What If?: the North American Premier League

[The Imperfect]

So this is the current version of my What If? series based around the American Soccer League. Near the same point (to be determined later) at which British soccer was introduced to the English Premier League, the ASL would switch to a relegation and promotion system using two associations to operate on American soil, the premier league being the North American Premier League, and the organization a step below the NAPL, the American Soccer Conference (ASC), which by 2012 would feature 20 teams of their own, while the NAPL would stick similar to the EPL and consist of 20 teams as well.

But there is one team which has never been relegated, and that would be the most successful club in American soccer history, Bethlehem Steel F.C.

I may or may not write a history of the club, but that would probably be more fit once I finish my records and go deeper into the years with my other thread. But for now I wanted to start pumping out modern day kits for my ASL/NAPL teams, starting with Bethlehem Steel F.C.

[cornettored]

The home and clash does give out that tradition that Bethlehem would be known for. Just a few suggestions:

1. Pick one pair of shorts for the home/clash. I suggest a mashup of the two, combining the clash shorts with the BSFC crest on the front

2. The secondary and tertiary logos look too similar to the Red Sox. An "F" and "C" on opposite sides of the B could be very classy and timeless for me anyway.

3. Making the sponsor gray hides it from the jersey to an extent. White for home, black for the clash.

4. The sponsor itself (bear with me, as it really isn't about the design of it at all). Bethlehem Steel was a company, and they directly funded the team. It's a what if scenario, so lets say Beth. Steel was still in business. It wouldn't have had to declare bankruptcy, and sell its remaining properties to ISC, meaning that Beth. Steel woudn't have been part of Mittal Steel, and later on Arcelor-Mittal.

Long story short: If Beth Steel is in existence, I would assume they would still be in operation of the team. Ergo, I would like to see no sponsor, and maybe have the Bethlehem Steel wordmark on the third, albeit more compact on the other two jerseys instead. (unless for course, Arcelor-Mittal allows the Beth. Steel name to stay as a heritage thing. In that case forget number four )

The inspiration is there and I am eagerly waiting some other ASL teams like the Fall River Marksmen or the New York Giants. Also interested in the integration of the MLS clubs.

[McCall]

Thats the Brooklyn Dodgers B. Don't think a soccer team in Bethlehem, PA would be allowed to use it. I'd create a different, more custom B.

[illwauk]

I don't have anything to add, but I'm definitely looking forward to this series!

Any chance we could see a list of the teams you plan to do?

[The Imperfect]

The home and clash does give out that tradition that Bethlehem would be known for. Just a few suggestions:

1. Pick one pair of shorts for the home/clash. I suggest a mashup of the two, combining the clash shorts with the BSFC crest on the front

2. The secondary and tertiary logos look too similar to the Red Sox. An "F" and "C" on opposite sides of the B could be very classy and timeless for me anyway.

3. Making the sponsor gray hides it from the jersey to an extent. White for home, black for the clash.

4. The sponsor itself (bear with me, as it really isn't about the design of it at all). Bethlehem Steel was a company, and they directly funded the team. It's a what if scenario, so lets say Beth. Steel was still in business. It wouldn't have had to declare bankruptcy, and sell its remaining properties to ISC, meaning that Beth. Steel woudn't have been part of Mittal Steel, and later on Arcelor-Mittal.

Long story short: If Beth Steel is in existence, I would assume they would still be in operation of the team. Ergo, I would like to see no sponsor, and maybe have the Bethlehem Steel wordmark on the third, albeit more compact on the other two jerseys instead. (unless for course, Arcelor-Mittal allows the Beth. Steel name to stay as a heritage thing. In that case forget number four )

The inspiration is there and I am eagerly waiting some other ASL teams like the Fall River Marksmen or the New York Giants. Also interested in the integration of the MLS clubs.

I appreciate the comment so here is my response...

1. I may go ahead with this proposal and will take the time to see if I like the idea of combining the two shorts.

2. I really don't like this argument because Bethlehem had been rockin' the old-school B before the Red Sox had, and I don't see why two teams in North America could use the same old-school B when Boston and Brooklyn were doing it at the same time, in the same sport. I know it's Brooklyn's B and I may try to change it up a bit, but my Photoshop skills are sub-par when it comes to vectoring. The F and C on the side does sound pretty sexy so I'll give it a whirl in my laboratory.

3. I way thinking of making all sponsors faded into the jerseys because it's kind of a mix of having the sponsors there, like association football has evolved into, but also keeping it classy faded into the jerseys keeping true to the American-way of not having sponsors on the jerseys. But we'll see what I decide to go with, cause faded in sponsors might not look to hot on all the kits.

4. ArcelorMittal is actually the company which succeeded Bethlehem Steel company, but I like the idea of not having a sponsor at all, one of the true classy-things about Bethlehem Steel F.C. that is still around in a modern-world of super-sponsored soccer. This is another suggestion I will get around to messing with when I get down to it, and I appreciate all the comments and am as excited as you are!

I don't have anything to add' date=' but I'm definitely looking forward to this series!

Any chance we could see a list of the teams you plan to do?[/quote']

I might post a list of teams but I know that posting lists of teams leads to massive speculation in threads blowing them up to debates over team names and whether this city or that city should have a team. I will probably go down a timeline of teams in order to reveal their modern look in the same order as when they began as a franchise.

[cornettored]

3. I way thinking of making all sponsors faded into the jerseys because it's kind of a mix of having the sponsors there, like association football has evolved into, but also keeping it classy faded into the jerseys keeping true to the American-way of not having sponsors on the jerseys. But we'll see what I decide to go with, cause faded in sponsors might not look to hot on all the kits.

That is very clever. The only snag is that advertisements are meant to advertize obliviously. A sponsor that is not readable by its customers, defeats the purpose of advertising it in the first place. Like I said, it's unique way to get around the sponsor issue.

[BigRed618]

Very amazing work. Seeing this sorta makes me wish the team really did survive all these decades and then joined the MLS when they started. Like a derby team to the Union since Bethlehem and Philly are practically next door to eachother.

[The Imperfect]

I'm in the process of working on Scottish Rose F.C., by record the oldest club in North American history. While working on the home kit, I'm at a block for which way to go with these rose flowers I've added on the bottom of the jersey to give the kit some more flare and personality. The only problem is I can't decide whether to fade the roses or have them at a full white...so please I need some opinions on this!

Option #1

Option #2

Also, I've decided to have the logos at a full opacity and color, only because something just doesn't feel right when the sponsor on the front isn't at full opacity...

[cornettored]

I would choose option 2. It seems that the stems in option one blend into the side stripes.

[The Imperfect]

As I await for a few more opinions, which I'm feeling is going to lean toward option #2, here is the finished logo identity for Scottish Rose F.C....

[Sport Billy]

Here is a team photo showing the "B" they used:

[BigRed618]

Beautiful crest for the Scots. Same goes for the SR monogram on the jerseys. Also I think Option 2 looks best with the subliminated roses. There would be some people who would think decorating your jersey with flowers is a silly idea, so at least this way the design doesn't draw more attention than they need to.

[The Imperfect]

When I posted their logo identity I messed up on two things I decided I wanted to change later. I've decided to have Scottish Rose in East Rutherford presuming they would move from the very small town of Kearny, NJ where they began as the Kearny Scots, a dominate immigrant team from the early ASL days, to the new Giants Stadium of 1976. The stadium would break ground in time for the football season, while Scottish Rose F.C. began play in March of 1977. Also, I've switched the third team color from green to gold since I decided to go with a gold kit instead of a green clash kit.

Also, my computer crashed when I was working on posting this in a new template. My future concepts will be on a template similar to the one in the logo identity design of the one above, but before I could finish my stupid computer overheated (happens often), and I've been forced to red X out the previous location I had, and override it with East Rutherford, NJ. Oh well.

Enjoi

[The Imperfect]

A preview for the next club...Fall River F.C.

[Raymie]

I would hardly call that orange, but oh well, that's semantics.

[The Imperfect]

So guess what!

I FINALLY figured out the correct way of using the pen tool in Photoshop, and this is expanded my designing abilities by ten-fold, and am now super-duper excited to see if I can finish this project. I was working on logos for New York Giants, and came up with a final bunch. I found inspiration in this Brooklyn Dodgers logo, and decided to do something with the Manhattan Bridge to give the team a real logo instead of just using the interlocking NY which I had to use as their secondary logo. I found a good image of what I was looking for, and vectored the bridge, and walla! My first real logo using the pen tool correctly! I also re-vectored the old New York Giants interlocking NY stamp, and created a wordmark.

Thoughts?

[The Imperfect]

Here's two more identities I have worked on and perhaps completed.

The first is Queens City Club based out of Queens, NY, who, despite having been apart of the ASL and NAPL since the ASL's reopening in 1946, have never won a North American soccer title. But 2012 would be the year things change, as they would mirror the real-life season of the EPL team Manchester United, who would win their first EPL title in dramatic fashion, after years of struggle and millions spent to make it happen. Foreign Saudi-Arabian investors would take over a struggling QCC in 2004, and would eventually build an NAPL championship team in eight years.

I knew I was never going to change their logo ever since I first thought of it, and figured it to be as timeless and classy as the interlocking letters of other American sports teams such as the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, and scores of other teams. And I've only given them a two-color identity scheme, their tone of red and the league-standard white, a color-combination they've had since day one and never changed.

While I see QCC as a model of timelessness within the league, given their identity, I wanted it to be in an ironic way since they haven't even won a league title in 65 years, but would finally get it done the year of this concept, but in a way that is the most modern in professional soccer ownership.

Buffalo F.C. is the second team I created, although I can see myself coming up with a secondary logo and tertiary logo as well, but the primary logo was hard enough work for me. I have never taken on such a feat with my previously cited enlightenment when it came to using the pen tool and creating vector images in photoshop. But with this series I wanted to test my limits, and decided to go with a bold move creating a stand-alone buffalo image, on my own. This image would serve as inspiration for my buffalo, and with some research figured it was a unique approach to doing a buffalo logo. I worked from the back-leg to the front, and found myself struggling with the facial features, and notice there is a huge difference between how I feel looking at the logo in photoshop, and how I feel before I'm about to show the world. If anyone could help me finish the face is great detail, please do, because I spent some time looking at other buffalo logos to get an idea without full-blast copying what another artist did. The eyes have been the hardest part, so I left them out for now, not to mention I like the dark look of no eyes. Should I add some eyes? If so any ideas of how to incorporate them? Or is the face on that buffalo down there just dandy?

Definitely looking for some feedback on that buffalo logo, cause I spent some time on that thing and wanna make it look great.

[BigRed618]

I just now remembered this thread, and came back to see what happened. Queens looks amazing, and as for the Buffalo logo, I would make the horns a little bit longer, and definitely add some eyes. Other than that, I think it looks good.