Opinion BY Armin

Brandiose is Grandiose

Established in 2000 as Plan B Branding by life-long friends Jason Klein and Casey White, Brandiose, as the new company has been named, is a branding firm focused on designing official logos and uniforms for Minor League Baseball teams with awesome names like the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs and the Richmond Flying Squirrels. Having been called to the Majors, they also revitalized the Cincinnati Reds logos and uniforms. With the new name comes a new identity with lettering by Ken Barber.

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Opinion BY Armin

Abstract Sports

Established in 1990, FADU (Federação Académica do Desporto Universitário, Academic Federation of University Sports in English) is an organization in Portugal focused on sports as a tool of educational development. It acts like a less carnivorous version of the NCAA by organizing events and enabling communication between higher education students, almost 7,000 of them, across all possible sports from soccer to basketball to chess to bridge among 25 total activities. A new identity has been created by Braga, Portugal-based Gen Design Studio.

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Opinion BY John J Custer

Hit that E

Easton-Bell Sports has just over 80 years of experience in the sporting goods market and has established itself as a recognizable and reliable brand and name. The company mainly focuses on protective head gear for baseball, softball, hockey, lacrosse and cycling. Under the Easton-Bell Sports name they manufacture and sell the popular Giro helmets and cycling accessories, the Riddell football helmets and hats, and the Bell motorcycling products. They also have their own branded products under the name Easton for lacrosse, hockey, baseball, and softball — in the past several months, Easton-Bell Sports has rolled out a newly updated mark that extends into these line of products.

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Opinion BY Armin

Sportsnet Shoots and Misses

Launched in 1998, Sportsnet is the main sports multimedia platform in Canada, which includes six TV channels, two radio stations, a magazine, and a website. It has been owned by telecommunications giant, Rogers, since 2001. Sportsnet is the official broadcaster of the London 2012 Olympic Games. This week, it introduced a new logo and on-air look designed by Los Angeles, CA-based Troika.

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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.

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A B-Side BY Armin

NBC Sports

NBC Sports, a major “segment” of the programming at NBC, is now also its own channel as NBCUniversal has announced the transformation of the old Versus channel into the NBC Sports Network, which will share the look with the segment on NBC. More details here.

Thanks to Reilly Brennan for first tip.

Opinion BY Armin

What Big Teeth you Have

Established as an expansion team of the NHL in 1997 in Tennessee, the Nashville Predators first took to the ice in the 1998 – 99 season. They finished second last that year and the year after that. Since then they have made the playoff on and off. I don’t follow hockey but I’m generally aware of what cities have teams in which professional sports but I had no idea there was a hockey team in Nashville and once I knew that information I had no idea why it had a saber-toothed cat as a logo. Turns out in 1971, the skeleton of one of these was found during construction of the First American National Bank building in downtown Nashville. The Predators — or “Preds” as they are also known (really?!) — have been using the same logo since they joined the league and this week they unveiled an updated identity.

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Opinion BY Armin

Sinking Rock

Established in 1999, the Mountain West Conference is the youngest conference in the NCAA Division I — compare that to those of previous reviews here, the Big 10 (1896) and the Pac10 (1959) — and its original members were the Air Force, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, UNLV, and Wyoming. Texas Christian University joined in 2005 and in the next two years BYU and UNLV will leave while Boise State, Fresno State, University of Nevada, and University of Hawaii will join. With so many changes the conference considered this a good time to introduce a new logo, designed by San Diego-based Savacool Secviar who were brought into the project by Loma Media, also from San Diego.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Big Ten Network

Established in 2006, the Big Ten Network — now BTN — is a partnership between th Big Ten Conference and Fox Networks for a channel covering over 600 events featuring the schools of the Big Ten Conference. Press release here. There is also customized color versions of the logo for each of the 12 schools that make up the Big Ten.

Thanks to John Coburn for the tip.

A B-Side BY Armin

Wichita Wings

Originally an indoor soccer team that played from 1979 to 2001, the Wichita Wings are getting a second chance and will begin playing in the 2011 – 12 season of MISL. Story here.

In other news: when Whataburger called to get its logo back, it did.

Thanks to J. Jason Smith for the tip.

Opinion BY Armin

Wizards go Retro, Dodge Bullet

Known as the Washington Wizards since 1997, this Eastern Conference NBA team goes back to 1961 when it was known as the Chicago Packers, moving to Baltimore in 1963 and changing its name to the Bullets (I guess they never saw The Wire coming), then moving to Washington in 1974. As the Bullets the team won the championship in 1978 and as the Wizards they are best known for hosting Michael Jordan’s twenty-third un-retirement. Yesterday, the Wizards unveiled new uniforms and secondary logos that hark back to their look of decades past. The uniforms and marks have been designed in collaboration with their apparel provider, adidas.

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Guest Editorial by Roy Levitt Posted BY Brand New

Sparky Benched by Nike

Founded in 1885, Arizona State University is the largest public research university in the United States with a 2010 student enrollment of 70,440. Its Division I athletic teams, known as the Sun Devils, has collectively won 136 national championships to date. The Sun Devils have been recently rebranded and the Sparky mascot illustration, which had been used since 1946, has been replaced as the team’s primary identifier. This rebranding effort was completed by the Nike Graphic identity Group. According to ASU, the objectives of this initiative were “…to create a bold, high- performance athletic image and a promotional campaign that would maximize enthusiasm and interest in supporting the university, but to do so with minimum out-of-pocket costs.”

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Opinion BY Armin

Deutsche Eishockey Liga

Established in 1994, the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (German Ice Hockey League in English, DEL for short), is the professional Hockey league in Germany, featuring 14 teams and, apparently, the highest number of American and Canadian players outside the NHL. The new logo has been designed by buergerclever.

Thanks to Simon Vatareck for the tip.

A B-Side BY Armin

Root Sports

Root Sports, a subsidiary of DirecTV Sports, is the new name that will take over three regional sports channels in Seattle (formerly FSN Northwest), Denver (formerly FSN Rocky Mountain), and Pittsburgh (formerly FSN Pittsburgh). Troika has designed the identity and on-air package. All work can be seen at their website.

Opinion BY Clinton Duncan

Giant G, No Little g

Previously Team GWS, now the rather wordy Greater Western Sydney Giants (but thankfully shortened to GWS Giants), are the latest expansion team of the Australian Football League, or AFL. Team GWS was a placeholder name for the initial few years, and the name was chosen after a community competition, and Sydney branding firm Pincipals were tasked with turning the new name into a new brand.

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Opinion BY Armin

The Tampa Bay Lightning Lack Voltage

The Tampa Bay Lightning — nickname: Bolts — joined the National Hockey League in the 1992 – 93 season along with the Ottawa Senators as expansion teams. The Lightning won the Stanley Cup in the 2004 – 05 season and in the following season, trying to defend their championship, they were eliminated by the Senators in the first round of the playoffs. I bet there is some poetic justice there for Senators fans. The Lightning have had two very crappy seasons after those glory days and now seem determined to get some thunder going behind them. Yesterday, they announced new uniforms, which will be used starting next season, and a new identity designed by SME Branding.

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Opinion BY Armin

All Aboard the Round Rock Express

Round Rock Express is a minor league baseball team located just north of Austin, TX. Earlier this month the team announced that it would be changing leagues and affiliation from Double-A with the Houston Astros to Triple-A with the Texas Rangers, the current American League champions (who defeated the New York Yankees for the title, thank you very much). To coincide with this change the Express unveiled a new identity designed by Louisville, KY-based Studio Simon, that will debut in 2011.

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Opinion BY Armin

Lumberjack Soccer

While the whole world has soccer in their brains I figured the timing might be right to feature a diminutive component that helps fuel this worldwide craze. From the deep, damp and cold confines of the United States’ northwest, the Portland Timbers have had a soccer team since 1975 when it competed in the North American Soccer League and most recently played in the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) Division 2 league, or, more bluntly, the minor league to the Major Soccer League (MSL) where the Timbers will be graduating to in the upcoming 2011 season, becoming the 18th team. In preparation for the move, the Timbers unveiled a new identity designed by Rare Design, a firm in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with plenty of athletic identity experience.

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Opinion BY Armin

A Fierce Blue Camel

Let’s be perfectly honest here. The only reason we are talking about this is because it involves camels. Specifically the “before” camel. Look at it and tell me you don’t want to learn more? Why is it so complacent? Who is it waiting for in such relaxed repose? Is it smiling at me? Can I take it home and feed it blue food? Okay, maybe I’m getting carried away and we should just state some facts. The adorable camel is the ex-mascot of the Connecticut College Camels, the 28-team athletics department of this small liberal arts college in New London, Connecticut, with a petite student body of 1,900. The Camels compete in the NCAA Division III but are also part of the exclusive New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), a fact worth pointing out as it is a conference that features athletic departments with a chicken, a cow, a donkey and a polar bear as their mascots — needless to say, they are not the fiercest teams in U.S. college sports. Earlier this month, the Camels unveiled a new camel, created by sports-branding-machine Rickabaugh Graphics. (Sadly, their web site has been the same since 2006).

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