No, it’s not fantastic. It is not fantastic, at all.
Marlins’ New Logo Is Real, And It’s ...
The Marlins’ old logo was actually pretty good. But they’ve got a new name and a new ballpark, so the old logo has to go. Unfortunately, the new logo will actually cause serious retinal injuries.
Remember that supposed new (Miami) Marlins that we all mocked?
A few weeks ago, Uni Watch confirmed it.
Still, without a physical manifestation there was still a chance it wasn’t real, right? Or that someone with some juice would step in and say, “Really nice effort, kids, but now the grown-ups are going to come up with something that’s not hideous.”
No such luck. Now we have a physical manifestation. This looks like the side of a seat or something in the new ballpark:
This doesn’t look as bad as the color version, but it’s still pretty awful, with its mix of curvy stylized fish abstraction and sharp diagonals.
Hey, here’s a little bit of advice for all you would-be logo designers ... Don’t stylize animals.
It's almost always a bad idea. The further you get from the actual animal, the uglier your logo gets. The single greatest development in baseball logos? When the Baltimore Orioles went from this:
to this:
Blue Jays, same thing. The farther they get from the ornithologically correct Cyanocitta cristata, the worse they look. And right now they're pretty far away.
So what happened with the Marlins’ new logo? I’ll bet you a pound of shark-fin soup this mess was the result of your classic design by committee -- which of course is the absolutely worst way to design anything, and explains most of our worst architecture -- with everyone from the owner to the visitors’ locker-room janitor throwing in pet design elements, and at no point did some responsible adult step in and tell everyone they couldn’t have everything.
Why the stylized Marlin? Because the old logo’s got a literal interpretation, and the franchise needs to break with the past. Also, abstract is cool! If I were a kid I would love it!
Why the double M’s? Because now we’re called the Miami Marlins. Get it? MM? So many things you can do with double letters!
Why the bizarre color scheme? Well, the teal is a nod to Miami’s beautiful ocean waters, the orange commemorates the Orange Bowl, the site on which the new stadium sits, and the yellow honors Florida’s official nickname, “The Sunshine State”.
You think I’m kidding and I sort of am, but this is really how people think about logos. They don’t wonder, “Hey, what would a really pretty logo look like?” They wonder, “How many symbolic and disparate elements can we jam into this thing without making complete asses of ourselves?”
Mission half-accomplished!
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