Canada Soccer Logo. Time for a new one?

[frmr]

6 minutes ago, Califax said:

Sure simplicity is key, but it's not the only factor. If I look at the old Whalers or Brewers logos, they are both simple but they have that extra layer in them. I look at the Canucks hockey stick logo and it's so simple that it's terrible. It's only possibly seen as good because of how terrible it is.

 

I like Canada basketball, I hate Canada hockey, but I also think that those logos don't matter as much because they're essentially for local marketing as no one really cares about those tournaments anywhere else in the world. World Cup is different. There is a greater opportunity to market Canada to the world. 

As for your last point, I disagree. While England focuses on three lions, we are still focusing on telling people it's a logo for a soccer team. It feels like it was designed at a time and for an audience to introduce them to what sport they're watching. IMO we are past that now.

I throw this out there though, anyone seen a rebrand that is infinitely worse? By and large, most rebrands land you with a better logo. 95% of the ones i've seen have. 

I'd have to see it, I'm not married to the current badge, and I think it is possible to improve it of course, but I also think the current one is not broken and so there is no need to fix it. The one thing I disagree on is that rebrands can definitely go wrong. I also think there is an understated quality to our current badge that actually is representative of us. It basically says "hey, we're Canada, we play soccer", which is basically the truth, let's be honest. We are only now introducing ourselves to the world as a country who can actually play football, and so that's what our badge communicates. And the bonus of that is, in 20-30 years when we (hopefully) have established ourselves as a consistent top 30 country, then our badge will have organically created that history and it will become "iconic" (in a minor sense) in the process. Rebrands can interrupt that natural process.

[Califax]

8 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

I honestly don’t get the opposition. In reality it is just personal preference.  If you feel it should be changed it isn’t because of some objective truth - it is because you personally just don’t like the design.  And that is fine - but it doesn’t mean Canada Soccer should do a complete overhaul of a logo that many feel is iconic.  There is no need to freshen it up just for the sake of change.  

And as I said before, the CSA doesn’t have the benefit of a third concept like a pro team.   There is no blue jay, raptor or penguin that can be utilized to add conceptual nuance.  It has (and has to communicate) the concepts of “Canada” and “Soccer” and the existing logo does that quite well.  

I mean, you could literally use this exact language you put together in the first paragraph to take the opposite position. So you're right. It's a personal preference. 

To the bolded parts: first the people who want freshen it up would say it looks old. Which is probably the number one reason to update a logo. Second, soccer doesn't really need to be in there. Lot's of countries don't communicate that visually. But if there was a simple, classy way to make it happen, I'd be all for it. 

 

[Kent]

On 3/15/2022 at 9:18 PM, Califax said:

I throw this out there though, anyone seen a rebrand that is infinitely worse? By and large, most rebrands land you with a better logo. 95% of the ones i've seen have. 

Personally I didn't like the Raptors logo change, but I am sure I am in the minority on that one. The Jays as well have had some that didn't work for me.

As maybe a better example even though I don't really care about any version of the logos, the Washington Capitals have basically gone full circle. They had a logo that was essentially the word "Capitals" with a hockey stick for a t, then they had an eagle, then the capitol building, then they went back to the word "Capitals" with a hockey stick for a t. If that is what's best now, maybe it was always fine? You mentioned the Milwaukee Brewers as well I believe. I love the glove logo. They got rid of it from 1994 to 2019 and finally brought it back (it's in a circle now with the full name of the team, but otherwise the same). I think it was bad to go away from that logo in the first place. The angry fisherman logo for the New York Islanders I think is pretty universally considered a mistake that they quickly reversed. So yes, there are some that don't work out. It's not always an improvement at all.

[Shway]

40 years of the logo. Every brand looks to do a refresh of their logo. Even the most iconic ones, even if it's the slightest change, something is usually done. Why? It's about positioning  and staying current in the market.

IMO our logo isn't perfect, nor is it horrible. However it shouldn't be seen as not needed to be tweaked/refreshed/or changed. 

[WestHamCanadianinOxford]

Just hope if we do, we don't do a Juve. Or a West Ham.

[Shway]

5 minutes ago, WestHamCanadianinOxford said:

Just hope if we do, we don't do a Juve. Or a West Ham.

Was literally going to ask you that.

I thought West Ham could've been a little better, but it's better than their old logo. 
I think they could've kept the shape of the old logo, removed the castle, and using the new hammers. 

[WestHamCanadianinOxford]

11 minutes ago, Shway said:

Was literally going to ask you that.

I thought West Ham could've been a little better, but it's better than their old logo. 
I think they could've kept the shape of the old logo, removed the castle, and using the new hammers. 

Probably just being sentimental but I like the castle. The shape is supposed to be the silhouette of an important navy ship build at the Thames Iron Works, whose team became West Ham. Other than that it is close to very old badges.

The "London" is the dumb part, pure marketing.  

Edited March 18, 2022 by WestHamCanadianinOxford

[Califax]

2 hours ago, Kent said:

Personally I didn't like the Raptors logo change, but I am sure I am in the minority on that one. The Jays as well have had some that didn't work for me.

As maybe a better example even though I don't really care about any version of the logos, the Washington Capitals have basically gone full circle. They had a logo that was essentially the word "Capitals" with a hockey stick for a t, then they had an eagle, then the capitol building, then they went back to the word "Capitals" with a hockey stick for a t. If that is what's best now, maybe it was always fine? You mentioned the Milwaukee Brewers as well I believe. I love the glove logo. They got rid of it from 1994 to 2019 and finally brought it back (it's in a circle now with the full name of the team, but otherwise the same). I think it was bad to go away from that logo in the first place. The angry fisherman logo for the New York Islanders I think is pretty universally considered a mistake that they quickly reversed. So yes, there are some that don't work out. It's not always an improvement at all.

I get what you're saying, but they went away from it for 25 years. It's not like they played a season with it and gave up. People liked it during those 25 years, some years more than others.

Design, like fashion, changes. Sure you can ride it out til it comes back in style again, but you'll be wearing baggy jeans for a while when everyone else isn't. Even the caps logo refreshed when it came back. I'd take a similar level of refresh on this in a heartbeat. 

[Califax]

Sorry if it was posted before (and for bumping a contentious thread haha) but I just saw this knockoff patch on amazon. 

Almost looks like the sarcastic sponge bob font. 

[The Real Marc]

The only thing to improve our logo would be to write the word Canada in the Planet of the Apes font. That would be badass

[Obinna]

CaNaDa

[Shway]

A lot of Concacaf federations have done rebrands.

This is a neat and nice logo refresh. 

Maybe a new logo for the CSA would represent a sign of "change" 🤪

[dyslexic nam]

I still don’t feel any need whatsoever to change it.  

[Kent]

Why are their golf flags on the red ball on that new Cuba logo?

[gigi riva]

In all honesty I think we should leave it alone 

[Markoaleks]

I like the current logo. No need to change. 
Change is not better- look at the WC 22 Serbia logo vs the previous version as example A

With the current tire fire that is the CSA and the bungled Nike deal amongst many missteps- could you imagine how they would screw up a new logo?

[Shway]

17 hours ago, Kent said:

Why are their golf flags on the red ball on that new Cuba logo?

You say golf flags, I see corner flags.

[Kent]

27 minutes ago, Shway said:

You say golf flags, I see corner flags.

Amazing how that never even crossed my mind.

[RJB]

If you look at the logos that got rebrands, they all took a logo and provided less detail - made it cleaner.  Just look at the Cuba logo: fewer small lines, bigger and less font, and just an overall cleaner badge.  The same can be said for the USA and Mexico ones at the front of the thread.  

I'm not sure how that can happen for us because our logo already has those characteristics.  So then the question is what would you change dramatically if simplifying isn't necessary?  It's Canada soccer, so what will you replace the maple leaf and soccer ball with?

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by RJB

[jonovision]

I had to do a double take yesterday watching the Voyageurs Cup match because Vaughan Azzurri's logo is almost identical to the Canada Soccer design.

[RS]

10 minutes ago, jonovision said:

I had to do a double take yesterday watching the Voyageurs Cup match because Vaughan Azzurri's logo is almost identical to the Canada Soccer design.

I'm not sure how they're allowed to get away with it.

[Metro]

CSA may be okay with it.  I don't think local semi-pro clubs using a variation of the CSA's logo reflects negatively on the CSA.  They can do that themselves. 😄 

[frmr]

Vaughn's logo is fucking horrendous.

One thing that is really embarrassing in Canadian soccer is the graphic design. Not all of it, but a lot of it. The Vaughn crest is a perfect example. Rip off another crest, make a series of awful decisions to make it markedly worse and boom, Bob's your uncle. I would except better design decisions from a U-8 team.

Another one that makes my head spin is Forge's crest. It looks like the owner got his 20 year old nephew who freelances graphic design as a side gig to do it.

Back to the topic at hand, the Canada logo is fine. The issue arises when people don't know how to use it. When it's on a black or red background (the black background looks the best and is not used nearly enough imo) anchored with a nice thick white outline around it, it looks great. Simple and bold. Unfortunately (and this is becoming less of an issue lately thankfully) some media people use it without the white outline and on a stupid background which makes it look like some clip art looking piece of shit that has been left out to dry.

Look at the differences between the two contexts of the crest. One looks great, the other looks embarrassing and amateur. I feel like people's negative feelings towards the crest has been because in the past, we used to see abominations like the green one below way too often, even from Canada Soccer at times, and it made the logo seem much worse than it is.

 

Edited April 19, 2023 by frmr

[narduch]

Not going to get too worked up about the Vaughan SC logo.

It's a community club that got its start in 1986 running youth programs.

[frmr]

5 minutes ago, narduch said:

Not going to get too worked up about the Vaughan SC logo.

It's a community club that got its start in 1986 running youth programs.

I'm not going to get worked up about it either, but the fact remains, that its logo is embarrassingly bad. That's just a simple fact. It's not hard to find a graphic designer and spend a couple hundred bucks (like Forge did).