How We Got The Rams New Logo
So the Rams are getting a new logo! It leaked! It sucks!
Take care to note that the graphical versions below the hat picture are speculation and recreation, the hat is the only official thing we’ve seen so far.
I have long complained about the abundance of angry head logos in the NFL. There are 11 angry head primary logos, 12 if you count the Texans, which I consider borderline since it is more a silhouette than a angry head. Additionally, there are 2 more angry head alternate logos that are well known (Bears and Bengals). It is a very overplayed trope among sports logos and in the NFL specifically. It’s understandable given the names of some teams, but still disappointing. That said, out of all the angry head logos, the Rams are one of the few I was pretty okay with. A Ram’s most defining features are the horns and that it uses them to charge, so really the angry head for the Rams actually suits the name extremely well. Especially in comparison to something like the uninspired mildly peeved Cardinal or the awful Ravens logo (I hate the Ravens head, too many colors, too much going on, a stupid expression, it sucks). The Rams logo worked well enough.
This new one is just trash and I can only hope the backlash causes them to keep the old head like how the Chargers got owned a few years ago with their also uninspired LA logo. The funniest part of this new logo is that it seriously works better as a chargers logo than a Rams one. The horn curls into the shape of a C, for Chargers! It’s still not a good logo, but it still works better for the other LA team. I’d love to meet the board of old men directors who probably broke some poor graphic designer’s soul and made him create this instead of the much better ideas he likely had. Seriously, don’t blame the designers for stuff like this: these decisions are made by the client, and the client is usually stupid. When the client pays you, you are at the mercy of the client and all you can do is try to convince them what works better and hope they don’t say shit like “can you make it “pop” more?” or “we want something more “modern”. This logo reeks of old dudes thinking this looks sleek and modern and not anything like a bank logo.
I hate the current trend of making every logo into letters, especially when it isn’t necessary. I understand the Rams desire to move on from the St. Louis Ram and forge a new look to fit the city but stop making it just LA with a motif of whatever the actual name is. The Los Angeles part isn’t the important recognizable part (especially with two teams in town). The Ram is what you want to use as your brand identity for a sports franchise. If anything, the horn is the symbol to use. Strip out the head and just make the logo a horn. It’ll be simple, clean, and classic. Hell, the R with the horn shape is better than this.
Maybe it’s just an LA thing. LA has a lot of underwhelming sports logos and almost all of them revolve around using the letters LA. The Dodgers LA hat logo is the best, but mostly because it follows the classic baseball trend of combining letters, and the full DODGERS logo with the ball is pretty good (of course that is just a holdover from the Brooklyn Dodgers, it wasn’t designed for LA). The Kings logo is bad, it has the shape of home plate (wrong sport dumbos) and the crown is too small and too detailed. The Clippers logo is fucking terrible and I have no idea what anyone was thinking with that piece of shit. The Lakers logo honestly needs a more modern tweak as the many speed lines make it look messy and the basketball’s black outline only covering part of the shape is weird and dated. I much prefer the Lakers alt logo for doing just that. The Chargers logo is good, but only because we yelled at them to not ruin it. I guess the LA Galaxy logo is pretty nice. Oh! the LA Wildcats logo is also boring trash.
Don’t keep this garbage, Rams. You can do better.
My friend sent me this yesterday and I accused him of being a bad liar. This would be a horrible logo for the Chargers. For it to be an even more horrible logo for the Rams? I still can’t wrap my head around it.
The good news is that draft hat logos are almost never the primary logo, so at least this would be their secondary or tertiary logo. Best logo for every team in the NFL:
Cardinals: According to Creamer, they only have one logo, so I guess the angry cardinal is their best one. I always liked the nonplussed looking one they used going back to 1970 better than the new, angry cardinal.
Falcons: Another one logo team, but the F-bird is a triumph of design. It’s clearly recognizable, but simple without being generic. And the bird is also an F! I liked the all black version better than the red and black, but it’s still one of the better logos in the NFL.
Ravens: The shield alternate. The Maryland flag should be way too busy to work as a logo for anything, but it just does. Also, like Dave said, the two angry raven head logos are bad. Ravens are menacing, but that’s because they look intelligent but dispassionate, like psychopaths. They don’t look good angry. The flying B alternate sucks.
Bills: Another one logo team, but it’s a good looking logo. I always liked the standing bison better than the jumping bison, but the jumping bison has definitely stood the test of time. The jumping bison is goofy, but like John Huston said in Chinatown, it’s lasted long enough to become respectable.
Panthers: The negative space silhouette. I didn’t realize they had alternates, but they have three. The primary is a remnant of the 90s fascination with EXTREME logos and shades of teal, and the 2012 update didn’t really improve it so much as make it shout “Zuul.” The wordmark emphasizes the bad font while also sticking the head logo on it somewhere. That leaves the two silhouettes, of which the white-on-black is generic, but the black-on-negative actually looks kind of cool.
Bears: Bear-on-C. Did you know the wishbone C has only been around since 1962 (according to Creamer)? Both of their logos look good, and fortuitously, combining them looks even better.
Bengals: Tiger head. It’s bad, but the others are worse. The striped B looks like something Mike Brown’s grandson could (and maybe did) put together in Photoshop in an hour for $20. The leaping tiger would look good, but that stupid head is pasted on, and at an awkward angle that makes it look like it broke its neck too.
Browns: Brownie the Elf. Creamer doesn’t have it on there, but they brought him back with a slightly more aggressive expression and posture in 2015, and it looks good. The helmet is classic, even with the 2015 updates. The smirking dog’s head sucks.
Cowboys: The star. Technically a one logo team, although their wordmark also looks good. The double keyline keeps the star simple and iconic without looking generic.
Broncos: Horse head. Another 90s EXTREME holdover. The hell-horse isn’t nearly as good as the old bronc-in-D logo, although it looks better on its own than when pasted above the even-more-90s wordmark that, in addition to the very-90s font, also follows the very-90s trend of putting the location signifier in tiny letters below the wordmark.
Lions: Lion. Technically a one-logo team. They also have a wordmark, but their font, even with the 2017 improvements, still sucks. The rampant lion may be my favorite logo in the NFL. I hated the 2008 update because the black keyline looked jarring against the softer, more detailed logo, but with the gray keyline it looks just right.
Packers: Keyline G. The logo was plain white on green until 1980, and they still use the two color version as an alternate, but the gold keyline version that’s been their primary for 40 years looks better. As an aside, the Packers had the logo before both Georgia and Grambling, by about 4 years.
Texans: Flying steer. It’s not great, mostly because it looks generic without the history to be iconic, but it’s at least solid. They also have a logo-over-wordmark that doesn’t looks any better than the Broncos’. There’s also this, which I’ve never seen used, but is pretty decent even though it shouldn’t be.
Colts: Horseshoe. The wordmark in that Old West looking font is pretty good, but the horseshoe is a great logo. I liked the more saturated blue they used in Baltimore better than the more muted blue they use now.
Jaguars: The head, I guess. Another one logo team. Their best former alternate was the jaguar en passant that got them sued by Ford, probably because it toned down the teal as much as possible.
Chiefs: Wordmark. Sacrilege, I know, but I’ve never liked the drop shadow on the KC monogram. For me that puts the wordmark above the arrowhead.
Raiders: Shield. The wordmark is probably just as good, and the shield is probably just a little busy (the chinstrap is one detail too many), but it’s hard to pull off a pirate flag for a sports logo that doesn’t look either generic or cartoonishly aggressive and they managed it here.
Whoops, hit post by mistake.
Chargers: Bolt. The shield and wordmark are both great logos and nice updates to the Chargers’ history, but the bolt is exactly what you want a football logo to be. It’s recognizable at a distance and is simple enough to be rendered in any colors they need it to without looking generic.
Rams: Ram’s head. They have a lot of alternates they don’t use (including a lettermark that looks just as bad as the one they accidentally leaked), but the Ram’s head is already iconic, despite only being around since their last Super Bowl win. The navy and white looks better than the navy and old gold, but it would look even better in navy (or royal) and athletic gold.
Dolphins: The dolphin. They have three wordmarks, all in a version of Miami Art Deco, and dating to around the same time as when the Marlins did the same thing. The old dolphin logo and font looked better, as goofy as they were. This new, “excelsior” dolphin looks too slick and corporate for my taste.
Vikings: The Viking. Does he have a name? He should. He probably does. They also have a bunch of wordmarks and two lettermarks, but the horn serifs they put on their font makes them look frilly, rather than evoking helmet horns.
Patriots: Flying Elvis. They changed the wordmark in 2013 to a block font with center serifs, or else it would be the one they had from 2000-2012. Maybe once Brady and Belichik sail off into the sunset they’ll go back to Pat Patriot.
Saints: Fleur de lis. Yes, they do have alternates. No, they’re not very good. The wordmark is nifty though.
Giants: NY monograph. Very few cities can universally get away with monograph logos. It may just be New York and St. Louis. This works really well. It’s a monograph, but it’s clearly not a baseball logo, which is how most of them end up looking (Chargers). I even like it better than the full wordmark they used in the 80s and 90s, though that was pretty good too. They also have two alternates: one looks like Eli throwing the ball out of Giants Stadium (although it predates Eli by 5 years), and the other is a decorated wordmark that’s just a little too bold and a little too messy to look good.
Jets: Monograph on football. The wordmark on football logo works well as a helmet logo, so it’s a mystery why it isn’t their helmet logo, but the monograph edges it out for whatever reason. Maybe it looks faster with the more pronounced forward tilt of the letters. Whatever, they’re both good.
Eagles: Eagle head. Most angry bird head logos look silly because birds don’t actually make those expressions, except bald eagles do have eyebrow looking forehead ridges. The slanty wordmark (not the arching one) also looks good. The alternate that puts the eagle head on the arching wordmark, not so much. I like the stylized diving eagle they used briefly in the late 60s.
Steelers: Steelmark. They put a keyline around it and cleaned up the font in 2002, but for all intents and purposes it hasn’t changed since 1968 for a reason. The stencil wordmark, especially the current iteration, with both the gold fill and the keyline, look like they’re trying too hard.
49ers: Monogram on football. The 1996 update was not an improvement over the simple 1968 version, but the 2009 update, with a few subtle changes, looks a lot better. The white wordmark looks better than the red one, but they both look messy.
Seahawks: Osprey head. Since it’s supposed to look like a Salish painting of an osprey, rather than a real osprey, it doesn’t lose points for the grumpy expression. I like the coloration, and it’s a hell of a lot better than the wordmark.
Buccaneers: Flag. Remember what I said about pirate flag logos looking either cartoonish or generic? This manages both. It’s still better than the wordmark, especially since their logo font keeps getting dumber. Bring back Bruce!
Titans: Sword. So much better than the flaming thumbtack. The wordmark would be decent if it weren’t for the beveling. Apparently we were still doing that in 2018?
Washington: Script R. It’s not for the reason you think; I actually like the Indian head logo. I just like the script R better, even though it’s probably better suited for a baseball cap than a football helmet.
I like the little hidden details in some of these logos, like the E in the Eagles logo, and how the Panther logo is shaped like Carolinas.
RE: The Giants Eli lookalike, it actually predates Eli by 50 some odd years. I forget the exact year, I think it was like 1940-something. Lemme google… 1945.
https://sportslogohistory.com/new-york-giants-primary-logo
Thanks. I know Chris Creamer doesn’t have all the information (see my Browns entry), so I’m more than willing to believe there are missing items or history in there.
What, you didn’t have 35 hours to do extensive research on every team’s entire history before posting? 😉
Honestly the logo fits the St Louis Rams more because the way that horn is split up looks like the Arch from the 90s St. Louis Rams logo.
That lukewarm compliment of the Galaxy logo may be the nicest thing you’ve ever said about soccer on here. Careful, you’re only a few steps away from marching to Providence Park with the Timbers Army or waking up in the wee hours to watch your favorite EPL team!
Rams: Wait, which LA team is this logo supposed to be for?
Designer: Yes.
This actually made me realize that every LA sports logo just LA with some sort of spin on it. Teams like the Yankees and Giants can get away with it because they’re old and classic at this point but teams like the wildcats have zero excuse. Like your team mascot is a wildcat! You can do better than this LA
My initial reaction to the new logo was “This is a vision of the future where Stan Kronke and Dean Spanos, along with their teams, have finally merged into a homunculus of grift and greed.”
Good luck getting *that* image out of your head…
new logo looks like coronavirus to me
Is coronavirus the new GOAT?
The Kings used to have the crown and a nice coat-of-arms look, but the current logo is just trash and I hate it.