Friday Likes BY Armin

Friday Likes 34

A norseman gets sandwiched between two food-related Likes on this Friday.

Continue reading this entry

A B-Side BY Armin

Lexington Legends

About: “The Lexington Legends are a minor league baseball team of the South Atlantic League (SAL), and the Class A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals. They are located in Lexington, Kentucky.”

Design by: Brandiose.

Ed.’s Notes: On the subject of moustaches, this identity delivers. Logo detail and moustachioed cap below (or after the jump).

Relevant links: Photo gallery. Press Release.

Select quote: Fans will see an old-timey “Big L” gripping two bats over a classic “Legends” script and white farm fences. Caps worn by the Legends for home games will feature a stone-chiseled “LEX” in reference to the historic dry stone walls that line many of the roads in the Bluegrass and a modernized “L-State” (a letter “L” in which the base is an outline of Kentucky). Big L’s famous mustache will appear on the road caps, and the “stache” will be part of several new mustache-themed fan experiences. Big L will continue to represent the Legends as he has since the team began play in 2001.

Continue reading this entry

Opinion BY Armin

Blazing Kiddies

Established in 2008 in White Plains, NY, the New York Blaze Athletic Club is a nonprofit organization that offers kids aged 7 to 18 programs in basketball, homework assistance, and life skills. Its main focus is to get kids into college, ideally through a basketball scholarship. A new identity was released earlier this year, designed by Bialystok, Poland-based Kamil Doliwa — the Blaze’s CEO, Torey Thomas has played in the Polish Basketball League (which explains how a Polish designer designed a logo for an org in White Plains, NY). This is typically not something we would cover on Brand New, since it’s small and it’s far from perfect but, for some reason, it gives me the warm and fuzzies and I felt like it was something worth covering.

Continue reading this entry

Opinion BY Armin

It’s a Sports Nation, we are only Living in it

Launched in 2004, SB Nation (short for Sports Blog Nation) is a massive network of more than 300 blogs run by paid sports writers-slash-fans. Combined, SB Nation pulls in 100 million pageviews a month through 20 million unique visitors, 80% of them dudes. While there is a mothership blog that covers sports in general, SB Nation’s real appeal are its local and team blogs, dedicated to the micro concerns of fans in different cities and for specific sports and teams, i.e., there is SB Nation Chicago for all of its citizens but there is also Bleed Cubbie Blue for the MLB’s Cubs, Windy City Gridiron for the NFL’s Bears, and Blog a Bull for the NBA’s Bulls. Over the years, each blog has been given free reign to design its own logo based on its own puny, insider-ey name — the result has been humorous yet mostly crummy, rectangular pieces of artwork. Earlier this month, in preparation for a relaunch of the look and functionality of its blogs, SB Nation introduced new logos for ALL blogs through a unified approach, designed by London-based Fraser Davidson. ALL of them, designed by Fraser Davidson. 300-plus.

Continue reading this entry

Friday Likes BY Armin

Friday Likes 09

We cover it all, from all corners of the world: cooking magazines from Ukraine, hot dogs from North Carolina, and bike polo players from Spain.

Continue reading this entry

Opinion BY Armin

Gloves fit for the Six Million Dollar Man

First produced for hockey players in 1999, Bionic is a line of specialty performance gloves for sports like golf, baseball, fitness (weightlifting), tennis, racquetball, equestrian events and others, as well as a very popular line of gardening gloves. The gloves are the invention of orthopedic hand surgeon James Kleinert for sports equipment manufacturing company Hillerich & Bradsby, which more famously produces the Louisville Slugger bats. In March, Bionic introduced a new logo designed by New York, NY-based CBX.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.

Continue reading this entry

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.”

Continue reading this entry

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.