Did the New Jersey Nets tease their Brooklyn logo?

[DC in Da House w/o a Doubt]

Boring logo and ultra boring colors. I don't hate the logo, but there is definitely nothing worth liking about it.

[waltere]

This may actually be the weakest, laziest 'logo' in pro sports history

[truepg]

Twitter leak

W...T...F!

Are you *censored*ing kidding me? Unbelievable.

Edit: We can only hope this is a secondary logo.

[goforbroke]

That logo has all the personality of kris humphries.

[Chawls]

Let's not go down that road. The guy is still a professional and none of us were privy to the process he went through on his end, how much he got/gets paid, etc. You don't get to work on projects of this magnitude by accident. You can't knock the effort that people put into their work. Everyone wants their work to succeed, especially as a designer. I assure you it wasn't phoned in, no matter how much you want to believe it.

Judging by the guy's portfolio it would seem he owes his entire career to being friends with Jay-Z. So this is basically Jay-Z giving his buddy a job rather than seeking out the absolute best designer/company for the job.

I hope he's got some thick skin because if that's the logo I the design community is going to come down hard on him when it's officially unveiled.

Co-sign.

You think he'll end up getting more heat than you did for the buffaslug, kpbl_design?

[IceCap]

With all due respect to kpbl, the buffaslug was criticized by everyone, not just those in the industry. Everyone disliked it, because it missed the mark that badly.

This? It's bland, boring, unoriginal, overly-simplistic, and generic. It's not bad enough to get enough people to dislike it enough to force a change in a few years. Most people (ie not logo nerds like us or professional designers) will just look at it, shrug, and go on ignoring it.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

If this is it, I like it. It's simple and clean. A kid can draw it on his notebook. (Note: this is a good thing.) Some have complained that it's a B in a basketball. So? The Packers' logo is a G in a football. Considering that I had been fearing all kinds of atrocities (swooshes, gradients, faux-3D, bevels, motion lines), this design is a relief. The last time I expressed these fears, Andrew Harrington told me "I think you'll be happy." So far, it looks like he's right.

(He also said that he himself didn't like the logo: "The idea and direction is nice, but they didn't come together into a professional-looking graphic identity...")

For my money, the shield and wordmark show nice continuity with the current logo, whose only problem was its faux-3D. I once imagined a straightened-out verion of it:

The leaked logo is the next step. Good job.

I hope the unis have the same traits: that they also will be simple and clean, and that they'll show some continuity from the current set.

[tBBP]

Let's hit this off here.

First...are we absolutely sure that this is actually black & not some super-dark half-past-midnight navy color or something? (It'd make sense, as it would tie in with Yankees...and we all know how much Hov loves him some all-blue Yankee.)

Second...I'm gonna try to put myself in the mindset of the braintrust here. I'm gonna guess they were going for something simple and potentially iconic?again, drawing from the aura of the Yankees. That being the case, there's something to be said for the barebones simplicity of this. The font choice isn't bad, and appears to have staying power i.e. no wuirky serifs, indents, outlines and such?I think that it'd actually look really good in a basketball uniform in a one-color application. And truth be told, it is a tight comp?there's really no wasted space here. And, as far as functionality goes, it does exactly what it needs to do?identifies the team and (somewhat to a lesser extent) the locale. In that regard, the logo succeeds.

Now, outside of all that, here's the problem I see here: the overall style and inherent subtleties are more indicative of a professional corporate identity rather than a professional sports identity, at least in the vein of what most of us see and expect of a pro sports identity, that being heavier line weights, bolder type/letters, thicker keylines, more expressive rendering angles and such. This logo does none of that?it has thinner, more consistent line weights and much lighter type. [EDIT: after looking at that ball again, it appears the lines are not as consistent as I thought, which now bugs the living hell out of me.) And once you factor in the overarching fact that the name "BROOKLYN" alone carries more weight than any visual interpretation of the identity ever could, then the logo doesn't need to be all that expressive. And when you really get down to the barebones basics of it all, that's really all a logo is?an icon.

Now, I know that most of this flies in the face of most of our creative artistic spirits, which in reality is why many are pissed off at this solution. But see, there's an essential difference between being an artist and being a designer: as an artist, you can allow all of whatever creativity you have within you to display itself on the canvas, and it becomes an artistic representation of you or whatever emotion(s) you wish to convey, because as an artist, you create for yourself. On the other hand, while design pulls from artistic ability, it also factors in this primary characteristic: to identify/represent a company or business; said another way, as a designer, you create for someone else. Yes, there's varying degrees of artistry in that, but the challenge is channeling that artistry to best convey the function, and there's all kinds of variables involved in that process?one of whichthe is learning how to check your creative ego at the door. So, to that end, whether the guy who did this got the job by association or not, he still had to understand this process, factor in the company's intent or overall vision, and use his artistry/technical skills (one of, by the way, should be process of elimination) to come up with the simplest yet most disctinctive solution to satisfy the company, in this case the Nets franchise.

So I say all that to say this: there is room in the sports design business for identities such as this, even if for no better reason than to balance extremes (super-expressive versus super-simple, and the varying degrees between the extremes). And at that thought, I leave you with this: if this and the new Marlins identity have taught us anything, its that the landscape of what we see and knoe of sports design may be breaking out of the box a bit, and changing right before our very eyes.

[SCL]

This isn't bad because it's simple it's bad because the B and basketball below the word Nets look like they were assembled off of a clip art program; this coming from someone who loves the crests of European football. The Marlins M is simplistic, unique and identifiable unlike this logo.

[kpbl_design]

Let's not go down that road. The guy is still a professional and none of us were privy to the process he went through on his end, how much he got/gets paid, etc. You don't get to work on projects of this magnitude by accident. You can't knock the effort that people put into their work. Everyone wants their work to succeed, especially as a designer. I assure you it wasn't phoned in, no matter how much you want to believe it.

Judging by the guy's portfolio it would seem he owes his entire career to being friends with Jay-Z. So this is basically Jay-Z giving his buddy a job rather than seeking out the absolute best designer/company for the job.

I hope he's got some thick skin because if that's the logo I the design community is going to come down hard on him when it's officially unveiled.

Co-sign.

You think he'll end up getting more heat than you did for the buffaslug, kpbl_design?

I kinda figured I'd catch heat for my commentary... but fack it, here we go:

To answer your question, probably not. What I worked on was such a drastic departure from what the fans truly wanted, and to say it was "experimental" would be an understatement.

On the other hand, this Nets logo is uninspired to say the least... it's vanilla, boring, and borderline corporate. This was a huge opportunity to kick in the door and knock everyone on their a$$, but instead, it's like opening up a Christmas present to discover a pair of Voits ... cool if you don't know any better, but if you do, it's worthy of the big NAH BUDDY!

I believe I can speak on the Nets project because I participated in the early development of the identity, and believe me, there was some great stuff that came out of early rounds.

[GFB]

I believe I can speak on the Nets project because I participated in the early development of the identity, and believe me, there was some great stuff that came out of early rounds.

Don't do this to me, you :censored:ing design tease.

[rosstaylor24]

i cleaned up the twitter photo. It's ok in my opinion, could have been a bit better.

[whchoclte]

As a designer born and raised in brooklyn I have to say im totally disappointed in the outcome.

The owner paints himself on a billboard across from MSg and then decides this is the boldest statement you can make. You can create an iconic mark without making it ultra simple.

I see the Nets trying to emulate the Yankees. Their B and Basketball is their take on the classic NY. Maybe put the B and basektball on everything and it becomes a brand. JZ made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can as he states. Issue is the Nets are like the Mets. They are playing second fiddle in NY so I dont know how being iconic will work up against the Knicks.

I did this a few years back and figured i would do quick update to see if i could juice it up a bit. You can do the B and ball but think there just could be more.

[29texan]

Guys, I highly doubt that's the final logo.

Chill.....

[dolfan13]

As a designer born and raised in brooklyn I have to say im totally disappointed in the outcome.

The owner paints himself on a billboard across from MSg and then decides this is the boldest statement you can make. You can create an iconic mark without making it ultra simple.

I see the Nets trying to emulate the Yankees. Their B and Basketball is their take on the classic NY. Maybe put the B and basektball on everything and it becomes a brand. JZ made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can as he states. Issue is the Nets are like the Mets. They are playing second fiddle in NY so I dont know how being iconic will work up against the Knicks.

I did this a few years back and figured i would do quick update to see if i could juice it up a bit. You can do the B and ball but think there just could be more.

That's actually pretty good. I especially like the black/pewter(?) one. Is that Ebbets Field along the rim or is it supposed to be the Brooklyn Bridge? Personally, I don't think "Nets" carries as much brand potential as "Brooklyn" and so I thought the focal point of the new logo should be around Brooklyn. What the single, still-standing, most iconic imagery of Brooklyn? The bridge. Why is it nowhere to be found in the leaked image?

Also, the symmetry of the basketball in your logo makes it fit more than the basketball in the leaked image. It just seems forced, even moreso with that block B plastered on top of it.

[BrandMooreArt]

As a designer born and raised in brooklyn I have to say im totally disappointed in the outcome.

The owner paints himself on a billboard across from MSg and then decides this is the boldest statement you can make. You can create an iconic mark without making it ultra simple.

I see the Nets trying to emulate the Yankees. Their B and Basketball is their take on the classic NY. Maybe put the B and basektball on everything and it becomes a brand. JZ made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can as he states. Issue is the Nets are like the Mets. They are playing second fiddle in NY so I dont know how being iconic will work up against the Knicks.

I did this a few years back and figured i would do quick update to see if i could juice it up a bit. You can do the B and ball but think there just could be more.

thats good work. well done sir

the thing about this Nets logo is it totally lacks personality. i always say the difference between simple and boring is that simple is affective. this is just boring. the color palette, styling (ball) and font choices are a total snooze fest. you know why people use Helvetica and other grotesk san-serifs? because they're flexible and non intrusive. they're robotic because they dont have any personality. they just get a job done. it's fine if theres something else to grab onto, something emotional or memerable (like whchoclte's work above) but there isnt here.

[scottysprings]

Damn, I love those logos, whchoclte.

[tron1013]

Guys, I highly doubt that's the final logo.

Chill.....

How could it end up on licensed apparel if it is unofficial? Anyone else find it interesting that the Nets, the second fiddle in the NYC NBA market, appear to be consciously coping the color scheme of the White Sox, the second fiddle MLB team in the Chicago market? Or that the color scheme the ChiSox ditched for black and white is somewhat similar to the Nets soon-to-be jilted colors?

[raysox]

Honestly, I hate it. There was really never a step in the design process that looks halfway decent. It's SOOOOOO boring.

[TampaBayEverybodyLovesRays]

As a lifelong New Jersey Nets fan, this logo makes me sad. At least they're still called the Nets