Rockford Blackhawks

[The_Admiral]

I loathe the IceHogs identity, as a few people may have picked up on at one point or another. It served its purpose as a UHL team, but it's far too minor-league whimsy for an organization that takes its developmental pipeline rather seriously. With that in mind, I'd really just prefer they take the name of the parent team. Being in northern Illinois, they're still very much in Black Hawk territory, so it wouldn't be as incongruous as renaming, say, the old Norfolk affiliate.

I guess the aesthetic I'd like to see is one of a college team, the idea being that the AHL team is post-secondary education for aspiring Blackhawks. So with that in mind, the sweaters would be the parent team's white and black with the Indian Head off the front in exchange for an arched "ROCKFORD" script and a number, the crest being something you earn later. The red sweater that everyone loves so is thus limited only to people who make it to the NHL, and will have no inferior, non-Indian Head version.

Lettering is all in Berthold City for continuity with the parent club.

With no plans to use it as a crest, and not wanting to just slap the script over the Indian Head (that would be so Vancouver), coming up with a primary was tough. Rockford isn't really rife with local iconography, but I did the best I could.

Obviously it's built on the WInter Classic crest, but with Berthold City again. That's a pretty faithful rendering of the Jefferson Street Bridge at the bottom, which is the closest thing to an iconic bridge in a city that straddles a large river and thus ought to have a few significant bridges. I took a cue from the Springfield Cardinals, a favorite logo of mine, to cobble together some sort of local skyline. The first building is a generic building. The second is the Coronado Theater -- every mid-sized city in northern Illinois seems to have a fancy old theater that hit the skids and was lovingly restored. Waukegan has the Genesee, Joliet has the Rialto, Woodstock has the Opera House, and Rockford has this. There's probably one in Elgin, too. The third is the Swedish American Hospital. The fourth is the Amerock Building. More importantly, they're colored in the pattern of the feathers from the Indian Head (with the Swedish one getting the blue/yellow feather, natch). This could be on one of the shoulders with the genuine Indian Head on the other, but I'd kinda rather just have the Indian Head on both shoulders and relegate this to center ice and official stuff.

This concept kinda sucks, but Rockford kinda sucks, and the IceHogs really suck, so I still see it as a marginal improvement.

[Kevin W.]

I'll save the SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEYs for when you do the jerseys. I really like where this is going.

[The_Admiral]

There's no jersey to do, though, really, and I don't have an Edge template. I mean, I could just slap them on an nhluniforms.com template in the meantime.

Oh, I just realized, I could have used the Clock Tower in lieu of Generic Building. I wish I could have used a Beef-a-Roo.

[Kevin W.]

Oh, my mistake. Uh, well, the identity is great anyway.

[Mings]

Rockford does suck.

[WNDUP FX]

My suggestion would be to look at the design style of the Blackhawks logo and apply the shading techniques used within it. It's one of the best logos in all of sports for its simplicity and this logo is a decent start, but can be greatly improved upon.

[FGM13]

I'ts actually not bad.