Opinion BY Armin

Royal All-Stars

With less than thirty days since the last All-Star Game for the Major League Baseball (MLB) was played in Phoenix Arizona — National League won — the league and the host team of the 2012 All-Star Game, the Kansas City Royals, have unveiled the logo for next year’s “Midsummer Classic”. According to our archives we haven’t covered an MLB All-Star game since 2007 so just to fill you in, the first image you’ll see is a recap.

The logo suggests the recognizable shield shape of the famous Kauffman video board [above], and is topped with a gold crown bearing the year “2012.”
— Press Release

Will it embroider? Yes!

Will it, um, encoin? No! (And, yes, I know the correction question would be “Will it etch?” but I just wanted to try it out the word “encoin”. Abraham Lincoln, for example, encoins great.

The one thing that’s crystal clear about the 2012 All-Star logo is that it has to do with the Royals and the idea of royals. It has a crown. It’s dark like the host team and some purple hints like royalty. It has banners, like those you would see on Game of Thrones but way less cool. So, in that regard, it certainly succeeds, making it very location- and team-aware, which is a trait among All-Star logos. I don’t think any of these All-Star logos are particularly great — the 2010 hosted by the LA Angels in Anaheim is somewhat strong — and I would categorize this year’s edition as decent. I actually quite like what they did with the typography, it’s a nicely chiseled serif. Given that sports logos aren’t shy of adding colors I don’t understand why they didn’t add a little shadow between the front and back banners so that it doesn’t become such a blob? The crown is fine. And, as usual, the white stroke around the whole thing is dumb. Here is an idea sports logos: If you feel the need to force a white stroke on everything to differentiate the logo from the background how about you choose a different background? It ain’t rocket science.

Thanks to Chris Murphy for the tip.

Many thanks to our ADV @ UnderConsideration Partners