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What is "modernization"


Hat Boy

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People seem to love the new Sharks logo. One of the big compliments is that it is a great "modernization" of their previous logo. As a non-artist, I don't understand the technical aspects of it all, but it seems that modernizing a team's identity means making it more "cartoony" (See Dolphins or Sharks) or making it more streamlined with implied forward motion (see Falcons, Patriots, Seahawks, Sabres)

Modernizing a wordmark only seems to mean adding seriffs (Falcons, Bengals, Seahawks, Sabres).

I think teams should not worry about what is "old" or "modern," but just with what looks good. I think the Colts' horseshoe looks fine without dropshadows attempting to draw it so it looks cybernetic.

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It depends on the logo the teams use. Sometimes simple is fine. Somethimes the logo needs to be 'tweaked' or 'cleaned up'.

For your examples

Miami: Too many white lines in the dolphin make it very astetically unpleasing and the dolphin looks very constipated.

San Jose: the shark shape and face makes it very unintimidating and there are 4 to 5 outline colors around the traingle. Too much.

Seattle: Nicer color combo, and agressive look looks better for a football team.

Colts: Simple and clean.

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Both of the examples you show are perfect examples of good "modernization." In each case, the logo had come to look dated. The public's taste changes over time, and it's the rare logo that can weather shifting public tastes indefinitely without seeming left behind. (The Yankees' Tiffany NY logo is a perfect example of a logo that has stood the test of time without coming to look like a quaint artifact of an older age. It always looks somewhat dated, but it never looks specifically dated to a particular time.) Both the older Dolphins logo and the older Seahawks logo look specifically dated. Not bad -- good designs don't become bad designs just because they get old -- but you can tell by looking at them almost to the month when they were created, and both feature design elements that have been largely abandoned in contemporary design. Sort of like how a 20 year old car may be perfectly functional and even attractive, but it will still look slightly out of place on the street, where the average car is only 5 years old. An '89 Crown Vic may be pleasing to the eye, but when one rolls by it's impossible not to notice how out-of-date its design is.

Take the Seahawks' perfectly fine previous logo. It has a level of formal abstraction -- the way it just stops on the left, as though it continues off to the left forever and we're just seeing the right-hand end of it, and the way the eye is sort of imposed on the rest of the head and looks out to the viewer, not forward in the direction of the rest of the logo -- that has fallen out of style. It was a bold and aggressive look when it was adopted, but now tastes and standards have changed. Icons that seem self-contained are seen as communicating strength and power, so the new Seahawks logo now has a start and a finish, as if you're seeing the whole thing and not just the head. The eye is just as abstract as before, but now it's more of a realistic depiction of how the eye of a totem figure might be carved. Again, that sense of resemblance to a physically plausible object, a sort of abstract sculptural realism, has come to signify a certain aspect of strength and solidity much more than the design elements that went into the original logo do.

A good logo modernization takes the elements of the previous logo and translates them so that they communicate the same things about the team identity to fans that the older logo did when it was more current.

As for fonts, the serif thing is a bit of an illusion. It's not that serifs are hot, it's that we're coming out of a long post-WWII period in which a whole loose affiliation of sans-serif fonts based around Helvetica have been the dominant letterforms for all sorts of publicly visible uses. As the Helvetica consensus continues to dissipate, you're just going to see more serifs. Maybe in 20 years we'll be able to look back and say, "Oh, in the years around 2000 this serif font was becoming dominant," and by then every display font will have serifs. But for now it's really more of a thing of designers setting aside a certain sans-serif aesthetic in favor of something else, and when you want to avoid sans-serif fonts you wind up using a lot of serifs. 50, 60 years ago the exact same thing was happening, but in reverse.

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What I have found lately is that alot of teams will try to modernize their logos but they will leave out the factors of previous identities. (see the buffalo sabres, new york islanders and vancouver canucks) I think that if you are going to modernize your logo it has to become better than what you have had before. Alot of times the older logos are just tweaked and everything is ok. Then there are the teams who go overboard and COMPLETELY redo everything. The hardly ever works...in fact I can only think of the the Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Mavericks, and Phoenix Coyotes who have done that successfully. Anyway...in answer to your question. modernization is when a team updates their logo making it better than what they had before. So in that case...the sabres have never moderized their logos.

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I think one of the best examples of modernizations is the 49ers. They dropped khacki gold for a shiny one, gray masks for red, outlined the numbers, and updated the helmet logo.

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Best modernization ever, according to my completly biased opinion:

ArizonaCardinals_HS_Compare.gif

Agreed. i have all the mini helmets in my bar room and for some reason Arizona is my favorite. Maybe a red stripe down the center would look a little better?? no?

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Agreed. i have all the mini helmets in my bar room and for some reason Arizona is my favorite. Maybe a red stripe down the center would look a little better?? no?

Believe it or not, I would actually be in favor of THIS:

ArizonaCardinals_RHS_RedHelmetBlack.gif

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Agreed. i have all the mini helmets in my bar room and for some reason Arizona is my favorite. Maybe a red stripe down the center would look a little better?? no?

Believe it or not, I would actually be in favor of THIS:

ArizonaCardinals_RHS_RedHelmetBlack.gif

but what about when they wear red on red? Too much??

I have the Texans white mini helmet before they switched to blue. I like the blue much better.

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Sort of like how a 20 year old car may be perfectly functional and even attractive, but it will still look slightly out of place on the street, where the average car is only 5 years old. An '89 Crown Vic may be pleasing to the eye, but when one rolls by it's impossible not to notice how out-of-date its design is.

The car example is right on. Think of the cars you thought looked awesome 15 years ago. Some still look okay, but the just have a dated feel when put on the road with all the newer cars.

And I'm on board with the 49ers update as one of the best updates in recent memory. They slightly tweaked the colors and logos, but the overall look and feel is unmistakeably Niners. I even thought the white pants looked okay trying to build on the '94 Super Bowl look. (Of course, the gold pants are even better.)

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And I'm on board with the 49ers update as one of the best updates in recent memory. They slightly tweaked the colors and logos, but the overall look and feel is unmistakeably Niners. I even thought the white pants looked okay trying to build on the '94 Super Bowl look. (Of course, the gold pants are even better.)

Ditto again, except I'll raise you one. I think the 49ers are not only the best modernization ever, but have been the best looking NFL team ever since they introduced the current look.

1 hour ago, ShutUpLutz! said:

and the drunken doodoobags jumping off the tops of SUV's/vans/RV's onto tables because, oh yeah, they are drunken drug abusing doodoobags

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Except in the NBA, where modernization means slapping on new colors that have nothing to do with the team's tradition?

It's interesting that teams will modernize, and at the same time some teams are going retro. Many times the retro move will include a modernization of a prior logo. I wonder if there has ever been an attempt to "unmodernize" a logo, where the update goes for a more retro style?

That would test a hypothesis that any "update" is technically a modernization since the updated logo is by definition new and modern. An "unmodernized" logo might defeat that notion.

I suppose just some unclutterings would count. Like the Pistons going from the red/blue head to the current logo (or more precisely from th red/silver secondary logo to the current logo?) Or things like the early 90's astros taking the blue background off the star logo? I'm not convinced that these really go in a retro direction though.

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Except in the NBA, where modernization means slapping on new colors that have nothing to do with the team's tradition?

It's interesting that teams will modernize, and at the same time some teams are going retro. Many times the retro move will include a modernization of a prior logo. I wonder if there has ever been an attempt to "unmodernize" a logo, where the update goes for a more retro style?

That would test a hypothesis that any "update" is technically a modernization since the updated logo is by definition new and modern. An "unmodernized" logo might defeat that notion.

I suppose just some unclutterings would count. Like the Pistons going from the red/blue head to the current logo (or more precisely from th red/silver secondary logo to the current logo?) Or things like the early 90's astros taking the blue background off the star logo? I'm not convinced that these really go in a retro direction though.

I'd say Seattle did a good job of "unmodernizing" the prior Space Needle logo and going with the current-S they have. More reminiscent of the early ball and skyline they used to sport.

it's all good and soothing for me.

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No, but that's an excellent idea. Cohibas anyone?

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Sort of like how a 20 year old car may be perfectly functional and even attractive, but it will still look slightly out of place on the street, where the average car is only 5 years old. An '89 Crown Vic may be pleasing to the eye, but when one rolls by it's impossible not to notice how out-of-date its design is.

The car example is right on. Think of the cars you thought looked awesome 15 years ago. Some still look okay, but the just have a dated feel when put on the road with all the newer cars.

And I'm on board with the 49ers update as one of the best updates in recent memory. They slightly tweaked the colors and logos, but the overall look and feel is unmistakeably Niners. I even thought the white pants looked okay trying to build on the '94 Super Bowl look. (Of course, the gold pants are even better.)

Well whatabout a DeLorean?

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