PowerPlayGoal.com – Hockey From A Different Angle

Since the dawn of time it would seem that we are inundated by two “features” of Microsoft Office; WordArt and ClipArt.
WordArt is that wonderful feature which allows you to make a word look “stylish” and “colourful”. You can give it an assortment of shapes such as an arc, or triangular.
Whilst this sounds like a brilliant function for livening up your essays or documents, many people feel it looks tacky, unprofessional and has no place in the world of design. The very notion of using WordArt would most likely have you expelled from your design degree course at College, fired from your job at a design agency, and exiled from your country to some remote island in the Samoan region.
ClipArt for those of you not familiar is a delightful set of images supplied by Microsoft again to “brighten up your dull report. Additionally, you can download ClipArt from Microsoft in case the default selection doesn’t do anything for you or you can visit a vast array of websites for even more, some will even charge you for it.
Like WordArt, this is also a huge no-no in the design world, and worse still, it is often a complete copyright violation!

So, what we have for you today is a team who have a reasonably accepted name – not that of a trash firm or an imaginary fake animal, and they are still playing albeit in a much smaller league than previously.

This episode of war on logos is all about The Columbus Cottonmouths.

Instantly anyone not a fan, or perhaps those who are will see the immediate tackiness of the logo – and they will either laugh, or make that “urgh oh my god” impression on their face. I actually took time to show a few non hockey fans the logo, and they also agree – its cheap and nasty.
The most obvious thing to any viewer is the evident use of WordArt for the teams name. A striking yellow outline brings your attention the the light blue / dark blue gradient of the text in the shape dubbed by Microsoft as begin “Can Up”, and whilst the font is not recognisable to me, im pretty certain it is either a default font, or it was obtained off a free website because it “looked cool”.
A look beyond this awful WordArt font, will show up 2 further images, both which look like they came straight from ClipArt.
The hockey sticks, are recoloured to the same gradient as the text, and have additionally been given the same striking yellow outline.
Between the sticks is the head of a snake. This excessively detailed, electric blue coloured image overloads the logo and allows the design to make the jump from tacky to shit.
this snake is obviously infected as its tongue is a bright red colour, and worse still, the fangs are yellow! The mouth features a horrific black and white gradient, which would be acceptable had they not chosen to use a small colour pallet, leading to a very blocky looking effect.
The designer of this logo was either not paid, and thus voluntary; a player for a rival team; or possibly an 8 year old who has just got his/her first desktop and has just mastered paint.

In conclusion, this is one team with a snake team who should have a mongoose set upon them.

Its not very often that I will be looking through the internet and then suddenly see something so stupid, and terrible that I immediatly stop what I was originally doing, and the start writing a completely different article – however, this is an exception.

Understandably, sponsorship for minor teams is very important. It adds additional revenue that small teams need, as they are unable to generate massive amounts of cash from TV broadcasts. Sponsorship usually appears in the form of adverts around the rink, perhaps a small patch on the players jersey or pants, and often the name of the arena.
No problem with this, its there, but not blazingly in my face.

Sponsorship usually comes from a respectable enterprise also, such as a car manufacturer, a major airline or even a bottled water brand. However, the team that I found was not just sponsored, but owned by the same people who own the sponsor.

Ladies and Gentlemen. I proudly welcome to the ice:
The Danbury Trashers.

Sponsored by, and family owned by the AWD Disposal company, the team were named, and their logo was based on their sponsorship.
Usually, hockey teams have a vicious animal, a historical influence, even a geographical reason behind their name, however this team chose to be the laughing stock of a league and went for a domestic waste product. Seriously, what were they thinking? No one likes garbage, and it gives everyone so much amunition if the team plays badly – bringing a whole new meaning to the term “Trash Talk”.

They were established as a UHL expansion team for the 2004-2005 season, and the team themselves played pretty well for their first season, and they even claimed division titles, but alas, their time was short lived with them suspending operation within the UHL before the 2007-2008 season.

The teams final years were plagued with controversy, with 29 people behind the team earning a trip to the “Sin Bin” for various fraud charges. These charges of fraud involved phoney salaray cap figures and even wire tapping.

The teams logo features a bin, an inanimate object, playing hockey. The lid is slightly ajar and a set of eyes are poking out. This asks me questions on what exactly is inside the bin. My personal opinion is that its actually Oscar the Grouch from Sesame street.
What the design team have managed to do is to make the bin look menacing, although in my opinion it looks as it the bin is using an axe and is about to chop the puck in half, rather than shoot the puck across the ice.

This is definatly in my opinion one of the worst concepts ever conceived – whilst we usually choose a logo that has ripped something off, is badly drawn – what we have here is a proffesionally created logo, that is of possibly one of the worst ideas ever. Can you imagine the design teams faces when this logo was ordered?

“Hello xxx design agency, how can we help”
“We need a logo for a hockey team”
“Sure, whats the theme”
“Garbage”
“Excuse me sir?”
“The teams sponsored by a waste disposal firm, and we want the logo to be a giant bin”
“Erm, ok…”
Long Silence
“We have a dump load of illegitimately earned money for you”
“Ok, we will get you something in a week”

The phone call would have been followed by a large amount of laughter, followed by a team of designers struggling to find a way of making a logo.

Additionally, the team had a word mark, and a shorthand logo – Both of which aren’t as bad as they don’t show the bin – Although it is in my opinion that the short hand logo looks much like the sort of logo you might see at a Fast Food chain.

Worse still was the teams special NASCAR game jersey, which involves a horrible combination of racing checkers and the colours black, white and blue. I understand the reasoning behind the checkers, but theres no reason for a jersey to make anyone feel physically sick on seeing it.

I finish off by reporting that apparently, there was an opening for a mascot named “scrappy”. This position was advertised by the looks of it in 2005, whether it was implemented or not I cannot say – theres no images on google or other websites of it, so I will guess the mascot looks a little like the one that the state of Georgia use to advertise against dropping litter.

Im KevKev, and this was a rubbish War on Logos.

Some of you folks reading this may remember a crappy logo I ranted about that belongs to a team over here in the UK, the Romford Raiders. In that issue of War On Logos, and in the very last paragraph, I mentioned their junior team, the Romford Spitfires, and I also mentioned how their logo was better than what their parent team uses:

See, this isn’t a bad logo at all, and I’d go as far as to say that it’s one of the best logos a British hockey team has ever used, unless of course it’s a generic piece of clipart, has been blatantly stolen borrowed from a professional team (which I can’t seem to identify) or copied off of an old propaganda poster from World War II (which I highly doubt). Maybe it’s a tad bit too detailed to be a sports team’s logo, but I like it anyway. But wait, I just said that the Spitfires’ logo was better than their parent club’s. What did I mean by that?

To keep a long story short, earlier this year and just after the hockey season ended, the Raiders organisation folded, taking their junior teams with them. After a very brief trip to the grave, they came straight back, somehow keeping everything intact from the previous year in time for the 2009/10 season. And rather than give the Raiders a fresh new start, like giving them a much needed identity overhaul with a decent new name and logo, like the one above, they even kept that the same as well, and instead took the opportunity to rebrand the wrong team, i.e. the Spitfires.

Readers, what you’re about to see is one of the worst name and logo combinations a hockey team has ever had. Because the logo below is so bright and garish, I would personally advise you to grab the nearest pair of sunglasses before you scroll the page down any further. Failing that, you could instead turn down the brightness of your monitor. I may also go as far as to advise you to stop reading this article here.

And since you insist on continuing to read it, here it is. But I will not be held responsible for any damage done to your eyes. I did warn you.

I would love to know what they were smoking when they approved of this horrible, horrible thing.

I’m under the assumption that someone within the Raiders organisation has read the article I previously wrote. Because I commented on the fact that the Spitfires had a better name and logo than their parent club, they seemingly out of complete spite went and rebranded the Spitfires with this horrendous logo and newly renamed them the Romford Fury.

The name doesn’t completely go against the Raiders’ apparent tradition of naming their junior teams after aircraft types, since the Fury were (or at least, I’m guessing they were) named after the Hawker Sea Fury, a fighter plane used by the Royal Navy in the Second World War… but who is going to know that? The Sea Fury is not as widely known as the Spitfire is. Everybody knows what Spitfires are, even this generation’s children. In fact, ‘Spitfire’ is used by members of the general public who visit war museums as a catch-all term for similar looking aircraft, including the Sea Fury, only until they are corrected by their grandparents or the museum staff.

And if I didn’t know any of the above, I’d be slating the new name as a ridiculous and extremely generic sounding name. But even when knowing where the name came from, it’s still very stupid and generic. It reminds me of the stereotypical “tough-guy” sounding names a hockey team might be given in a cartoon or comic, like “the Brawlers”, “the Bullies”, “the Demolishers” and “the Fury”… oh, wait.

Now to start tearing the logo to shreds, starting with the unnecessary wordmark. Notice that the “Y” at the end has a ‘tail’ for whatever reason, making it look like a weird “Y” and “L” hybrid (Furyl? Is that even a word?). The text is bending inwards, and I can kind of understand why they did this. It’s because it’s a function in Photoshop, and the designer was thinking “It’s there, and I’m feeling a pointless impulsive urge to use it, therefore I must use it.” Well, it was either that or they were going for a tacky, cheap and generic cartoony look; much like a lot of other UK based teams. Also, if you look carefully you will see a yellow outline around “Romford”, which does not even need to be there, and only makes the wordmark look even more garish.

Speaking of colours, they seem to have for whatever reason gone for a nasty bright blue and orange combination, something that belongs back in the 60’s and 70’s and not in this era, instead of their parent club’s blue and gold. Something else that belongs back in those decades is that completely random blue and orange rainbow shape behind the plane, which in turn is green, and doesn’t even match the team’s colour scheme.

Finally, the Spitfire Sea Fury plane. I myself don’t mind teams that go for a cartoony image, but this is just completely over the top ridiculous. I can’t help but feel that the plane is a generic piece of clipart (the crossed sticks on the front, with a thicker outline than the plane kind of give that away), even if they actually hired somebody to draw it. It’s hideous, and the colours, as I mentioned before, do not match with the rest of the team’s identity. Oh, and look at that, the plane is on fire. On fire. That’s not a very good sign at all.

Stupid identities like this are my single biggest gripe with many UK based teams. It’s great that we get our hockey fix, but not so much when teams bastardise and tacky up the game, seemingly for the sake of it. I have no idea what they think when coming up with this crap, but it certainly doesn’t get them any merchandise sales from fans like us at PowerPlayGoal.com who take the game seriously.

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