo for both; added double outline of sky blue/white to gold "P" (white immediately adjacent to gold didn't show up); gold brim for road cap (which could become alt cap, and use the home cap for home and road).

JERSEY - changed number font to something as close as I could render by hand to the "Whiz Kids" style of the 1950s and 1960s - including the fact that the numbers are comically oversized on the backs (I did keep player names on the back, while the uniforms that I drew from had no player names, home and road, and also had no small number on the fronts); added thicker gold outline, which shows up better now; tried adding city crest as shoulder patch, but it was too intricate for a sleeve patch and most of the detail was lost.

[sIDENOTE... In the course of researching this, it should be noted that during the late '40s, the Phillies used the "USC-style" numeral "1" on their uniforms as I had used on the first go-round (along with my favorite Phillies cap of all time, blue with a red brim), and they changed to the "stick 1" when they went to the "Whiz Kids" uniforms.]

PANTS - added thick blue/gold/blue triple stripe down pant legs; tried to decorate belt loops, but was unhappy with ther results.

STIRRUPS - no changes; tried some other stripe patterns, none of which looked better in spite of the seeming incongruity between sleeve/pants stripes and stirrup stripes.

Without further ado, here's what I came up with:

C&C is welcomed and appreciated, as always...

[uniguy22]

I really like this update. I did like your other number font better, but everything else looks great.

[BBTV]

While I'm not a fan of the "slanted 2", I do think that this more basic style of number works better for this concept. Especially since there is a number on the front (I don't like stylized wordmarks or logos with stylized numbers on the same side of a jersey.)

Have you thought of going to the old English style P from the early 1900s? The one they used on the white cap? I think with this color scheme, it may really work well (and yes, there will be people screaming Tigers ripoff, but we have a claim to it too.)

The road cap should be plain blue, no yellow brim. It is just too bright to go with a grey road uniform. If you really want to use that cap, just flip home and road and it's fine.

[Claystation360]

NYC's Colors are orange & Blue so the Mets have that covered , even if they are colors of the Giants & Dodgers .

[zig]

Those jerseys look nice and i feel the colors do really go together. Like someone said earlier i would be interested to see a Flyers concept in the same colors

[patsox]

What posessed this to come back from the dead??