PowerPlayGoal.com – Hockey From A Different Angle

The Calgary Flames have a thing for moving their AHL farm team every couple of years or so. In the last decade alone, they have played as the Saint John Flames, the Omaha Ak-Sar-Ben Knights, the Quad City Flames, and last year the team was moved to Abbotsford, British Columbia, basically in the backyard of the Vancouver Canucks.

In Saint John they had an amateurish looking fiery wordmark that was replaced with a kickass dragon after a couple of years. When they moved to Omaha in 2005, they adopted a Knight based identity instead, and again looked great. Once again in 2007, they moved to the Quad Cities, effectively booting out the UHL’s Mallards and going with a fairly uncreative logo (it was just a flaming Q over the top of Calgary’s iconic C). After just two years, Calgary got bored of the Quad Cities so moved their team closer to home, seen by many as a controversial decision that I can’t be bothered to go into (this is logos I’m talking about, after all).

So upon the move to Abbotsford, they held a Name-the-Team contest in which the Heat won out. Oooh, a name that’s associated with but not quite the same as their parent club! This would make for a perfect opportunity for the Atlanta Flames logo to be seen on the ice again! Or maybe they’ll come up with a brand new, amazingly creative identity -

…Oh, maybe not. Just a boring wordmark. What a letdown.

This is kind of like another boring wordmark we covered a while back, only this logo is even more boring. At least the Anaheim Ducks made some sort of attempt to incorporate something creative into their wordmark that’s relevant to the team name: as for the Abbotsford Heat, nothing. There is nothing about this logo that suggests anything to do with heat, or fire. No, the red streak coming from the puck doesn’t count, that looks more like a blur to me.

It’s as if the designer thought “There’s not much you can do with Heat,” opting to resort to the generic easy way out instead: make them a wordmark. Even though the team’s parent club pulled it off very well to create an iconic logo. Even the NBA’s Miami Heat have a good alternate logo, incorporating the team’s initials and using bright, hot colours.

Speaking of colours, this logo doesn’t feel very warm at all. Yes, there is red, but not much of it. The mainly black lettering maybe suggests that it’s been burnt, but for some reason feels cold. There’s also silver, which for this team name doesn’t work. Again, it feels cold, like a piece of metal that’s been left outside in the snow. The colour scheme overall also makes them look more like a Carolina Hurricanes affiliate than a Calgary Flames one.

I really, really don’t know why or how they came up with this. Did they go with a wordmark because it’s a safe, easy and comfortably generic choice? Or were they going for that Charlestown Chiefs wordmark only effect? Would it really have been that hard to throw together a great looking flaming H? And if they were so lazy as to only come up with a wordmark, why not just go with a no-brainer decision to use or even modernise the Atlanta Flames logo instead?

In short, this logo is disappointing, incorporates absolutely nothing to do with the team name except for a bunch of letters spelling it out, and for what is supposed to be this team’s primary logo, is very dull. Boring wordmarks are boring.

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

When it comes to American Sports in Great Britain, not limited to but especially so in Hockey’s case, the way the sport is treated is beyond ridiculous, and it’s been made to feel more like British Football (or Soccer to anyone from North America) on ice, with promotion and relegation between leagues rather than franchise based systems in place, the same teams winning every season, at least four different championship trophies (knockout cup, league cup, etc), adverts all over the jerseys, lack of creativity when it comes to naming teams (think of how many teams in British Football are named “United”), and worst of all, many of the logos and jerseys are horrible. It’s almost as if the teams are deliberately trying to make themselves look and feel tacky to serious sports fans.

For this edition of War On Logos, I will be listing the top five things that are generally wrong with the identities of most of these teams from the United Kingdom, starting with…

5: Complete Irrelevance

Example team: Peterborough Islanders

As mentioned earlier, there is a general lack of creativity when it comes to naming UK based teams, with many of them resorting to using comfortably generic names that ultimately have little or nothing to do with the area they are based in. Pictured here for example is the logo of the Peterborough Islanders. To be fair, the logo looks quite good (probably because it was stolen or something), but they were named the Islanders because one of the founders of the team had ties with the Falkland Islands. And you guessed it; the name has absolutely nothing to do with the City of Peterborough.

Other examples: Chelmsford Chieftains, Streatham Redskins, Sheffield Scimitars, Swindon Wildcats, Basingstoke Bison… I could go on for ages here.

4: Boring, Old Fashioned Designs

Example team: Trafford Metros

Looking at this logo, you’d think that it was designed in the early 20^th century if not even earlier, despite the fact that this team hasn’t even been around that long. Believe it or not, this team was founded as recently as 2007, and then changed to this name and logo in 2009! Logos in this category are usually either hand drawn, or they tend to feature only the black lining, lacking in many, if any other colours. Most of the time these logos also seem to be trying to emulate British Football logos in appearance: this one shown here looks more like it belongs on a 1900’s Football shirt instead of a 2009 Ice Hockey jersey.

Other Examples: Oxford City Stars, Murrayfield Racers (defunct), Lee Valley Lions, Cambridge University Blues

3: Generic Clipart (Or Clipart-ish Graphics)

Example Team: Telford Tigers

When a team can’t afford/be bothered to hire a professional designer to make a good logo for them, one of their two other options is to go with a generic piece of clipart instead, which is usually provided to them by a jersey manufacturer such as Rhino (I had to mention them at some point). These graphics always have a tendency to be overly detailed, with way too many thin lines, and most of these logos make use of everybody’s favourite shading effect, gradients. Amateur designers always seem to think that gradients are “cool looking” for logos, yet it always feels tacky. Many logos of this type also tend to use generic word art to go with the clipart.

Other Examples: Chelmsford Chieftains, Wightlink Raiders, Paisley Pirates, Braehead Clan

2: Blatantly Stolen Logos

Example Team: Guildford Flames

Oh wow, that logo doesn’t look familiar at all now, does it? The other option for teams that won’t hire a professional designer to make a good looking logo for them is to instead “borrow” one already being used by a North American team (not limited to Hockey), much like how this Guildford Flames logo is evidently a rip-off of the Calgary Flames. It’s as if these teams either don’t know any better or they think that nobody will notice or care. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but at least the teams that use generic clipart are actually trying to come up with an identity for themselves!

Other Examples: Romford Raiders, Streatham Redskins, Basingstoke Bison, Bracknell Bees, Manchester Phoenix, Grimsby Redwings… yeah, that’s a lot. And I haven’t even named every team that does this!

1: A Sponsor in the Team Name

Example team: Wightlink Raiders

Never mind using crappy Clipart or stolen logos: this is about as low as it can possibly get for British teams. Most, if not all UK teams are funded primarily by sponsors, and as if the adverts all over the jerseys weren’t enough, some teams actually make the name of their biggest sponsor part of their team name, with the Isle of Wight based Wightlink Raiders being an example of this (the sponsor is a ferry company that pays for the team to travel across to the mainland, go figure).

Other Examples: Not many, although some of the top level Elite League teams are doing it: the “LBM” Belfast Giants, “GMB” Nottingham Panthers, and “MobileX” Newcastle Vipers.

And that’s pretty much a summary of all British Hockey logos there. Maybe some time in future I’ll take a look at teams from other countries in Europe, as there are some pretty bad logos there too.

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

Much like I did with War On Logos #10, this time I’ll be talking about another team, based in the UK, that I (or in this case, we) root for with an identity that I find very displeasing (the very fact that this is a UK based team I’m going to be talking about may already be a bad sign). This team also happens to be a long-time rival of another team we covered back in WOL #4, so any fans of that team who have stumbled upon this site might just be pleased to see this.

And before I get started, I’ll introduce this team to those not familiar with them: the Chelmsford Chieftains. Now unlike North America, Great Britain, or for that matter the city of Chelmsford is not exactly home to any Native Americans, so Chieftains is completely irrelevant as a name (although I’m safely assuming they really picked it just for the generic alliteration)… oh, but wait! Apparently the team are named that because back when they were founded in 1987 and still looking for an identity, the players started giving the nickname of “Chief” to their player-coach, and so the name stuck… yeah, kinda lame. And serving as further proof that UK sports team owners suck at naming their teams.

This team could probably be compared to the Vancouver Canucks in that they’ve gone through several different logos and colour combinations over their 23 year existence – the jerseys have changed too, but like many UK teams they change the jersey designs every year anyway, taking another page from football (soccer) so as to further ruin hockey.

Currently the Chieftains seem to have settled on this design, with a Boston Bruins-esque black and gold (orange?) colour scheme:

At first glance, this looks like one of the better logos belonging to a lower level UK team, but that really isn’t saying much. I can’t be completely certain, but something about this logo just screams “generic clipart”, that’s been provided to the team by their jersey manufacturer. And why do I think this? First of all, it’s been recoloured three times in the past five years (from red and black, to burgundy and silver, and finally to black and gold/orange), an even lower level team that plays at Chelmsford, the Warriors, who used the exact same logo even before their affiliation with the Chieftains, and finally, the team’s youth development program again uses the same logo, but with a red and blue colour scheme.

The second giveaway of this possibly being a clipart-type logo is the use of one of the most generic fonts ever, Impact, for the wordmark (We’ve been through this already…). Their junior team, the Warriors, also use the exact same font in the exact same position for their otherwise identical logo. In one this logo’s previous colour schemes, the wordmark had a tacky gradient going through it, which I’m glad to see gone.

Ah yes, gradients. Another favourite element of bad logo design. It’s great that they got rid of the aforementioned one in the wordmark, but why not remove it from all of the other objects that have them too? It’s tacky, and no matter how “awesome” you think it looks, it just doesn’t work, not even for shading. And this is why professional sports teams always go with solid colours for their logos, including any shading that’s needed.

And finally, the designer at some point seems to have gotten lazy. It’s not noticeable when you first look at it, but there’s been a lot of copying and pasting going on with this logo: the feathers are all exactly the same – not that consistency is a bad thing, but it really does feel lazy. They also use the same zig-zaggy line featured underneath the wordmark to act as the middle bit of the feather… but why is that zig-zag there in the first place? I have no idea…

OK, you know what: I’m going to be doing something very different for the next edition of War On Logos. As these teams from Romford and Chelmsford have shown, British hockey teams hardly ever get it right when it comes to their identities, so Instead of ranting about why a logo sucks for a change, I’ll be doing a list of the Top Five things that are wrong with British hockey logos.

Until the next time, I’m Wildwing64, and I declare War On Logos.