NHL Rebrands -- #2 Pittsburgh Penguins

[elliott]

What's up guys.

Ohh, theres a lot I want to talk about, so bear with me if you can stand these ramblings, if not, just go ahead and look at the concept. But I've always like it when a designer takes the time to explain exactly what he was thinking, and hopefully I can shed some light on my choices on this concept.

Anyways, it's been a while, as the subtitle says, and I dont think I've really been active on the boards for some time, really simply because I was busy with other interests, and my interests in designing were put last in line for some reason. However I've taken some time to rethink my style as a whole, rethink what makes a good concept, and rethink design elements in general, because I want to be beyond the current design trends, I want to come up with modern yet classy designs that make the rbk edge system all the more pathetic.

So, yea, I think I changed as a designer, but I also have noticed more changes in the Concepts section of the boards in the most recent month that I have been on. I remember back when I first joined here the concepts forum was always pretty busy, and your concept might not stay up at the top for very long if it wasnt the best. Now, I see the activity is less, along with the quality of the work. I'm not trying to stand on a soapbox and preach, but I honestly have observed that the quality has gone down, things are less creative, and messier. Now obviously there are many exceptions and excellent designers who post their stuff, but I think the activity from the "elite" designers is way down. Before I went on "hiatus" this year I suppose I was regarded as a pretty good designer around here, or at least one who was consistently going to do something new and creative. I know I don't really possess the pure rendering skills that some designers, like dgnrmw or davidson, but I do think my creativity is up there with the best, and that can allow me to come up with some crazy stuff that is also sometimes good. I really want to start using this forum as a creative outlet again, so I hope I can contribute with some really good concepts and hopefully inspire some of you guys to take time with your work, and think outside the box. This concept took over a month from start to finish, easily my longest, and I think the results reflect that. I also want to say that I encourage any and all designers on here "in hiding" who haven't posted anything in a long time, even if you are a professional I know I would love to see some professional sketches and designs.

Ok, I think I'll finally start talking about the concept. First, the color scheme. I took a different shade of navy than the islanders use now, but the same same of bright orange, with a mostly accent color of lighter orange. Light blue also makes an appearance in small quantities, although it's much more visible on the uniforms. The two shades of orange gave me some cool ideas to work with because I had never really tried a two tone orange look.

This primary logo I did for the Islanders is honestly probably my favorite logo, out of all of my past concepts. As hopefully you will see, the lighthouse forms and 'I', along with a hockey stick shadowing the right side, with the island being surrounded by waves. I think the shadowing looks fairly realistic here, which I would cite as one of the stronger aspects of the logo. I tried to go for a more modern, artsy look for the back drop of skyscrapers, changing up the colors from right to left side to break up the monotony a little.

For the secondary, I messed around with a variety of shield shapes. I eventually settled on this, then, you have to look a little harder here, but the shadowing on the orange of the shield helps form a 'NY', you'll essentially see it in the orange background of the blue center of the shield. That is accented by a different shaped stick than the one you see on the primary, crossed with some rushing water. I went through quite a few drafts here, always trying to manipulate the fact that the N and Y shapes can be formed by just flipping one of the letters vertically.

I'm gonna talk about the template a little. I revamped my personal template, which is essentially a combination of the ideas of few templates that I have liked, but the rendering and layout is all mine, you get the picture. So, I revamped it by adding the glove and helmet renderings you see, along with a different pants template. I'm going for a sleeker look than the current edge uniforms have. I worked with some modern jersey designs, and left room on the template for customization of the pants and gloves, as you can see from the dotted lines that separate segments. You'll see that pants feature on one of my next designs after the Islanders. I came up with new collars that are loosely inspired by the rbk collars. But, some of their collars are just plain ugly, so you'll only see fresher looking collars on the upcoming concepts.

Finally, the uniforms. I'm trying to go a little in the future here. I took some elements that I liked from soccer jerseys after watching the world cup, like repeated dot pattern and numbers on the pants. (which i think would be a better trend than numbers on the front of the jersey). I wanted a modern typeface though, I came up with this custom font and matched the coloring of the numbers to elements found in the primary. The side panels follow the modern theme, in the future, I don't really envision horizontal hem stripes being a thing. I also think most players will tuck in their jersey, so the horizontal stripe is useless. I'll talk about that more with the Penguins concept I have coming next. The faded dot pattern is definitely...interesting, I can understand if you dont like it, but I think it helps complete the modern nature of this concept. I wanted to break up the blend that you usually get between pants and socks, so the top of the sock is orange on purpose.

More stuff coming from this concept. I'll show you the wordmark I created, and all of the stages of the primary logo, from the first sketch I had. Also I'll release the orange alternate uniform I came up with, but right now you can make do with just home and away. I do hope this concept gets some comments, because I've looked through some threads lately with only 1 or 2 comments per concept, usually all by the same guy. I don't really want that to happen here, so hopefully you find the concept interesting enough to talk about.

[LetsGoOakland9]

I love the primary logo its one of the best rebrands I've seen. I think you should add "New York Islanders" arched under it though since its the primary. I think the seconary is a fishing hook (?) I like that idea but it'd be cool if you worked in an NY and used the hook as the I

[GFB]

Wow. I'll bite.

First off, you don't give yourself enough credit as an illustrator. That primary logo is flat-out breathtaking. I feel like the shoulder logo is a little too forced, maybe instead of going for the NY shape you could try playing the middle of the logo off as an anchor. The whole style you chose to use brings me back to the "coolest game on earth" days. Do you have any examples of inspiration for the style you used through the whole design, which I would call "beachfront mosaic" for my failure to come up with a better term (all those little squares and rectangles)?

Addressing the "elite" issue... When I was a new poster stalking the boards, people like nitroseed, Sterling, cward, and Phil ruled the concept forum, then they moved on to bigger and better things (clients, school, jobs, starting a family, etc). Then the next wave of designers came through (AAO, andrewharrington, and others) and now they've moved on for the most part. It's the cycle of the Concepts section... Now, I find myself in the same position. When I was 16, I could just sit around and doodle around and work on projects such as hockey rebrands. I turn 21 in six days. I have an internship at an advertising agency and I'm constantly working freelance design jobs trying to make as much money as I can this summer. On the rare occasions that I have free time, I don't want to sit down in front of the computer and do MORE designing. Don't get me wrong, I love designing, but too much of a good thing is exactly that, too much.

Though, I will say that there appears to be a shift due to the "instant gratification" needs of society. These up-and-comers don't want to spend the time required to become skilled at the trade. They spend 30 minutes on one logo, then spend 30 minutes on the next logo and wonder why they didn't improve on their previous effort. Ten logos later and improvement may be there, but it's nothing as drastic as it would be if they had put one, two, five, or ten hours into a concept. Sure, Sigma Kappa, davidson, or dgnrmw will post a concept every now and then and it's worthwhile, but outside of those rare cases, everything seems to revolve around a lack of creativity and a lack of invested time. Your concept elliott is the perfect example of when time and creativity are allowed to work, as I bet this concept took a little longer than an hour to put together... Would you mind sharing an estimate of time you invested in this concept? <End of my mini-rant>

Stellar job overall again... best Isles concept I've ever seen.

[aci]

Definitely a good primary logo, and I like the idea of incorporating the NY into the shoulder patch, but the hockey-stick-ish thing in the middle just looks weird.

As for the jerseys... the number font looks like it would get incredibly irritating very quickly, like when the Lightning used that paintbrush font, or the Kings had that one where the 1 and 7 looked nearly identical.

On your home jersey, there's basically no white, so the orange and blue will probably just muffle each other instead of popping. Also, because you're using essentially the same colours on top of each other over large parts of the jersey, from a distance people are going to see that the jerseys have massively wide arm stripes, which will look very odd to say the least.

It could just be personal bias here, but there seems to be an exorbitantly large amount of orange on the socks, and the 'road gloves' idea is very strange, not to mention impractical. All the white on them would get dirty incredibly quickly and discolour to a grey.

[north dakota]

I like the logos but I don't like the design of the uniforms that much.

[Lights Out]

I'm not really a fan of the number or NOB font, or the lack of a team name on the primary logo. However, I love what you have for the primary so far, and that color combo and faded dot pattern on the unis is awesome. However, I'm not sure it works for New York. To be honest, it looks like what the Islanders would use if they moved to New Orleans or something, as it's a tad reminiscent of a Mardi Gras look. That's not saying the concept is bad or anything, just maybe that it is a little wrong for the target market.

I'm totally in agreement with the summaries of the state of the concept forum in this thread. It seems like too many people these days are just doing five-minute "tweaks" that change nothing, or simple recolors, or making bland, uncreative and sometimes outright ugly concepts that look like they only took five seconds. It's downright insulting to the people on here that actually spend a lot of time on their concepts. I always try to be creative and a little controversial with my concepts, and it doesn't always get good reviews or even a lot of reviews at all, but I wish that more people would be creative and try new things with sports uniforms. At the same time, the people that think uniforms should be as standard and boring as possible (and there are many on here, sadly) need to stop trying to impose that opinion on the more out-of-the-box designers on here.

[mbannon92]

This is INCREDIBLE! The logos are both extremely well done, and I like the two-tone orange. The uniforms would, in my opinion, be the best in the NHL. I love the Villanova-esque numbers, and the dot patterns are out there but not over the top. The only negative thing I have to say (which isn't really negative) is that the back of the template is different near the top of the collar on the home and away. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but the road one looks better in my opinion.

Amazing work! It's nice to see a really really well done concept!

[BJBerthiaume]

Okay,I'll be the first person to disagree. I looooove the abstract-ness of this entire set. It's great when a team completely separates from the norm and does something like this. But, for me, the primary logo is a little too cluttered. There is so much going on, I don't quite know where to look. Also, I don't see the need for the lighter orange area inside the orange outline at the bottom of the logo. It seems like it was just thrown in there to take up space. Maybe it wasn't, but that's what it seems like to me. I don't have any problem with the secondary logo other than the fact that I have no idea what it is. It is a clever logo with the NY in there, but I would love to know exactly what it is. Right now, if I had to guess, I would say it is just a very abstract anchor. The uniforms are very good. I love the away jersey. As mentioned before, maybe a tad of white would help the home jersey out a little bit. But I love the general identity you created for the Islanders here. The first glance at fading dots or the two-toned orange would immediately make people think Islanders. So, overall, maybe just simplify the primary a teeeny tiny bit and this will be a phenominal concept.

[sergeimakarenkov44]

Well, first off the logo is gorgeous. It's a little complicated for a hockey crest, but it's very clean and well done. For me, the secondary is a little confusing because of all the different elements. It's a secondary logo, though, so it's not too big of a deal to me. The sweaters are something that I don't like at the moment, but could grow on me. They feel cluttered to me with the way you've done the striping, although I like your idea of the descending dotted pattern.

I like the idea of the stitching because it's something I've seen on here a lot, but very often not well-executed. There are some aspects of the stitching idea I would rethink, though, such as the stitch pattern on the helmet and how complicated it is on the pants. Speaking of the pants, I like the idea of having the soccer element of numbers on the bottom right. I saw an idea someone posted on here about incorporating design elements of soccer in other uniforms. Inspired by that at all? Something else about the pants: I would maybe try to clean up the back plate. It sort of looks like it's in the front right now. Just a though.

Overall, I think the design is really, really good with a few nitpicks here and there and things you may want to clean up. Solid concept though.

[CJworks]

It's really good to see you back, elliot. Your concepts have definately had an influence on me, being the young designer that I am, because you always seem to go out of the usual and, like you intended, create a whole new style of design. The concepts section is definately more flooded with 'not well-thought-out design', if you will, than when I first joined the boards in June of '09. I always have been interested in design, and coming to the boards was, I'd say, one of the best ways for me to get into the buisness. I've started off slow, my first concept didn't get alot of praise, but the great C&C on these forums from experienced designers like elliot really pushed me through, and ended up changing the whole concept and IMO, made me put forth more effort. At the beginning of the year, I introduced my football league redesign, which was my 'entrance' into the designing buisiness. I've started putting forth TONS more effort in my concepts since then, and I believe I am one of the few designers here still putting effort in their work.

Elliot, I think you've been a REAL strong influence on here. I've seen alot of crazy concepts, some a bit controversial, but they HAVE been creative, and there WAS effort put in, and it's the thought that matters sometimes. It seems like the creativity aspect has rubbed off on some of the designers here, one of them being Lights Out. His MLB TATC uniforms had made me sit back and think a little, it made me critique less on the execution but more on the design aspect of it, and sometimes that could be the deciding factor. (Sorry for flooding up your concept, elliot )

Anyways, the concept is CRAZY. This new style/technique is really 'in your face' with all of these bold shapes, and I really like the look of it. However, the cons of this style is that you sometimes loose the detail that you usually need. For example: the anchor/secondary is hardly distinguishable, despite being really well thought out. It's hard to critique the design when you aren't really sure as to what it is, but I feel that if some detail was used it would create a figure, rather than a free-form shape. What I do like is the waves in the primary. This really looked good with the style you used; it's extremely simplified yet identifiable (nice color choice, by the way). The hockey stick shadow on the right looks odd, but if seems to fit in because I can recognise the pattern you used for the shading on the way up the tower, so I wouldn't mind it.

The uniforms, on the other hand, are out of this world. They are one of these ridiculous 'pro-combat' like styles, yet in this case, they can be respected. The fading dots look ridiculous (when I was scrolling down image by image, I saw the same fading dot pattern on the presentations you used, and hoped that you would use them before I even saw the uniforms) and I feel it compliments the concept really well; they sort of act like streams of light fading as you get further away. The numbers seem a little too soccer-ish, but I don't think it hinders the excellent design.

That's what I've got, take it as you wish.

[Canadian_Idiot]

The logos are fine, but those numbers are off the charts.

The colour layers are fine and all, but i think they'd be much more legible in a more traditional font.

And you don't even have to be super-traditional. Just something more.. legible i suppose. Does any of that make sense? Nice job so far.

[bohob]

Where do I start? This is great! I really like the primary logo, but it could use NEW YORK ISLANDERS under it. Speaking of the primary, it's very detailed, but it works well. Since you appear to be working in spot color, these logos would print as two ink colors, an economical aspect that I think helps. The secondary, while pretty good, I think could be more anchor-like, with the NY being developed in another way. The uniforms are great, I really like the World Cup influence: the breezer numbers and the patterns. My only two critiques I have are: 1) making the dot pattern squares to match the logo, and 2) reducing the inner stroke on the numbers to increase the readability. Overall this is a great concept. I look forward to your other work.

[SenatorJake]

Holy . This is so far ahead of what pro teams are doing right now. This is truly some visionnary you've unleashed upon us today.

[Has2916]

I`m probably going to be the bad guy here, but as a possible hockey logo I personally don`t think this will work. A lot of the good logos are simple (MTL, BOS, BUF, PHI, STL). The jerseys look good, but I think might only work as an alternate. Again, great jerseys are fairly simple.

As far as your dislike for the RBK Edge jersey system,

You wrote:

in the future, I don't really envision horizontal hem stripes being a thing. I also think most players will tuck in their jersey, so the horizontal stripe is useless.

and you put numbers on the front of the pants. All of those ideas I believe Reebok tried to introduce in the Edge system, but the NHL B.O.G. rejected it.

This is still a great looking design I just don`t think it`s a great hockey design. Then again reading some of the comments, my comments may be disregarded as I am not a designer.

[TopCat]

Wow elliott, this is amazing. But before I get to talking about this concept I just want to say that's it's great to see you putting out a new concept, this board has been missing people like you. I was actually going back and looking at your MLB rebrands the last couple weeks. Well anyway, the color choice here is great. The shades of blue and orange they use right now form one of the worst color combos in sports, I think. I love the way the light house pops out against the orange buildings. I also love the abstract-ness of the secondary, sports logos are getting really boring, and I applaud you for taking the time to think this one through and change it up, great job. Nothing to complain about on the uniforms, the dot fade on the sleeves looks, for lack of a better word, sick. This is some of the better work I have seen from you, which is pretty amazing considering how good your past concepts have been.

[darkhorse]

I actually took my own shot at updating the logo, as reaction to changing it has been harsh, yet some elements from the new logo a few years back got positive response.

[LMU]

While good, artistically, these are just way too busy to work in terms of embroidery and reproduction. With the primary, maybe consider dropping the light orange and using white more in terms of the highlighting. And with the secondary, definitely simplify it. As is, it kind of looks like an anchor, but the hockey stick in it makes the whole thing look awkward and out of balance, plus the shadow NY is just way too subtle to accomplish what you want it to.

[crashcarson15]

Oh man those are beautiful. The primary logo and the name and number fonts are beautiful. You've gotta keep them.

[elliott]

Allright guys, 17 comments already, you have no idea how happy i am that this is getting some interest and sparking some debate. I'm excited to share more with you and I'm also excited that this has generated some discussion, because obviously not everyone is going to like it, and that's a good thing. But it looks like you all are at least noticing the effort put forth on this concept, which I'm also happy about. I'll respond to some of your comments so you can get a better understanding of my thinking, hopefully.

@GFB, first let me say that your comments mean a lot man, you are one of those designers who I have always looked to for inspiration and for examples on good rendering and good designing in general. Now, to answer your question, I think I was really inspired here by modern, art deco type designs. I was touring a brand new house in Southern California and I was interested by its modern designs. I noticed simple, repeated patterns, and very good color balance throughout. I tried to recreate that in a sense with this concept, you can see repeated patterns in the skyscrapers windows and the dots on the uniforms, and you can see my usage of color balance because the uniforms exactly reflect the colors, and color arrangement, found in the logos. But yeah, I think mosaic is a good word to sum up this style, it's definitely not really something you see in sports logos today, and that's why I wanted to try it. When it comes to the time this concept took, it was the lengthiest in my "career", it took over a month from my original rendering until the finishing touches. This is a striking deviation from my usual style, for many of my MLB rebrands, I was inspired by something and quickly put down my ideas, but within a couple days I would be done. That's the best advice I can give to anyone younger than me, if you take your time and continually go back and attempt to perfect your work, it will turn out better, for sure.

@Lights Out, I agree with you in a sense, I could never see the Islanders wearing anything like this, quite honestly. But looking at your Miami concept, I could never see anything like that happening in real life, and I think, in both of these cases, the out of the box thinking is a good thing. Your Miami concept is good in the sense that no one has ever thought of it, and, although unrealistic, it is a true creative expression, which is what I think of my concept here as. So, to anyone else who says might think that this is unrealistic and would not work in the NHL.....that's kind of the point.

@BJB, believe it or not, I did put everything I did in the primary for a specific reason, for example, the light orange arc at the bottom of the primary is meant to mimic the light blue - navy contrast that you see right above on the wave, and it's also meant to give a little perspective so the circle isn't so flat. Now, you may just be right, a little simplification could help this out, as I believe simplicity is usually the best way to go, myself. Regarding the secondary, let me just flat out say that the secondary is in my opinion the weakest part of the concept as a whole, and I'm working on some new drafts of another. I went through about 10 drafts of the secondary before this final product you see here, but maybe it could use another 10, hah.

@sergei, yeah the part of the pants that you see is the front plate, I was trying to go with a new style of gurdle here, a prototype that we may see in the future. I might tweak this template a little, definitely, because it is the first time I have used it.

@CJayZ, I just read your comment a couple times, and first let me say, that was very well said. I appreciate the compliment and it has been rewarding for me to see your concepts in the past year, because I looked at your personal football league thread and some of the most recent concepts are absolutely amazing, so keep refining your skills because obviously you are a very good designer. You definitely nailed the thing about the dots, I tried to go for a fade that draws your eye downward. Finally, don't ever apologize for wordiness, haha, because just look at this post.

@Has2916, I would never disregard your comments man, that's not how I operate. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the edge system, I never have been, but I was going for a futuristic concept, and, like it or not, I think horizontal stripes will be a thing of the past in a few years, so I just tried to keep that in mind while designing this, I wasn't trying to emulate rbk designs, but instead think to the future and anticipate what is to come, if that makes any sense.

@TC, thanks for the compliments, yeah, I think the color choice here helps the concept out tremendously, otherwise, with the colors they use now, it would be too similar to any other islanders concept in terms of options of jersey design. I'm glad that you looked back at my mlb concepts because, although some are not that great, there is definitely some of my best work there, and it's unfortunate that I stopped that series after the most recent Rangers concept, which I feel was a failure. I do have like 5 more MLB rebrands that I never even released, maybe I will do that one of these days, but no one wants to hear about that on a hockey thread, so moving on.....

@LMU, yeah, the primary logo would have issues in reproduction, no doubt. The thing about the light orange is that i essentially used it INSTEAD of white, to try something new, and although some more white in the home jersey might brighten things up a little, I do feel that the jersey would lose a lot of its character, because as it is now, it's pretty interesting in terms of color balance, considering that most dark NHL jerseys do have much more white in them.

This has turned into quite the lengthy post, so I'll finish it by leaving you with 5 of the stages of the logo before I came to the final product, seen in the image furthest to the right. Keep the comments coming, I appreciate every one of them.

[hockey week]

I know I'm a n00b around here, but this logo just seems way too complicated. I think of all the kids who sit there drawing team logos in their school notebooks (i used to be one of them), and they'd have to automatically hate this concept.

The skyscraper background is simply too much, and two oranges AND two blues seems to be too many bumper stickers.

Personally, I think you should go back to that 2nd design, and maybe adjust the waves to look more like the final product OR take the light from the lighthouse in the final and attach it to the 2nd design.