The Use of COLOR in Sports

[DG_ThenNowForever]

I gladly stand corrected.

Just don't get me started on the primary colors....

No kidding. That movie sucked, and the book wasn't much better.

The funny thing for me is that I totally avoid black, and I think it looks terrible with khaki. I recognize that I'm in the minority opinion, but I think black only pairs well with black: black belt, black shoes, and some shade of black (like grey) for slacks. I would never buy a black jersey, black sweatshirt, etc, and this is all before the turnover of professional sports to the color.

For what it's worth -- and I don't know how great an addition it is to the thread -- I do completely get the navy color discussion. It goes with so many things and is classically never out of place in dress. You have a lot of options with navy -- far more so than orange, red, green, or any of the brighter colors we no longer see in pro sports.

But tastes do tend to be cyclical, right? I wouldn't be surprised to see a new sports franchise end up using a current fad color scheme (like baby blue/brown, for example), or resuscitate an old one (royal blue/kelly green). Black and teal are now a decade past their prime, and I think the navy boat has sailed for now. Brick has replaced red for now (probably the khaki justification), but I just can't help but to feel that some entrepreneur will recognize a place in the market for a dramatically different color scheme.

[mydogisgomez]

see next post...

[mydogisgomez]

Can someone tell me why they couldn't use the "trendy" color--that being sky blue, in this instance--and pair it with PURPLE? How many times has that been tried before? (Maybe PANTONE knows something I don't, but I'd venture to guess absolutely ZERO.) You wanna talk about eye-catching? I think THAT would have boosted merch sales right there...

The "Old" Hornets did use that combo and they had huge merch sales. It was also super trendy at the time.

[Jamikel]

If that's the color of the sky in Austin, then well, um, move.

[andrewharrington]

Good point, but seriously, weren't the Jazz' uniforms sky blue and purple for a few years when they were using the mountain theme?

[ShinyHubCaps]

Good point, but seriously, weren't the Jazz' uniforms sky blue and purple for a few years when they were using the mountain theme?

Does this qualify?

[Coast2CoastAM2006]

not to be off topic or anything but i still think that was their best to date, much better than the boring set they wear now. That set there said, "utah jazz" a whole lot better than the current set.

i really think those colors worked really well together. The caught the eye and popped, the current navy and baby blue are forgettable, and drab.

while we are on the Utah Jazz.

I'll present two exhibits:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

The first logo is a decently designed logo but where it goes wrong is the color scheme. It starts off on the right track with purple and light blue but then goes off the track with copper, black and teal. Those three colors are completely unnecessary, jarring and creates a mess of a logo.

Then they streamlined it with logo 2. This is a much better logo (mind you virtually same design) with the elimination of about 3 colors. Purple, light blue and navy work really well together and is far more cohesive and creates a far more visually appealing logo with out the gradiant, extra and out of place colors. They go together and creates a feeling of cool color association with the mountains, which is accomplished far better than the previous logo.

which leads me to a point that to many teams try to incorporate either too many elements or colors in to their color scheme. its one thing if you have different hues as a result of gear. But having 5 or 6 different colors is over kill. If you look at the logos, uniforms that people consider iconic and top 10, they are usually simplistic and doesn't require the use of several colors.

The dallas cowboys are a clear and present example, they got 2 and 3 differnt colors silver, navy, royal blue, black and none that go with each other. They are a victom of having too many colors in their color scheme which creates a disunified mess of a uniform.

[BlueSky]

Great thread.

Color in sports is influenced by a number of factors, including those like marketing and such that have been mentioned. You can't completely separate sports from society either. Take black and white for example:

Did league honchos just want the zebras to be visible or did they use that combination to convey authority?

What appeals to me most is a conscious effort to use colors to link a team and its city. Seattle is a great example. I hate their monos but only because it's too much of a good thing. If you've ever been there on an overcast day, you know that shade of blue they came up with is perfect. As shown here, you'd be hard-pressed to design a uni that better illustrates rainy, overcast Seattle:

Continued...

[BlueSky]

Pittsburgh is another example. It's not the weather there though, it's the city flag:

The Pirates use the same combo and I think the Penguins used to, I don't follow hockey but IIRC they did. Pics now show them using more of a true gold than yellow.

This linkage extends to nicknames and logos. The coolest ones by far have a real tie to the city/area. The Steelers score again here, as do the old Oilers. The Saints are a good example logo-wise. Even the streetlights on Canal Street are designed to resemble a fleur-de-lis:

Moving on to the Giants' current road unis, Bucco's original post about HD TV brought to mind one thing that's glaringly obvious - those unis were designed in the era of black and white TV. They probably looked fine in B/W...in color, not so much. I'm not saying that was the basis of the design - actually the opposite, because obviously people saw them in person but how they looked on TV wouldn't have been much of an issue.

This influence is also evident in the huge helmet logos back in the day. People say, "Why were they so big?" Because few games were on TV, so the design emphasis was on visibility from the stands.

Sadly, IMO most of today's designs are really all about marketing, with goofy, cartoonish logos and garish colors.

[Gothamite]

Sadly, IMO most of today's designs are really all about marketing, with goofy, cartoonish logos and garish colors.

Cartoon logos aren't exactly a new phenomenon....

[Jamikel]

What appeals to me most is a conscious effort to use colors to link a team and its city. Seattle is a great example. . . you'd be hard-pressed to design a uni that better illustrates rainy, overcast Seattle:

That, or there was a misunderstanding when the owners of the Seahawks heard that the new trendy colors were going to be sky blue and navy.

[Gothamite]

What appeals to me most is a conscious effort to use colors to link a team and its city. Seattle is a great example. I hate their monos but only because it's too much of a good thing. If you've ever been there on an overcast day, you know that shade of blue they came up with is perfect. As shown here, you'd be hard-pressed to design a uni that better illustrates rainy, overcast Seattle:

I agree that the color set is great. My only problem is that they overdid it - watching the games, the overall effect of the monoform is boring, blah and washed out. White pants would mitigate this considerably, but they've chosen not to go that way.

The perfect representation of an overcast day inspires Seasonal Affective Disorder on the field.

[TheOldRoman]

I don't like the color trends that terrorize sports. First, it was teal, then purple, then black, then navy, and now it's baby blue. It's the product of marketing firms grasping for whatever will sell the most merchandise, not emphasising the individuality of the team(or brand, from their viewpoint).

Also, in a perfect sugue into my next opinion, I also dislike when a team's colors don't match their mascot. For instance, the New Orleans Hornets. When I think of Hornets, I think of black and yellow, like most sane folks. Not teal and purple(which was just a blatant following of the color trends at the time the franchise originated). This particular topic doesn't irk me as much as the prior one, but it's still annoying. Take LSU, for example. At least they've got it half-right. Before being associated with the color orange, tigers were often depicted as yellow(to quote Jack Bruce from Cream:'Yellow tigers, crouched in jungles'). The purple, while my absolute least favorite color, works as a viable substitute to black in this instance.

Unfortunately, I've got company, so this rant will have to be continued at a later time....

How many royal blue and red baby bears have you seen at the zoo? And do they grow up to be navy and orange?

[Gothamite]

Or Lions in a lovely shade of Honolulu Blue....

[powersurge]

Or Lions in a lovely shade of Honolulu Blue....

Say what you will, but that Honolulu Blue looked pretty bad ass when Lil' ole' #20 was rushing for over two hundred yards against my beloved.

[powersurge]

To add my own two hundred dollars to this thread...

I think most designers don't think ENOUGH about color and that schools don't spend enough time on color theory. I think bad design with great colors can still stand up. GREAT design with horrible colors almost always fall flat.

This is a great thread Bucco_B. Its no surprise to me that you got us talking about color after seeing you rockin' the Creamcicles in your pic.

[Jamikel]

How many royal blue and red baby bears have you seen at the zoo? And do they grow up to be navy and orange?

Well, some black bears actually do have a blueish hue to them.

But how many people think bear and automatically think "brown" or "black" compared to the number of people who think of tigers and automatically think "orange and black?" Neutrally-colored animals don't have that connection, so it's not nearly as disorienting to see a team called the bears in blue as it is to see tigers in inaccurate colors.

I'm also willing to accept teams whose colors aren't exactly like, but approximate to the colors of the animals they represent. So if your team's the tigers, and your colors are navy and orange or purple and gold, that's okay with me. If, however, your mascot is a tiger, and your colors are blue and silver, you just look dumb. I don't care if you are the #1 team in the nation, you look like a bunch of idiots.

[tBBP]

To add my own two hundred dollars to this thread...

I think most designers don't think ENOUGH about color and that schools don't spend enough time on color theory. I think bad design with great colors can still stand up. GREAT design with horrible colors almost always fall flat.

This is a great thread Bucco_B. Its no surprise to me that you got us talking about color after seeing you rockin' the Creamcicles in your pic.

Ahh...you seen that eh? (I forgot that was even in there!) Well don't look in my closet then...cuz there's about 4 or 5 more where that came from.

All of you make great points. However, the two that stick out the most (a general consensus of such, anyway), are these: the advent of hi-def TV and the presumed skew towards adult-based marketing as it relates to what pretty much is a "neutralization" of color in pro sports.

Whoever it was that made the comment about uniforms of days past being designed in the era of B&W (and fledgling color) TV made a great point. Back then, teeny eeny little differences in color weren't anywhere near as noticeable, which may help explain things such as the disparity between helmets and jerseys of the Minnesota Vikings and NY Giants from the '80s on through the early part of the 2000s. But now, on hi-def, where EVERYTHING shows up, I don't think there'll really be very many more decorative color schemes devised, just simply due to how digital and hi-def TV displays things now. Add that to the point about adult-gear apparel marketing (the whole "grown folks ain't tryna be wearin' bright colors" thing ), and I can see why the trend of late is what it is.

I think most designers don't think ENOUGH about color and that schools don't spend enough time on color theory.

That's how I feel at times, too. My major thing is this: when is someone going to have the guts to try something new and/or unheard of??? Now, back in the early part of the '90s, it was more of a "fad" thing--speaking of the use of purple and teal (and aquamarine, emerald, and all other similar hues)--oh, and ericcson cellphone blue--but now, it seems for some reason, "safe/trendy" is the way to go. Remember the Michigan Panthers? What was it...gold, maroon, and sky blue or something like that? THAT's uniqueness for you right there. Hell...even the Devil Rays had the beginnings of something going with their dark green and somewhat bright blue (along with a branding package that I felt was among the best in MLB--too bad the team itself wasn't). I don't know...maybe my Florida tastes ain't quite congruent with what I'm seeing out there right now. Maybe it's just me...

...Now, as to the whole "color don't match mascot" thing, I find that the more generic a nickname is, the easier it is to get away with colors that "don't match". Best example I can think of? The Lions. Honolulu blue and silver. Ain't nobody in they life ever seen a blue lion. But again...it's a super-generic nickname, so they can get away with that. In fact, look at all the generically-named mascots in high schools and colleges today, and you'd probably get about 15 different color combinations for the same nickname. Auburn Tigers...okay, they got the orange, and if one were to split hairs, one could say navy is close to black, but, still...and then the LSU Tigers. Purple and gold(en yellow). The gold(en yellow)? Ehh...but DEFINITELY not the purple. Then there's the Missouri Tigers, who probably match colors the best. Let's not forget the Idaho State Bengals...whose colors are the same as the team by the same name in the Queen City in Ohio. And I'm not even ABOUT to get started on the "wildcat" nickname...but, for the most part, at least color pairings make a bit more sense in college. Take the U of Florida, for example. You ain't never seen a blue, or orange, or blue-and-orange alligator in your life, now have you? Hell--even the gator in the damn school's LOGO is green (a more representative color). BUT, being that blue and orange are the state colors of Florida, it makes sense. In the case of the U of North Carolina, thheir colors came from the two societies that existed back at the school back in its formative days--the dialectic and philanthropic. One was represented by white, the other, columbia/carolina blue. And I ain't ever in my life seen tar that's either[/] of them colors. And DEFINITELY not a ram. (Funny thing is there's a university up in Rhode Island--the university OF it, actually--whose nickname IS the Rams and has similar colors.)

But let's get back on pro sports here--the focus of this discussion here. the Falcons colors make some sense (although that scheme was picked for for the University of Georgia, so the story goes), but the Dolphins? Aqua and orange? Those are Florida colors there, but when you ever seen a dolphin that ain't some neutral shade or black and white? (Zoology lesson for the day: killer whales ARE, in fact, dolphins.) So you see...it ain't really so much about colors making sense in regards to the nickname it represents, if it's rather generic (which I ain't gon say that "Dolphins" IS generic, but you catch my drift.)

Either way it go, I'd like to see future branding heads concoct some newer, more unique schemes in pro sports--and not in the sense of throwing ash gray up next to purple and orange (I'd guess the gray was used to symbolize ashes, in relation with the whole story of the "phoenix", anyway), or injecting some random weird color just because. I mean...some colors just fit. Others CAN fit if people just sit down, play around with them, and MAKE THEM work. it's all about balance.

Of course, as the artist formerly known as Tempest might say, though...if the form ain't right, meaning the desingn of the uniform, no matter the colors, ain't none of it gon look right.

[Gothamite]

I'm also willing to accept teams whose colors aren't exactly like, but approximate to the colors of the animals they represent. So if your team's the tigers, and your colors are navy and orange or purple and gold, that's okay with me. If, however, your mascot is a tiger, and your colors are blue and silver, you just look dumb. I don't care if you are the #1 team in the nation, you look like a bunch of idiots.

Wait....

Blue/silver bad, but purple/gold good?

[DG_ThenNowForever]

That's how I feel at times, too. My major thing is this: when is someone going to have the guts to try something new and/or unheard of??? Now, back in the early part of the '90s, it was more of a "fad" thing--speaking of the use of purple and teal (and aquamarine, emerald, and all other similar hues)--oh, and ericcson cellphone blue--but now, it seems for some reason, "safe/trendy" is the way to go. Remember the Michigan Panthers? What was it...gold, maroon, and sky blue or something like that? THAT's uniqueness for you right there. Hell...even the Devil Rays had the beginnings of something going with their dark green and somewhat bright blue (along with a branding package that I felt was among the best in MLB--too bad the team itself wasn't). I don't know...maybe my Florida tastes ain't quite congruent with what I'm seeing out there right now. Maybe it's just me...

I think I raised this point earlier in the thread and I think you're right too. The market is always moving forward and we're constantly surprised by new fads. Nearly 20 years ago, teal was introduced as a bonafide, acceptable color for professional sports franchises. Fifteen years later, NFL teams were wearing monochrome uniforms. Ten years ago, high school kids were wearing carpenter pants with hammer holders (and if you still are, you need to stop). Two years ago, people of all ages thought Crocs were acceptable footwear. The point? Styles and what's acceptable change so often that we're basically due to see breakthroughs every now and again. The Casper Ghosts wear glow-in-the-dark uniforms. NCAA basketball teams wear subliminated textures on their uniforms. We're moving everything forward, and I think (know) that colors will be part of that movement.