Rebranding the MLB....

[elliott]

O hai.

So, I've been working on some pro-combat-ish concepts, but honestly the concept forum has been a little flooded with these as of late, so I decided to stop doing ncaa football concepts for a while, with ideas to bring back that thread at a later date, especially considering I finished about 8 more of those concepts and it's a shame to let those just sit on my computer.

This is my first foray back into the mlb concept world since the summer, so a whole semester has gone by and my interest is back. I had finished about 6 more baseball concepts at the time of part 11 of the series way back when (linkage), but looking back at that concept (the Mets) I was unhappy with the product. And when I, as the designer, am unhappy with my own work, I have to rethink. I looked at all of the other concepts I had completed, and they all seemed rushed and less-than-adequately thought out. 4 out of the 5 concepts you will see in this thread are my designs from over the summer, reworked and differently presented to my liking, and I'm happy with all of the thought and effort I put in this round.

This time you'll be getting a new presentation format with plenty of close-up views of all of the logos. I also made some tweaks to scottyspring's template to better suit me. Let's get right into it with the Nationals.

Here you see the primary and secondary, I rendered a new "Nationals" wordmark to match the "Washington" road mark they debuted a few years after their inception. above it is a version of the capitol building, and the stars and stripes underline that is featured throughout the package also wraps around the capitol. A baseball streaks along the underline (I ended up liking the speed this created). You'll notice that I added silver to the set, just as an accent. The secondary is a waving US flag on a bat, I didn't use this logo on the uniforms however because I saw a potential patch as having an awkward shape.

Now, we have the home and road uniforms. The hats use my version of a DC logo, with a red home cap and a navy road cap. You'll notice that the home wordmark matches the home cap with a white base and a gray inner stroke (including the stars), and the road wordmark switches that, with a white stroke on the stars as well. The numbers stay red on the road uniform but the hat and socks switch to navy, making a more dull uniform that I think gray road base evokes. (I like it when baseball uniforms look drab on the road). The "W" in Washington is altered a little, because I think what they have now is too Walgreens ish. The "ashington" is the same script font that they use now. The stars going down the pants match the underscore, with one star on each sleeve, but I alternated the colors to divide up the red and navy more.

The alternate has a unique undershirt with a blue right sleeve and red left sleeve so when you look at it, you see the american flag layout, especially considering the stars and stripes on the ends of the sleeves. The wordmark follows the same theme. The alternate cap drops silver completely. And yes the pants are quite far fetched, I just wanted to do something a little different for baseball. A quick word on the bps: with news of a new bp template debuting this season in the MLB, I just decided to come up with one of my own, you'll see by the stitching that the template leaves room for 4 colored sections...the shoulders, the striping around the shoulder, and a tooth shaped panel on the front. This one only fills in one panel and I'm not planning on filling in all 3 at once for any future concepts. So yeah, we have a simple red bp with the modified W cap logo on an all red cap with a blue front panel.

That's about it, I hope you enjoy the new presentation and the many close up views of the logos (10 images to my photobucket lol), I think it helps get a better feel for what these conceptual uniforms would look like. So thanks for any comments you have, and I thank all of you who have commented on my past MLB rebrand concepts, I've gotten a lot of support and positive comments over the course of this long series and I hope I can repay y'all with an enjoyable concept. Thanks again.

[CDixonDesign]

These are fantastic! I just can't put my finger on what or why, but they seem to have more of a Minor League feel to them than MLB. I love the Star/Stripe combo sleeves and the striping in the pants is a great tie in. Great work!

[JayJaxon]

I think this is a great looking set. There are so many things I love about it. The scripts for the jerseys are wonderful! I love the new logos. I do not like the pants for the home and away. I think all of those stars going down the side would be too much. But I like the pants used for the alternates. I would just use those all the way around.

I think both alternates are unique and attractive. I am not turned off by the different colored sleeve like I expected to be. I think it fits the set nicely and I would keep it. I am glad to see you brought this back!

[gingerbreadmann]

I wish the stars on the flag logo were a little different; at the very least followed the angle of the flag's crease. Otherwise, yeah, lookin' good. I would have to see that alt on the field though.

Edit: I should have said "A lot" different, and also in size. They should have different sizes sort of like the stripes as well as different positions because it really looks mad awk to me.

[chickenfish13]

Honestly, I don't know what it is, but I love this. It's just so perfect to me, I'm not sure why. I love how everything works in the logos and uniforms. Just...

[CJworks]

I agree. It's perfect. It looks like you've thought this out well. Only thing is that the script in the primary isn't straight. It kinda throws me off. No biggie.

[bohob]

Good to see you working on MLB again! This set has some good stuff going on. I love the alt jersey. The flag in the secondary logo looks a little long. It could also be a little smoother in its wave, specifically, where it doubles back against itself. The S in Nationals could be cleaned up too. I don't really care for the DC logo. I think it's the serifs/ termination of the stem. I just picture something smoother working better. As for the uniforms, The outlines on the numbers could be thinner, they seem a little clunky. Also, I definitely prefer the pants on the alt over the primary home and road pants. Personally, I would like to see the striping on the home and away resemble those alt pants more. I realize I just listed off a bunch of things I think should change, but this is a really good start. I can tell the wheels are turning, you just gotta put it all together.

[OpaqueChicken]

This is a solid set here, but when I first looked at the logo I had a St. Louis feel with the red and white stripes around the Capital Building. On the primary at first I thought there was too many stars but now the more I look at it, the more stars seem to fit in better. The flag logo is good but the stars need to be worked into a natural position. Both scripts are outstanding and I don't feel there is anything wrong with them. The "D" in the cap logos is kinda lost with the shooting ball but is still a great looking logo. The pants on all the uniforms are perfect. The script on the alternate has that old school feel to it and I love it. Overall great work and can't wait for the next set.

[sergeimakarenkov44]

Their alternates should say "Natinals"

[jaha32]

These are great. The script looks very nice. The only thing that I think needs improvement is the way the stars are alligned on the secondary. they dont go to the bottom left and top right corners of the blue rectangle. i also think the top two jerseys would look nicer/classier without the stars and stripes banner underlining them but thats just me. all in all im loving this

[jaha32]

something i just noticed is that from far away the caps look more like LC than DC. might consider doing something about that

[IceCap]

It looks great. The one thing I can suggest is to ditch the DC cap logo in favour of the W all around. Other then that, it's pretty cool.

[dgnmrwrw]

There's a lot to like here. I really love the overall style of the identity as a whole. You've brought much more motion and flow and interest to what is currently a blocky, dull identity. Kudos on that.

I also love the wordmarks and number treatments on the uniforms. They're both gorgeous. I really admire your chutzpah in doing the stars as leg striping and the odd striping on the alternate/BP uniform. They certainly look really nice when presented like this, but I really don't know if they'd be tolerable on the field or not. If pressed, I'd say they're both a bit too much. But again, you're trying new things and they work well within your overall package, so good job.

I do think the DC cap logo needs tweaking. There's a LOT going on, and it's difficult to get an instant read on the monogram (For instance, I see "IE"). I think if you used the silver to make the top of the C overlap the D and the bottom of the D overlap the C, it might help resolve those shapes. Or it might not. But I think if you go back and play with different iterations and tweak/simplify a few things, then you'll have a great cap.

Overall, a very nice job on this. Looking forward to more.

[The Fixer]

Wow LOVE the logos. But I don't know anything bout baseball uniforms

[elliott]

There's a lot to like here. I really love the overall style of the identity as a whole. You've brought much more motion and flow and interest to what is currently a blocky, dull identity. Kudos on that.

I also love the wordmarks and number treatments on the uniforms. They're both gorgeous. I really admire your chutzpah in doing the stars as leg striping and the odd striping on the alternate/BP uniform. They certainly look really nice when presented like this, but I really don't know if they'd be tolerable on the field or not. If pressed, I'd say they're both a bit too much. But again, you're trying new things and they work well within your overall package, so good job.

I do think the DC cap logo needs tweaking. There's a LOT going on, and it's difficult to get an instant read on the monogram (For instance, I see "IE"). I think if you used the silver to make the top of the C overlap the D and the bottom of the D overlap the C, it might help resolve those shapes. Or it might not. But I think if you go back and play with different iterations and tweak/simplify a few things, then you'll have a great cap.

Overall, a very nice job on this. Looking forward to more.

Yeah, nice suggestion. I think this does help.

Also, thinking about some of the smaller details that wouldn't be easy to reproduce in real life, I deleted the bottom swoosh. I think it also helps the shape of the "D".

Thanks everyone for all of the comments, it is much appreciated.

[elliott]

(See final update on page 3)

So now we are moving on to the Royals. (I've also decided to make this 6 part thread and possibly 7, because I've been getting plenty of ideas and inspirations lately).

My original draft of the Royals was completed back before the summer. I attempted to use royal with light blue and then add silver. Here is my original primary sketch. Which I turned into this, including an attempted modernization of their current cap logo. I scrapped the color scheme, because of the basic problem of silver, I much preferred the more regal color scheme of blue and gold. I attempted to use this lion rendering but it just was not meshing with the new cap logo I came up with, which you will soon see. And I ended up thinking that my original cap logo was utterly classless when compared to the flowing, curvy logo that they currently use. So yeah, I basically went back to the drawing board.

So there are the primary and secondary logos. My new lion was a front view, wearing a new crown. I think this logo might need a little work as it wasn't the easiest thing to try to render the lion in one color. The crown ties into the outline, same with the secondary logo, which is a simple patch using the stylized R seen in the wordmarks.

The uniforms are all rather simple. The pants match the offset gold outline. Here is a bigger version of the interlocking KC cap logo, which moves to the chest on the road, seen here. I thought that spelling out the 10 letters in Kansas City was a little too long for my purposes. I worked out a custom font for the primary home wordmark, which I originally had a crown on top to match the gold underline, a version of which can be seen here, but it didnt make the set, I didnt like how the crown looked on the chest and how small it made the "Royals" to fit it between the buttons.

The home alternate is a super clean white uniform, with a lot of white. The cap is all blue but with a white front panel, similar to blue jays retro, and with an alternate cap logo I worked up, the crown sits angled on the R, once again interrupting the gold stroke. The lion makes its only uniform appearance on the home alt. The wordmark with the crown that you saw before was considered for the bp, but instead I just used the "Royals" without the underline to match the all white cap logo. The overall theme of the uniforms is one of simplicity, I suppose, reflecting the minimalist primary.

So there it is, I'm interested to see the response on this one because I think I need to work on this one, I foresee at least one logo update. I am pleased with the way the cap logos turned out though. So, thanks for any and all comments, I appreciate it. Next I'll be showing the Cubs.

[raysox]

Damn, elliot. I did this for both concepts you've posted. "Ohh hoho. That is fantastic."

You fixed the only problem from the Nats concept(the DC logo.) ANd for the royals, the ONLY thing I would do is put the piping from the pants around the sleeves, but that might just be me liking some piping. The Cap logos are also great.

I can't wait for the next.

EDIT: on the roads, i'd make the grey outline on the numbers, and kc logo white.

[aci]

Looks like the Kansas City Brewers to me, especially with the interlocking 'KC' logo. The numbers also remind me of the Brewers, for whatever reason.

The 'R-crown' hat logo and the Royals script I do like, but the gold underline doesn't seem quite long enough.

[spamspamspamspam]

Nationals: I love the logos, but the uniforms, primarily the pants that I don't like. If a team wore those starred pants in real life I'm pretty sure they'd look like Evel Kineivel.

Royals: I like it except for the fact that you got rid of the cursive "Royals" and "KC".

[IceCap]

The Royals set is really nice. I love the KC logo.