Some of you may have been reading War On Logos and have noticed that I’ve ripped on terrible icons of hockey teams from all kinds of leagues except for my own favourite NHL team, the Anaheim Ducks, so I felt that it was only fair that I do the same to one of their logos at some point. Now this team was in the past notorious for their original choice of name and logo (both of which I liked, thank you very much), and even more notorious for one particular jersey, the “Wild Wing”, which has been listed numerous times all over the internet as one of, if not the most hideous things a professional sports team has ever worn… and as much as I wholeheartedly agree, I’m saving that for another time.

Remember back in 2006, when the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim announced that they were officially changing their name to the Anaheim Ducks, with a new logo and colour scheme to sever the team’s remaining ties with the Walt Disney Company? And then the speculation on what new and exciting logo and jersey they were going to unveil? And then how that turned out to be… well, this?

Ever since the Ducks unveiled their new logo, I’ve had mixed feelings about it, kinda like a love-hate relationship. Now you may be asking why I like it, and at the same time, why I dislike it. Well, maybe you should keep reading to find out.

Now I really liked the original duck mask logo, and I didn’t mind the name too much, but at the same time I’ve felt a slight lingering discomfort when wearing the old Mighty Ducks jerseys in public. My main reason for that is because over here in the UK, very few people know or care about the existence of an Anaheim Mighty Ducks NHL team, or for that matter the NHL itself (it is a Football/Soccer obsessed nation after all), so people will generally only ever recognise it as something from the sodding Disney film of the same name. Like the hundreds of West Ham and Arsenal and Whatever FC supporters walking around in their shirts, I as a Ducks fan like to show my support for my team by wearing their jersey. The problem is, with a logo that was seen in *groan*… that particular movie, and the fact that very few people know that the team actually exists, some are bound to give funny looks, and then some stupid chavs will point out the obvious by yelling “MARDY DOCKS, YEAH!”  (this sort of thing they’ll do regardless of what it is you’re wearing because chavs are f**king stupid like that, as my next point proves) or ask a completely ridiculous question like “Do you play for the Mighty Ducks?” To this day, I still cannot believe someone was stupid enough to ask me that with a straight face.

This is where my liking of the new look comes in: the Ducks, and in turn me as a fan, are being ridiculed much less as they now look less like a bunch of superheroes on ice (an image I enjoyed with a guilty pleasure and which I’d still take any day over the movies), which makes the logo a bit more comfortable to wear in public (though I’ve had at least one chav recognise it as belonging to the “Mighty” Ducks). I’ve grown used to the look as a whole, and the choice of colours was fairly interesting: a stroke of Orange for Orange County, CA, along with Gold  possibly being a reference to California being known as ‘the Golden State’ which was never confirmed by the organisation. The D being shaped like a webbed duck foot is also pretty clever, and then of course, the Ducks won their first Stanley Cup Championship with this logo in 2007.

But really, this logo isn’t all that great, and when it was first unveiled, the first reaction from everyone, not limited to but including Ducks fans, wasn’t much more than “meh”. I mean, really? A wordmark? Was that the best they could come up with? It really was a disappointing unveiling, and today I, and I’m sure many others, still think that it’s a weak identity for a team named the Ducks. What’s even worse is that, for those who are dyslexic and can’t read the script, it probably looks like a spork.

Compared to other teams’ identities, the whole thing feels a bit cheap (and the fact that the Ducks’ graphic design department sucks at graphic design – at the time of writing, anyway – doesn’t really help with their overall image), like they rushed to get something little more than adequate out there in time for the summer of 2006. Some would say it feels more “aggressive” than the previous look, but I fail to see that myself. It looks more as if the team wants to hide in a corner and not be noticed by anybody. The initial NHL switchover to the Edge uniform saw a teeny tiny wordmark on the front of the Ducks jerseys… this was fixed later on, but in general it feels as if the team doesn’t want to really make itself stand out among the other 29 NHL teams (2011 update: the newly released third jersey has solved this problem, and it looks as though the Ducks want to make this their home uniform soon enough).

If there’s one single thing about the identity as a whole that infuriates me, it’s how the Ducks’ choice of Metallic Gold as a colour, much like the Jade Green  that they wore in their Mighty Ducks days (or Teal if you must, even though it’s more green that it is teal), is constantly confused with other colours, because it appears in all kinds of different shades all over the internet. Most of the time it looks like a nasty poo brown, so people have confused it with bronze and copper, yet the NHL website has it as a more yellow colour that’s closer to the Bruins gold. Take a look at the image below to see how many different versions of this ONE colour exist:

(Note that if you have a nice bright monitor, Web Colour #3 above will appear closer to the ‘correct’ gold colour)

The fact that different image file formats somehow get the Ducks’ gold mixed up with so many other shades is quite ridiculous, but at least the NHL website seems to acknowledge the fact that it is Gold, albeit in a different shade.

But, if there’s one part of the Ducks’ current identity package that I do really like, it has to be the standalone ‘D’ duck foot logo. As much as it doesn’t actually feature a duck, I’ve grown to really like it for its ingenious simplicity. It can be compared to the Boston Bruins’ B-in-spoked circle, the Calgary Flames’ fiery C … heck, just about any sports team’s logo that incorporates a single letter in a unique and clever way, as a strong identity (sadly, there are some out there who think the D looks more like a UFO, or one of Batman’s weapons than a duck footprint, but there we go). I’d really like to see the D completely replace the boring wordmark on the jersey… but to be honest, I wouldn’t mind seeing the whole look replaced by something better in future like, y’know, a duck. That probably won’t happen for some time, but we can dream, right? (2011 update: the third jersey in general has made me feel a lot better about the team’s current brand, especially since the original Mighty Ducks logo has been brought back in some way. The Ducks seem to be slowly phasing out the wordmark in favour of the webfoot D, which can only be a good thing).

Apologies that this turned out to be a big, long, personal rant. Next issue will see a return to my normal writing style!

I’m Wildwing64, and I declare War On Logos.