Awesome Glowing HareWolves Logo

I'm a fan of The Clink Room and all the cool logos their users create. I recently saw this Harewolves logo by Jason Villanti. I love the logo and it's the best uses of glow in the dark in a logo I've ever seen. Very Creative! I thought it would be fun to make an animated gif out the logo, showing its cool glow in dark alter ego!

DC Comics & Carbon Copy Cloner Logos

Is it just me, or do these two logos look kinda similar?

The logo on the left is the current DC Comics logo which was unveiled on March 2012. The logo on the right is the Macintosh backup program Carbon Copy Cloner. I had a look as some old reviews for the software and I found this logo used as far back as October 2010, which predates the DC logo by about 2 years.
I showed the two logos to some of my coworkers and asked them if they thought they looked similar, and strangely they said no. This may not be as similar as these two logos, but they sure seem similar to me. What do you think?

Little Golden Book Monday #122

Today's Little Golden Book is Casper and Friends, BOO-O-S On First from 1992. I have been wanting to pick up a copy of this book for a while, but never seem to find a decent copy. This one was in fair shape and at just 69 cents I could not pass it up. I happen to be a fan of Casper the Ghost, and I love the title of the book (gotta love Abbott & Costello). It also gives me an excuse to do a post about the Casper Ghosts minor league baseball team and their awesome logo... I do love logos you know!
I first heard of this team (and their logo on The Clink Room web site.
The Casper Ghosts are a Minor League Baseball team in the Pioneer League based in Casper, Wyoming, where they play at Mike Lansing Field. They are the Rookie-level affiliate of the Colorado Rockies, established in 1978.
Unveiled in 2007, the Casper Ghosts are the only team in Minor League Baseball to wear glow-in-the-dark caps. The Ghosts official colors are orange and black.
In addition, they use as an alternate logo the image of Casper the Friendly Ghost with permission from the Harvey Entertainment division of Classic Media.
And hey, notice this book, features Casper playing baseball!

A Visual History of the BC Lions Logo

I am a big fan of team logos, and I love seeing the evolution of a team logo. Here is a a short article about the BC Lions of the CFL accompanied by the 5 Lions logos that span from 1954 to present.

Pepsi Unveils New Logo & Bottles

I saw this posted on The Fire Wire Blog and found it kind of interesting. Pepsi is redesigning its globe logo. A ’smile’ will characterize brand Pepsi, while a ‘grin’ is used for Diet Pepsi and a ‘laugh’ is used for Pepsi Max.
The company will spend $1.2 billion over three years to change everything about its brands – “How they look, how they’re packaged, how they will be merchandised on the shelves, and how they connect with consumers” - which will be done by the Arnell Group.
I don't know about you, but these new bottles and logos look pretty generic. They remind me of the generic store brands of Coke and Pepsi that my local grocery store carries. The logos always try to look kind of like the original without being a blatant rip off, but somehow always look very 'generic'.
After seeing this on the Fire Wire blog, I surfed over to the Pepsi web site expecting to see a big splash page announcing the "New Look", but found nothing on the site mentioning anything about a change, which leaves me wondering where the Fire Wire blog got this info. Real, or fake... you decide!

The International Hockey League is back... sort of!?!

I had today marked on my iCal as the day that the UHL would be announcing the changes for the upcoming 2007/08 hockey season. I knew that a bunch of the teams that payed last season would be gone for next season, as two teams are moving to other leagues and a few others are folding. But what I saw when I visited the UHL site tonight was pretty surprising!
The first thing I noticed when I clicked on my UHL bookmark was the the url quickly changed from theuhl.com to ihl-hockey.com. Then as the site showed up in my browser I saw that the UHL had indeed shrunk in teams from 10 last season down to 6 for the upcoming season. But more interestingly, the league had also changed its name from the UHL (United Hockey League) to the IHL International Hockey League).
My immediate reaction was that of excitement, after all, the IHL was my favorite hockey league until its demise in 2001. I was very disappointed when IHL folded.
Happily six of the IHL teams (including my favorites: Manitoba Moose & Grand Rapids Griffins), moved over to the AHL. I have a great T-shirt with those logos and the slogan, "the Original Six", as a homage to the original six of the NHL.
I always wished that IHL had not gone away, or at least that after a season or two they could have come back to play another season.
So here it is 2007, and we once again have the IHL, albeit a very different IHL.
Part of me thinks its wrong to change the name of the UHL to a name that already existed, but, at least 3 of the 6 teams playing in the new IHL were teams that played in the original IHL, so I guess that make this seem just a little 'less wrong', and possibly even OK.
I'll be very anxious to see the new IHL season begin this coming October. Once the season get going, I'll make up my mind if this is the greatest hockey move ever, or the worst move ever. Lets just hope they don't make a mockery of the IHL name.

The Montgomery Biscuits

I love logos and I am always checking out new teams and leagues to see what new teams/logos are out there. The other night I was visiting the Logo Quality Control blog and came across one of the silliest logos ever. Its a minor league AA baseball team from Montgomery, Alabama. The name of the team is the Montgomery Biscuits and their logo is a wacky breakfast biscuit! If they were a hockey team, that would make one heck of a cool jersey!

Victoria Vanguard Jerseys

Today on the way home from work I was listening to the local sports radio station and they were talking about the Vancouver Canucks and their jerseys. Of course as soon as I heard them talking about jerseys and new possible logos, I became very interested. They mentioned a Canucks fan website where there was a discussion going on regarding next season's Canuck's jerseys, along with fan made designs. As soon as I got home, I hit the web and ended up wasting a couple of hours at the computer. First I checked out the Canucks Canucks.com message board where the thread topic was "Modified Canucks Jersey - New Designs". There were some terrific looking jersey designs posted by the Canucks fans. This got me thinking about a logo I made a few years ago for the Victoria Salmon Kings of the ECHL.
When I first heard that there was a new pro hockey team coming to Victoria a couple of seasons ago, I was very interested to see what their name and logo would be. I was greatly disappointed when they unveiled their name (Salmon Kings) and logo (a sappy looking fish with a crown). Not the cool name and logo I had been hoping for. I decided I wanted to come up with something cooler. I remembered seeing some proposed (but unused) logos for the new team in Adirondack (check out my previous blog on this. I took my favorite unused Adirondack's logo and then mucked with it in Photoshop, changing the Adirondack Attack into the Victoria Vanguard. After spending some time playing around with, I made a nice desktop out of it, which pops up every now and then in my desktop screensaver mode.
Today I decided it was time to create some jerseys for my fictional hockey team. So, here I present the home and away jerseys of the Victoria Vanguard.

Lake Erie Monsters coming ashore

While visiting the AHL (American Hockey League) web site tonight, I found a great new team called the Lake Erie Monsters who will join the AHL for next season.
The new American Hockey League team that will begin play for the 2007-08 season in Cleveland at Quicken Loans Arena. The Monsters will operate as the primary affiliate of one of the NHL's most successful franchises, the Colorado Avalanche.
The team name was selected after an extensive amount of research was conducted with focus groups made up of casual fans, high level hockey fans, former Cleveland pro hockey season ticket holders, and others. In addition, considerable research explored names that would have a fun connection to the region. The Lake Erie Monsters was the top preference from the focus groups.
The "legend of the Lake Erie Monster" or "LEM," brings a fun geographical folklore connection to the region. The logo art reflects the menacing, powerful nature of the creature and features the hot yellow glare of the Monster's eye. Primary team colors will be wine, blue, yellow and black.
The home jersey will be white with wine shoulders and black trim segments on the arm sleeves and will feature the secondary logo on the front. The road jersey will be wine with black and white trim segments on the arm sleeves. Both home and road jerseys will have the Monster from the primary logo on each shoulder. Player numbers will appear on each shoulder sleeve and on the back of each jersey.
Leading the design and name development process with the organization's senior management team was Tracy Marek, Cavaliers/Quicken Loans Arena senior vice president of marketing. The team worked with Cenergy Communications on all elements of the name and design development process.
"Cenergy Communications brought a great deal of specialized expertise and insight to the table for this project. They really helped us develop an identity package that we'?re confident will engage our fans-to-be with a fun, but aggressive, team image they can be proud of and connect with. Monster Hockey is going to attack The Q like no other hockey team ever has!" said Marek.
I love the name and logo, but would make one small change. I would add the word 'Lock' to their name, making them the Lake Erie Lock Monsters. I think they probably avoided this name though, as there was another team in the AHL that used to go by the name Lowell Lock Monsters. They have since changed their name to the Lowell Devils (they went from a great name and logo, to a pretty lame name and logo in my opinion).
As well as the Lowell Lock Monsters, there was also a UHL team about 10 years ago called the Madison Monsters. I really liked thier logo, but their jersyes looked pretty funny as they were white with black pinstripes, which made them look like baseball jerseys instead of hockey jerseys.
While looking for the Madison logo, I also found this logo for the Vermont Lake Monsters baseball team.
It would seem that the name Monsters, is not as unique as I first thought. Uniqueness aside, I can't wait to add some Erie Lake Monsters merchandise to my collection next season!

10th Anniversary Logo Survey

Tonight while surfing the net, I visited the Bakersfield Condors web site and noticed they were going to be celebrating their 10th anniversary next season. To celebrate, they had a contest to vote for the logo they would use during their 10th Anniversary season. There were 4 logos to choose from. I always love seeing the logo choices, and then seeing which one ends up being used.

Of the four choices, I would choose logo #3. I love the claws grabbing the large ten "X". I would like to see them make the claws look a little more 'rough' as they look in their actual logo. A few claw marks on the "X" would look good too! Second choice would be logo #2. This one looks good, but the "X" in this one gets a little lost. It would look better if they had used the same "X" from logo #3 for this one. I do not like logos #1 or #4. Both are a little too busy and I don't think they would look very good on a jersey, when you see it for a distance.
As far as which one will win, I am putting my money on #3.
While we are discussing the Condor's logo, here is their original logo, back when they were known as the Bakersfield Fog. This is one of my all time favorite logos. I even have a Fog jersey in my collection. When I emailed them to ask why they had changed their name/logo, they told me that they changed their name due to the bad connotations that were linked with the name Fog, due to the fact that Bakersfield is known for its dense fog, and that many people have been killed due to the fog. Too bad, because this is such a cool logo and name!
And lastly, something else I found on the Condor's site. A piece of merchandise that I have not seen a hockey team sell before... toilet paper! The product details on the web site state: "This is a roll of toilet paper that has the Fresno Falcon's logo on it and says 'Wipe out the Falcons.'" I wonder if the Falcons have Condor's toilet paper for sale on their site?

Unused Silvertips Logos

Here are some more unused hockey logos. I love this sort of stuff!
The Everett Silvertips WHL hockey team played their inaugural season in the 2003/04 season. Here are some of the team names and logos that were considered for the team before they became the Silvertips.
These unused logos were printed in the 2003/04 game night program. Some of the proposed names were the Admirals, Golden Eagles, Sea Dogs, Fleet, and Boomers. I kind of like that Everett Fleet logo. Add some stars to the sleeves, and a naval motif, and the Fleet jersey could be pretty slick!

Andirondack Frostbite

The Adirondack Frostbite was a minor league hockey team in the UHL (United Hockey League). They began play in the 2004/05 season and folded after the 2005/06 season. Before they were known as the Frostbite, they were the Adirondack IceHawks. When the IceHawks were bought by new owners, they decided to give the team a new name and logo. On the Andirondack team web site, they had a 'name the team' contest where you could vote for your favorite from the 6 finalists. The choices were the Frostbite, the Axemen, the Attack, the Mulleteers, the RedHawks, and the Spelunkers. My vote went for the Attack.
After seeing the 6 finalists, you have to wonder what names and logos didn't make the cut if the Mulleteers and Spelunkers made the list of finalists!