NHL: Defunct Franchise Redesigns

[airmerz]

dgnmrwrw-

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. Really like your work. I run a fantasy football league that is 17 years old now and has a group of owners that take their teams very serious. We have a team called the Berserkers Gridiron Club that (obviously) has a Vikings theme to it, and I think your Nordiques concept would be perfect for them. Obviously, I don't want to step on anyone's toes or use anyone's work without permission, so I was just wondering how you would feel about a fantasy team using your artwork for their brand? There is no real money in our league, but would be willing to work out some kind of fair compensation for you - especially if you were willing to do a mock-up of that concept in a football uniform configuration. Anyway, if you are at all interested, my e-mail is airmerz@yahoo.com and I would love to discuss it further with you. And CJworks, if you're out there and interested, I'd love to talk to you, as well. Very impressed with your My Personal Football League thread...

Great job, guys!

[north dakota]

Amazing job on the Quakers concept. I love the wordmark on the alternate.

[Has2916]

Quakers is the best yet! Great job on the third jersey. The logo is excellent, I can't quite determine whether it would be accepted in the NHL or if it is too minor league style. I also really like the numbers on the back of the home and roads!

[mbannon92]

Another fantastic concept! The logos are INCREDIBLY well done...that mammoth is ridiculous. I also really like the color scheme and the uniform design. Not much else to say here except great job!

[JackFr]

The concept is a bit minor league, and the black on the jersey looks like brown for some reason. Other than that great rendering.

[santoleri3]

Seems to be a lot of negative space between the front leg and the tusk. I love the logos, and would have loved to see your take on a more traditional Quaker logo. Never enough wooly Mammoth logos, though, ha ha.

I love this series. And I don't mind at all "tarting up" these unis with piping... I mean, they ARE dead franchises, right? Had they stuck around, who knows what they might have come up with.

[KCScout76]

The Quakers Unis and Logo are absolutely stunning! Awesome concept!

[Morgan33]

I've spoken about this before, but people still keep complaining about the use of piping, so let me address it again. (And I invite anyone who has nothing more to post than their hatred of piping to post on other designers' threads, informing them how nice it is not to see that dreaded piping.) I actually like piping, if it serves a useful purpose. I think it can add forms, motion, and depth that traditional striping simply cannot create. You may not like the look piping creates, but to imply that it does "nothing to enhance the sweater" is simply wrong.

Yes it serves a useful purpose of making the jerseys look like futurisitic abominations of Gary Bettman's NHL. Until Reebok decided to take a **** on a decade of hockey tradition three years ago when they unveiled the modern day equivalent to Cooperalls, you may remember that zero teams in the NHL used piping. And yes I am implying that it does nothing to enhance the sweater because all it does is convolute the design. In just about every case we've seen, Piping looks like a tacked on afterthought added to round out designs that are awful to begin with. "This striping pattern doesn't work at all so why not add some arbitrary thin lines to the front that are barely visible from a distance."

In this case, the piping allows me to terminate the chest striping (which I needed to do, as I didn't want it to wrap all the way around behind, interfering with the back numbers) and the sleeve striping (same situation), leaving sleeves that are mostly clean white (or burgundy).

Having a chest stripe that ends abruptly for no other reason than the nearly invisible piping that lines it looks ridiculous. If you wanted a chest stripe at the front and not the back, at least make it span the whole front and end it at the side.

It also allowed me to create a running motif of thin orange forms, which unify the logos, the piping, the striping, the pants stripe, and even unify the primary uniforms with the alternate uniform via that pants striping. This simply cannot be done (certainly not as effectively) with flat, straight stripes that wrap around the sleeves and chest. Piping is simply another tool in the designer's arsenal that has its own unique advantages and--I'm perfectly willing to admit--disadvantages.

Now piping is a "motif." Please. Its a lazy fill to justify a design that doesn't work. If you look at those jerseys from a distance the first thing you notice are the bold chest and sleeve stripes. But instead of having them wrap all the way around and creating a consistant look, they've been chopped, skewed and lined with piping you cant even see from a distance making it look even more incongruent. The design doesnt work. Period. No amount of piping will fix that.

The look would be completely different (and in my opinion, much flatter and much more static) without the carefully employed piping. Maybe you (and others) would like that basic, traditional, and (in my opinion) utterly uninspired look better.

Right any jersey that doesnt use piping is uninspired... Well Im very impressed with your ability to pass off arbitrary thin lines as inspiration.

[RuffDawg]

Morgo, you act as if piping kicked your dog, burned down your house and f***ed your mom. Unlike Cooperalls, nobody's ever suffered an injury thanks to piping and its usefulness has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with aesthetics, so your comparison makes no sense. Some people like piping, some people don't. dgnmrwrw does, you don't. He's doing the concept, you're not. We get that you don't like it, but it's kinda weak to undermine the creativity used in this concept series with comments like:

Well Im very impressed with your ability to pass off arbitrary thin lines as inspiration.

Bottom line, your criticism is nonconstructive and adds nothing to the thread. I also find it ironic that someone who talks about styling and taking a dump all over tradition has three of the NHL's most garish non-third jerseys of all time in his signature.

[Morgan33]

Morgo, you act as if piping kicked your dog, burned down your house and f***ed your mom. Unlike Cooperalls, nobody's ever suffered an injury thanks to piping and its usefulness has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with aesthetics, so your comparison makes no sense. Some people like piping, some people don't. dgnmrwrw does, you don't. He's doing the concept, you're not. We get that you don't like it, but it's kinda weak to undermine the creativity used in this concept series with comments like:

Well Im very impressed with your ability to pass off arbitrary thin lines as inspiration.

Bottom line, your criticism is nonconstructive and adds nothing to the thread. I also find it ironic that someone who talks about styling and taking a dump all over tradition has three of the NHL's most garish non-third jerseys of all time in his signature.

Your right that comment was mean spirited and non constructive and I apoligize. But I was simply making a point that adding piping to jerseys in itself is not new, original or inspired. If you can say that thick traditional horizontal striping is ininspired you can say the same about piping. Oh and if you want to talk about jersey designs that are original, inspired and creative, look no further than the "garish" jerseys in my sig. Those are jerseys with actual Motif's and originality. The southwestern striping of Coyotes, the Wave striping of the Islanders and the way Buffalo horns are incorporated into to the striping of Sabres Red and Black. Those were original designs. Nobody had seen jerseys like those in the league before and whether you like them or not you should at least appreciate that they had the balls to think outside of the box and make something truly original.

[omnivore]

I didn't really like the Nordiques at all for reasons stated previously -- I just don't think it was believable, whereas your others have been -- but that Quakers uni is really creative and imaginative and I love what you did with it. Neat idea. The only thing I'd have done is find a way to keep their original colors somehow, because putting them in blue just didn't do much for me. Still, a well thought out idea and fun to see.

[RuffDawg]

Your right that comment was mean spirited and non constructive and I apoligize. But I was simply making a point that adding piping to jerseys in itself is not new, original or inspired. If you can say that thick traditional horizontal striping is ininspired you can say the same about piping. Oh and if you want to talk about jersey designs that are original, inspired and creative, look no further than the "garish" jerseys in my sig. Those are jerseys with actual Motif's and originality. The southwestern striping of Coyotes, the Wave striping of the Islanders and the way Buffalo horns are incorporated into to the striping of Sabres Red and Black. Those were original designs. Nobody had seen jerseys like those in the league before and whether you like them or not you should at least appreciate that they had the balls to think outside of the box and make something truly original.

Point taken. Personally, I like most of the outside-the-box 1990s jerseys anyway (I own several), but they definitely weren't to everyone's tastes. I'm wondering now when the piping craze took off and who started it, because it must have begun as an outside-the-box design that caught on so well it became decadent after a while... something the Coyotes' southwestern striping never did.

[SenatorJake]

I don't understand how anybody can come in here and bash such a glorious thread.

Haters will go on hating, I suppose.

[aci]

I have to say, you really went out of the box with these Quakers designs, and it paid off. The unis look great, the colours look great, and the logo is awesome. It does look pretty minor-league, but I seem to recall the Columbus Blue Jackets having an electric green cartoon wasp in their original logo, so I wouldn't say it's a problem.

Only suggestion I have is far less white on that blue jersey.

[Jahgee]

I'm hoping you'll make more if I bump it up from the depths of the ccslc concepts forums

so BUMP!!!

[airmerz]

GOOD CALL, JAHGEE! BUMP!!!

[JamieRose]

I'm hoping you'll make more if I bump it up from the depths of the ccslc concepts forums

so BUMP!!!

He won't. In fact, it'll be out of spite. You have just ruined it for all of us.

[OUSooners]

Great work!

[dgnmrwrw]

Wow. I've been incredibly busy the past month or so and had forgotten about this, and the fact that I never posted the final concept. So maybe it's a good thing it got bumped. I'll get the 16th and final team up asap.

[dgnmrwrw]

#16: Pittsburgh Pirates

Pittsburgh, PA // Relocated 1930

Pretty simple stuff conceptually: it's an easy name to work with. The biggest change is the color scheme. I wanted to do something different than black and yellow, both for uniqueness in the league and to differentiate from the Pens. So the new scheme is black, gray, silver, and red. I wanted red to be more of an accent color, and tried to use it accordingly in the logos and uniforms.

The home and road uniforms feature paired gray and silver stripes, with a black buffer and red edges. The thin red look is continued through the logos, numbers, striping, and (yes) piping. The shoulder patch is obvious (and probably too similar to the Hurricanes' shoulder logo to actually fly in the real world): a tattered pirate flag on a hockey stick, which kinda forms a rough P-shape.

I went with a gray alternate sweater. The crest is a skull-and-crossbones, with hockey sticks formed by the bones. I know some people won't like it or will say it looks "dirty" or "washed out." (I got similar comments for the Hamilton gray unis.) To me, gray is an under-used color, and I really like the look of the interaction between thick black striping, thin red striping, and the gray field. The shoulder patch is a simple P with a cutlass through it.

So that's it for the series. Thanks to everyone who's followed it and commented. Happy new year, all.