Tweaking MLS Part II

By Phil Hecken

You folks will recall that last week I ran the uniform concepts of Lance Hall, who had taken it upon himself to tweak the uniforms of MLS (Major League Soccer) — if you missed Part I, that article is here. He has done a fantastic job. Today, I’m back with Lance as he runs down the second half of MLS teams, plus he’s included two “bonus” concepts, for teams who will be entering the league in the future. In finest Casey Kasem with a Jim Vilkian twist fashion, here’s Lance with your “reverse-Top 10” (plus 2):

Tweaking the other Major League (Pt. II)
By Lance Hall

10. New England Revolution: That logo had to go. I can’t even call it a badge or a crest. It’s boring and dated and doesn’t translate well to merchandise. Is that a logo or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? For a new insignia, I went all symbolism and retro-actively claimed the best idea from the Philadelphia Union. The Revolution should’ve been using symbols like these from the beginning, so eat it Philly. The redesigned Revs crest has the historic New England flag, 6 red/white stripes for the 6 states comprising the New England region, star-style soccer ball, the 1776-1996 dates for the founding of the country and the founding of the team/league, and finally the famous “Don’t Tread on Me” rattlesnake. (See more on the snake below.) The coiled snake has become an unofficial symbol of American soccer since Nike started using it on US Men’s team kits and merchandise. The main uni designed itself. If there was ever a team that needed red vertical stripes it is the Revs. The green alt jersey is a nod to Boston and its unofficial hometown color. It’s perfect to wear for that drinking binge holiday this weekend.

11. Philadelphia Union: The uniform and badge are perfect. They are classic but modern, full of symbolism and city pride. Kudos to the Union and kudos again. I apologize for hijacking it all for the Revs. The only tweak I’d make to the current look is making the embarrassing sponsor more subtle by changing it to match the team colors. Now, about that snake”¦ It’s very nice of the Union and Adidas to help Nike Soccer with their brand recognition. However, in their official literature the Union refer to the coiled rattlesnake as a symbol first used by Ben Franklin in the 1750s, but the Franklin snake was a chopped up rattlesnake that needed to be “joined.” The coiled rattlesnake image the Union (and Nike) use is famous for the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag originally designed by Charleston, SC native Christopher Gadsden. I guess the USL’s Charleston Battery have more right to use the Gadsden snake than Philly, but the Battery currently have a better crest, kit and tradition than most MLS teams, so we’ll let it slide.

12. Portland Timbers: I like the design for the new Timbers kits. It’s unique and evocative and most of all its interesting. My concept kept the basic elements and added a real collar. When I think lumberjacks of the Pacific Northwest, I think real shirt collars. I good alternate kit would be plaid flannel. I broke from the three striped Adidas socks for a faux-stirrup design meant to match the ax on the crest. This is one of those kits, the real one and the tweak, where the sponsor works well with the design and it actually helps the overall look of the shirt. I’d proudly wear my collared Timbers replica jersey to the match”¦ leaping from seat to seat, with my best girly by my side, we’d sing”¦ (Please tell me that’s a match day song in Portland.)

13. Real Salt Lake: I’m a big fan of navy, burgundy and yellow together. I didn’t change much other than losing the all white away kit. I tried to make the second uniform something as distinctive as the primary. The third shirt is for when they play Chivas USA.

14. Red Bull New York: Here we have the poster team for corporations ruling sports. The Red Bulls have managed a distinctive look that’s impossible to change. There’s nothing to be done with the shirt design, since the design is the corporate sponsor. My only suggestion is changing the away jersey to red and bumping the navy to an alternate. Red is in your name, you should wear it occasionally. I suspect the Red Bulls are cringing at the idea of the Cosmos being resurrected in NYC. If that happens, Red Bull New York will immediately become the LA Clippers of the MLS.

15. San Jose Earthquakes: You can tell a team is a founding member of MLS when their name sounds like a minor league hockey franchise. San Jose needs to follow Kansas City down the rebranding road. Become AC San Jose or Inter San Jose or Arsenal USA”¦ or something. I went back to a design scheme used when the ”˜Quakes were good and added my own Richter scale stripe, picked up from details in the logo. The Richter scale stripe is a departure from the traditional designs I was shooting for, but there are precedents, most notably the 2010 Slovenia World Cup shirt. The shirt sponsor does make me rethink my ticket price. What if I get 10 friends to buy season tickets, and then they get 10 friends to buy season tickets”¦

16. Seattle Sounders: If you gauge success by championships then DC United rules MLS. If you gauge success by butts in seats then Seattle is king! The new 2011 kit is too horrible to be described. Obviously they need a complete makeover. I like the distinctive colors, even if the shade of green is a little too conveniently XBOX green. Still, last year’s kit worked fine even when they went monochrome. The under arm swatches were a bit much, but it wasn’t bad for a first outing. The tragedy is that nothing in the Sounders look claims an identity like Houston’s orange or the hoops of Dallas. The team with the highest attendance in the league should be rewarded with a kit that at least has the chance to be iconic. The vertical stripe is one of those elements unique to soccer and sorely under used in MLS. As far as the tweaks go, I’m more happy with the two toned blue away shirt, but I think anything is an improvement over the migraine inducing conglomeration we’ll be seeing them in this year.

17. Toronto FC: They’ve staked claim to the monochrome red Liverpudlian strip. So be it. The gray sleeves are a nice touch, so I’ve left that in, but added a real collar to the shirt. I’ve also reworked the BMO logo to work with the crest. I wonder what Torontonians think of their team being sponsored by the Bank of Montreal? Maybe it’s not a big deal, but I know if you put a Bank of New York logo on the front of a Red Sox uni, there’d be blood in the streets by lunchtime.

18. Vancouver Whitecaps: The Whitecaps have a surprisingly long soccer history in various forms. The most memorable of their kits had a chest stripe with “Whitecaps” spelled out. In the current era of shirt sponsors that kind of design is impossible, but it doesn’t mean a chest stripe is out of the question. For the away shirt, I chose argyle. What other American sport could get away with argyle? If the Rays can wear plaid then the Caps can wear argyle, right? The real away shirt has a stylized version of the Whitecaps insignia sublimated throughout, which makes it look like argyle, so I’m not that far out on this one. The alt is green because well”¦ I think there are lots of trees in Vancouver, and trees are green.

Bonus Tweaks

The Montreal Impact will join the league next year, and if the rumors are true the New York Cosmos will eventually follow as the 20th MLS team. Here are some designs for these two yet-to-be-seen MLS clubs:

19. Montreal Impact: I created a crest that’s pretty basic and incorporated the provincial flag of Quebec. While I was working on these MLS tweaks I’d been toying with the idea of a half vertical stripe shirt. The Captain America stripe. It’s ironic that I finally found a place for it on a Canadian team, but I couldn’t exactly use the stripes from Captain Canada.

20. New York Cosmos: The Cosmos are still legendary in American soccer even though they haven’t fielded a team in over 25 years. It’s about time the MLS added them to the table. If everything goes as destiny dictates, the Cosmos will become the 20th MLS team. My design of the Cosmos is basically just recreating their classic look. The badge is updated with a font that doesn’t drip 80s, a more modern soccer ball and a somewhat sharper swirl. Now all they have to do is sign Robinho and NY soccer is back!

That’s it fellow soccer enthusiasts. Hopefully these designs will generate some discussion about a sport that doesn’t get a fair shake when it comes to cool uniforms. If you think soccer kits are boring, then check out this guy.

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Thanks (again) Lance. Fantastic concepts — I remember the Cosmos (back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and they had Edison “Edson” Arantes do Nascimentando [you remember him as Pelé] and Giorgio Chinaglia and I actually played soccer back in grade school), so I’m mildly excited if the team name returns. Not that it will make me want to watch MLS, but it will be cool to see the retro gear.

Lance and I have been planning on something else special for you UW readers down the road — I’ve seen what he is concepting, and let me just say — once it’s read for publication, it will be pretty amazing. So until that time, thanks Lance. What say you, Uni Watchers? What do you think?

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It’s just a fantasy…

I’m not into fantasy sports, and I never have been, but a number of readers are. Occasionally, I’ll be featuring some of their leagues, uniforms and logos. If you folks play in fantasy leagues and want to submit your drawings/sketches/pdfs/jpegs…whatever — you know what to do. After I ran an article on Patrick Runge’s fantasy league a number of you sent in your own fantasy league submissions. I’ll be getting to those periodically, but feel free to keep sending new ones in.

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Today we have two sets. First up is Jeff Bahry, whose fantasy team is the “Beer Guzzlers” and they are a football squad:

Phil ”“

Patrick Runge’s article on Sunday inspired me to develop a logo and uniforms for my new FF team, the “Beer Guzzlers”.

Enjoy!

Logo
Uni Front
Uni Side

Jeff Bahry

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Next up is Charles Weir, who has a bit more of an intricate writeup for his fantasy clubs:

I haven’t quite taken it to the extent that Sunday’s guest writer Patrick has but then again my league is only in its third year. I have a league logo as well as logos for 4 of the 10 teams although since I made the logos during the 2009 season one of those teams changed their name and rendered the logo useless. The league’s name is The Liquid Glory Fantasy Football League, liquid glory being a term coined by myself and used by most of the league members during our freshman year of college to describe chocolate milk. The divisions, which unfortunately don’t have a logo are Hershey’s Syrup and Nesquik Powder and I feel it necessary to point out that in a bizarre display of fantasy imitating reality, the Hershey’s division has proven infinitely superior to the Nesquik division as all 3 league champions hail from Hershey’s.

Anyway I’ve designed logos for a few of the teams whose names lend themselves easily to an amateur designer’s logo creation process. The Hebrew Hammers (owner is Jewish obviously) were easy enough, especially after I found a font that mimics actual Hebrew letters. The Special Eds (the owners name is Ed) were another easy one and I based the design on a smiley emoticon-ish looking thing I found online. Next up was Evil Shenanigans (an obvious reference to Super Troopers) and I simply took a picture of Snidley Whiplash and changed the colors to look more demon-like, unfortunately this team has sinced changed its name to Elementary, Ben Watson and gone 1-12 in the regular season (Changing a team name is just as much bad luck as changing a boat’s name apparently). Then my crowning achievement, my team: Preposterous Tomfoolery (I just enjoy both of those words) I took Brownie the Elf and meticulously turned him into a clown complete with ruffled collar and cuffs, makeup and brightly colored afro. This logo serves a dual purpose as my roommate and owner of the team formerly known as Evil Shenanigans is a Browns fan and I take every opportunity to point out how the Browns are more deserving of the new moniker The Cleveland Clowns these days than they are the once proud name of Cleveland Browns. The league logo was the only one I designed that was entirely my own idea, its pretty basic, a football (stolen from the Jets logo) and two Chocolate Milkshakes (our championship trophy is called the Chocolate Milkshake Trophy).

Speaking of our trophy I’ve actually designed a 3-d model of what I want it to look like using Google’s Sketch-up program and hope to have one built. I attached a file with the four team logos and the league logo as well as a screen-cap of the trophy design, the circular notch in the base is for a milkshake glass to sit in. I also have a uniform that I designed for my team as well as a sweatshirt that I’m planning on making sometime in the next few months since my team just won Milkshake Bowl 3 with the most dominant post season performance ever seen in the league, I attached my sweatshirt design too just for kicks. Love reading the blog, you guys do a great job.

Thanks to today’s fantasy campers. Check back periodically for more.

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Benchies

by Rick Pearson

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On the bench, at the bar, so much time to ponder, to postulate…

And as always, the full size version.

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Uni Tweaks

Once again, we have a very special set of tweaks today.

If you have a tweak, change or concept for any sport, send them my way.

Remember, if possible, try to keep your descriptions to ~50 words (give or take) per tweak. You guys have been great a keeping to that, and it’s much appreciated!

And so, lets begin:

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First up today is another set of tweaks from none other than Jerry Reuss. I actually had the pleasure of speaking on the phone with Jerry last weekend for almost two hours, and we covered just an incredible amount of topics, including, of course, tweaks. I’ll have more on that interview (including the very submissions you see below), but for today, here are Jerry’s concepts:

Hi Phil,

Here are two tweaks of the early Houston Astros home uniforms.

The Classic Look

This uniform tweak is comprised of three elements:

1) The hat, belt, stirrups and buttoned uniform top are from the 1965-1971 home uniform;
2) The logo, player name and number use the color scheme from 1972-1974;
3) The dark blue sleeve and pants piping are new.

Not shown are dark blue sleeves and black shoes.

The Retro Look

The same three elements:

1) The hat, belt, stirrups and buttoned uniform top are from the 1965-1971 home uniform;
2) The logo, player name and number use the color scheme from 1972-1974;
3) The orange/blue sleeve and pants stripes are new and refer to the 1972-1974 era.

Not shown are dark blue sleeves and black shoes.

Also, this link is for a future wire service feature.

My best,

Jerry

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Next up is Richard Paine, who has a Bills logo for us:

Hey Phil,

As always, great stuff on the blog. keep up the great work. I’d like to contribute a simple concept for the Bills new uniforms. I know supposedly its all done, but I got to tell you, I think it would be great to take their 2 existing logos and move forward with this concept. I love the AFL unis and the white helmet to go a long with this design.

Thanks,
Rich

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And finally, we have “Part 2” of Kaleb Stuckey‘s MLB uniform concepts. If you recall, last week we looked at his AL tweaks, this week is the NL:

Inspired by my frustration of keeping up with so many uniform possibilities for each team, I came up with the idea of establishing a few rules for MLB uniforms. Some of the uniforms I have submitted are concepts and tweaks and some are the actual current combinations. I only have a few rules, and they are as follows:

1) No vests
2) No more than two hats
3) No more than two styles of pants (home and road)
4) Must have home alternate and road alternate, which are not interchangable

I realize there are teams that are very hesitant to adopt any kind of alternate jersey (Yankees, Tigers, Dodgers), but for the sake of consistency and fun, I created them as well. Enjoy!

National League

East

New York Mets
Atlanta Braves
Florida Marlins
Washington Nationals
Philadelphia Phillies

Central

Houston Astros
Chicago Cubs
Milwaukee Brewers
St. Louis Cardinals
Cincinnati Reds
Pittsburgh Pirates

West

San Diego Padres
Arizona Diamondbacks
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Francisco Giants
Colorado Rockies

Thanks,

Kaleb Stuckey
Broken Arrow, OK

Fantastic job folks. Back with more tomorrow.

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That’s going to be a wrap for today.

Make sure you guys check back in tomorrow — I’ll have a VERY special post featuring one of today’s Uni Tweakers, Jerry Reuss. I think you guys will enjoy that very much. Until then, you folks have a great Saturday.

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“Shoe pornography:” If you regularly check websites like sneakernews, niketalk, nikeblog, playerexclusive.com etc, you would fall into this category of which I am definitely a charter member of. — Matt Powers