2009 Minor-League Baseball Logo Unveilings

[Firefly]

I kinda like the C formed by the bat arc.

And the water reminds me of the brown waves of Galveston.

[Burning River]

You know... I assumed it was the sky with little clouds. I guess because it was at the top part. I really don't know what it is supposed to be. Either way... sky or water, a light blue should have been used. The whole bottom of the main logo being black is very uninspiring. It seems like Plan B. had a "Baseball logo" ready to be used. Nothing about this says "Lake Erie" or the Cleveland region to me. It seems the name "Crushers" is for a softball team.

This is a very good Generic softball logo.

[Jigga]

I just don't get why the batter secondary isn't better engrained in the primary. The arcs and the baseballs are differently shaped and it makes no sense to me.

[Lee.]

While I like the reference to an old nickname for Winston-Salem, "The Dash", I find the "element of speed in the game of baseball" justification a bit heavy-handed.

I was also fearing that with such a justification linked to the name that we'd be subjected to a logo that primarily consisted of an italicized wordmark with some trailing speed lines and clouds of dust meant to imply "dash"-ing. Bingo! As an added bonus, we get an anthropomorphic baseball gritting its "teeth" and furrowing its stitched "eyebrow".

Meh. I'm singularly unimpressed. While he name is tied to the city, I think it backs you into a corner graphically, resulting in what I consider to be a rather pedestrian logo.

I was no huge fan of the Winston-Salem Warthogs identity, but I find this to be a downgrade.

Grade: D

You forgot to mention purple-and-red. We're back to the 90's.

Ugh.

*It's also possible that the gritty baseball and clouds of dust are meant to harken back to the old Warthogs logo, but that's still no excuse for it's ham-handed execution.

[dfwabel]

I just don't get why the batter secondary isn't better engrained in the primary. The arcs and the baseballs are differently shaped and it makes no sense to me.

What I don't get is why are only the vowels in "Crushers" in lowercase font? What's next? Having the "s" backwards to mimick a little kid?

[BallWonk]

Scrappers logo PDF: http://www.mvscrappers.com/uploads/documents/logos.pdf (in full vector glory and password unprotected!)

Looks like the "use part of the face as a hat" trend is marching right along...

After looking at all tehe logos Im ashamed at Plan B Branding from doing such a great job on the Threshers and others to put out this kind of sloppy unprofessional work.

This is misplaced criticism. There is nothing sloppy or unprofessional about the Scrapers logos. Trite, cliche, and lazy, perhaps. But not sloppy or unprofessional. And the distinction is important. Any professional graphic design project is exactly as good as the judgment of the least creative member of the client's decisionmaking team -- not as good as the most creative member of the design team, as some here seem to believe. When I look at that PDF, I see a design project that was executed to near perfection within the bounds of an overly conservative and derivative client vision. Full credit to Plan B; a C-minus to the client.

Then again, the caps with facial features on them do seem to sell well, so this is probably a winner for the Scrappers, no matter the letter grade I would give the overall redesign. (A C-plus, on account of I'm feeling generous today and the Scrappers are so much better than any of the other unveils so far this week.)

[Blackjack76]

When you, Plan B, have two clients unveiling new brand identities on back-to-back days, one thing you should probably avoid is using the same font (Letterhead Fonts' Full Block) on both.

All three unveiled this week have been brutal. As good as Visalia and Oklahoma City are, they are completely overshadowed by how bad Fort Wayne, Winston-Salem and the Crap are. Not the best collective year for new MiLB identities.

[Brian in Boston]

Wow! Rough week for minor-league baseball logo unveilings. I couldn't be much less enthused about the identity packages I've seen unveiled so far.

So... Avon, Ohio's minor-league team decided to go with Lake Erie Crushers, huh? Nothing inherently wrong with the name. Utilizing Lake Erie as the geographic portion of the moniker allows team management to maximize the size of the audience it markets to. As they say in their press release, "The new ballpark will draw fans from Lakewood, Rocky River, all of western Cuyahoga County, as far west as Sandusky, Lorain County and all the cities in between."

What disappoints me is that the logo and color scheme chosen in no way tie the nickname portion of the brand to the reasoning that team management communicated was behind their decision to include Crushers in their "Name the Team" contest to begin with. They claimed that the Crushers name "... pays homage to Lorain County's vineyards and the crushing of grapes to make wine." How about giving us a bit of that in the brand package folks!

Look, I'm not saying that they had to overtly force wine-making imagery and grapes into the logo. In fact, while I think certain details of the primary mark could be better integrated, I must say that I find the batter logo secondary to be pretty damned nice. So, that said, couldn't the original vineyard-grapes-wine reasoning for the name at least have been referenced in the team's color scheme? Instead of adopting a rather pedestrian Red, Black, Tan and White color scheme, how about coloring this exact logo with something akin to the Royal Plum, Champagne Silver, Light Blue and White palette used by the Michigan Panthers of the USFL The Royal Plum shade could be said to represent red wine, the Champagne Silver to represent white wine and the Light Blue would make more sense representing the water in the logo.

[Burmy]

OK...Any word on the new Lowell Spinners logo design?

[Wally1912]

OK...Any word on the new Lowell Spinners logo design?

Here is the press release.

Spinners roll out new logos for 2009

12/05/2008 4:06 PM ET

Lowell Spinners

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Spinners unveiled a series of modernized logos on Friday, each designed to create better symmetry between the Spinners' name and logo image.

The logos, created by Single Source Promotions of Danvers, Mass., were unveiled to the public on Dec. 5 at Hookslide Kelly's in downtown Lowell at the Spinners' Holiday Party.

The primary hat logo will replace the "Stitch" character on the Spinners home, road and batting practice caps for the 2009 season.

"This logo incorporates the Spinners name with the familiar spindle bat," said Spinners Vice President and General Manager Tim Bawmann. "The symmetry with the Spinners' "S" really makes the logo pop."

The new character will be joining the Spinners mascot family for the 2009 season, joining the Canaligator family and "Bristles" the Spinners' trusted fifth-inning drag conductor. The new character will be named by the fans prior to opening day.

The patch logo will be another new addition to the Spinners for the 2009 season as a sleeve emblem.

"There are many marks that we feel are synonymous with the Spinners image," said Bawmann. "We feel the ball of yarn and "spindle bat" are two of those images.

Two logos will replace the Spinners current home and road logos, with minor changes involving shading and design to add to the symmetry that was the goal of the logo redesign process.

[DJSpeedy]

Scrappers logo PDF: http://www.mvscrappers.com/uploads/documents/logos.pdf (in full vector glory and password unprotected!)

Nice find!

Re: the Lowell Spinners new logo: EPIC FAIL!

[RyanB06]

Care to explain why this is an "EPIC FAIL!!!11!"? Because I happen to like the new set.

[crashcarson15]

OK...Any word on the new Lowell Spinners logo design?

Here is the press release.

Spinners roll out new logos for 2009

12/05/2008 4:06 PM ET

Lowell Spinners

LOWELL, Mass. -- The Lowell Spinners unveiled a series of modernized logos on Friday, each designed to create better symmetry between the Spinners' name and logo image.

The logos, created by Single Source Promotions of Danvers, Mass., were unveiled to the public on Dec. 5 at Hookslide Kelly's in downtown Lowell at the Spinners' Holiday Party.

The primary hat logo will replace the "Stitch" character on the Spinners home, road and batting practice caps for the 2009 season.

"This logo incorporates the Spinners name with the familiar spindle bat," said Spinners Vice President and General Manager Tim Bawmann. "The symmetry with the Spinners' "S" really makes the logo pop."

The new character will be joining the Spinners mascot family for the 2009 season, joining the Canaligator family and "Bristles" the Spinners' trusted fifth-inning drag conductor. The new character will be named by the fans prior to opening day.

The patch logo will be another new addition to the Spinners for the 2009 season as a sleeve emblem.

"There are many marks that we feel are synonymous with the Spinners image," said Bawmann. "We feel the ball of yarn and "spindle bat" are two of those images.

Two logos will replace the Spinners current home and road logos, with minor changes involving shading and design to add to the symmetry that was the goal of the logo redesign process.

That is a four-star pun. (out of five)

[DEAD!]

Care to explain why this is an "EPIC FAIL!!!11!"? Because I happen to like the new set.

It's ok, but people seem to be using "EPIC FAIL" way too much. If something's good, would they call it "EPIC PASS"?

[Lee.]

Care to explain why this is an "EPIC FAIL!!!11!"? Because I happen to like the new set.

It's ok, but people seem to be using "EPIC FAIL" way too much. If something's good, would they call it "EPIC PASS"?

I'd like to see the phrase "epic fail" be rewarded with an automatic one-week suspension, personally.

[dgnmrwrw]

Some thoughts on Winston-Salem:

I was born and raised near Winston, my dad's side of the family all still lives there, and my gf lived there her whole life until college. All of her family still lives there. In college, I lived with 3 different people from Winston or its suburbs. Absolutely no one I've talked to can remember ever hearing Winston-Salem referred to as "The Dash." So either this is a very old, very obscure nickname that few if any have even heard of (and if so, why use it for the team?), or it's just a forced explanation for why they chose a silly nickname. I still wish they had gone all the way back to the W-S Spirits.... But I digress....

I'm still looking for some pics on the uniforms online, but I saw news coverage from the unveiling and they had the uniforms up (not actually produced, they were just concept/template graphics). There was one that I pray will not be the home primary. It was white with purple chest and sleeve piping (same style as the Rays) with the stupid ball logo on the chest. So it was a white uni with thin purple piping, with only a white logo thinly outlined in black. An almost all-white logo on an almost all-white jersey. Add to this the possible white alternate hat, and you've got a winner!! Yay Dash!

Oy.

Anyway, logo sheet with caps and Pantone values for the Dash are here.

[Jigga]

Care to explain why this is an "EPIC FAIL!!!11!"? Because I happen to like the new set.

It's ok, but people seem to be using "EPIC FAIL" way too much. If something's good, would they call it "EPIC PASS"?

I'd like to see the phrase "epic fail" be rewarded with an automatic one-week suspension, personally.

Why so serious? 1-week bannination? Save the suspensions for merciless tNak bashing. Why not just ridicule the users for a week instead. It would be waaaaaay more funner.

[BrySmalls]

Anyway, logo sheet with caps and Pantone values for the Dash are here.

3 types of Purple in their logo? Yikes.

[TheEdge]

Looks like the Columbus Clippers, new Triple A affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, are getting ready to reveal their new identity. These new items, including on field caps, are on their website.

Clippers Primary cap

Clippers Red Alt

Clippers Royal alt

New Clippers wordmark? (t-shirt)

[raysox]

OKC Thunder logo > Dash logo