White outlines

[leopard88]

Regarding vertical arch on players' names: it seems "professional" only in the technological sense. Artistically, it's a mess. A given letter has a different shape depending on where it falls in a guy's name and on how long the name is. To have each letter of the alphabet represented in a variety of shapes is chaotic, and so is unbecoming of a professional team.

This looks terrific. You're wrong.

How did I forget about the Red Wings?

You know, when I brought up the whole vertical arch stuff, I was specifically thinking of team names and wordmarks, not NOB. The Redwings' NOB is nice and I can't really picture them any other way. The problem with a radial arch on the NOB is you need to use smaller letters or you end up with this mess...

To be fair, Cincinnati used an ENORMOUS NOB font during that era. Hell, it's bigger than the wordmark.

Side note, imagine if Jarrod Saltalamacchia played in that uniform!

It was bad enough in this uniform --

[Sport]

With the Red having a red hat with only white lettering, the grey road uniforms need some sort of white in them, IMO. The white outline provided that rather nicely.

I think it works that way, but I also think you can balance the white mark on the cap with some white stripes on the socks, for example, if the lettering is only one color.

My point was, the Reds jerseys without the white outline in photographs and video look like the s****y jerseys at the store. When they added the white outlines to the city and numbers in 1988 it brought that entire uniform together. The white tied in with the white stripes on the sleeves, collars, cap logo, belt, pants stripe, and sanitary socks. It became a complete look at that point.

and it looked fantastic last year when they wore it in Philadelphia

Tackle twill has enough heft, it just looks worse (IMO of course) without the white outline.

I don't think it works as well as you think it does for two reasons: 1. The scale/weight relationships of the white areas don't work very well together. 2. The white in the stripes is surrounded by red, while the white in the lettering bleeds out into the grey, creating a dissonant color relationship. I think the white outline on the lettering would work better if there was more solid white trim elsewhere on the uniform bleeding into the grey field, whether that means flipping the red and white on the jersey trim and shrinking the white down to the proper scale, or just using white trim on the jersey instead of red and white (which is unbelievably rare).

Now, consider this: If you were to remove the white trim from the lettering in the above image, you create great relationships. The weight of the lettering matches up nicely with the thinner red stripes around the collar and sleeves, while the weight of the numerals matches up well with the thicker stripes in the belt. Finally, the white in the jersey trims never looks misplaced because it is balanced by the color relationship of the cap (the white mark surrounded by the red field matches up well with the white stripes surrounded by red stripes, actually in both color and weight).

I understand your science and 99% of the time I'd agree, but I don't buy in in this case. I prefer the white outlines.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

Regarding vertical arch on players' names: it seems "professional" only in the technological sense. Artistically, it's a mess. A given letter has a different shape depending on where it falls in a guy's name and on how long the name is. To have each letter of the alphabet represented in a variety of shapes is chaotic, and so is unbecoming of a professional team.

This looks terrific. You're wrong.

You know how some people (including me) are annoyed at the two different shapes of the numbers on the new Vikings uniforms? Well, likewise, the sight of the the two different shapes of the E's in the pictured player's name makes me itch.

[Korkie]

I feel the White Sox and Yankees are the only ones who benefit from the white outline. I think it provides balance to the jerseys since the cap logo is white on a dark background with no other colors. The Phillies' and Tigers' road outlines are ugly and unneeded. I wouldn't mind a think white outline on the Phillies roads, like on the numbers, for the same reason I like the White Sox's and Yankees' unis.