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What does it take to rebrand a huge sports team? GQ finds out. Join Justin Thomas Kay as we look at the evolution of the LA Clippers’ branding, from their founding logo as the Buffalo Braves to the most recent (albeit controversial) LA Clippers’ hallmark. What are the key ingredients to a team logo in the NBA? Did the LA Clippers get it right? What could the team’s future branding look like? GQ settles the score, as the LA Clippers get rebranded.
Transcript
00:00This is a new logo for the Los Angeles Clippers. It's causing a bit of a stir.
00:05So today, we're gonna take a look at this new logo, take a stroll through history, looking at legacy Clipper brand design, and even try
00:12my own hand at making a new logo myself.
00:18So this logo was debuted in 2024. You're gonna see a lot of logos now. As teams do rebrand,
00:24they're almost always within a circle. The NBA kind of wants all these logos to tie together and feel like they're a part of
00:30a family. The second thing that you're going to see is the city name. The third, obviously, being the team name. In the case of
00:37this identity, they sit sort of on the same level of hierarchy. And the third main component is obviously the actual
00:44visual signifier. Once you get into the jerseys and all, like, the disparate elements of how the brand comes together,
00:50there's a lot of different ways that these things start to break apart.
00:52They have this red that gets brought in on the outside.
00:55They have this light blue, and it's anchored by the Navy, which is a primary component of the logo.
01:01You have your sea element. Within that sea, you start to break down maritime elements.
01:06It's like a little bit of a compass going on. And then you have the ship. And within that ship,
01:10you have your hidden basketball element. Another common thing,
01:13so all teams have a directive to integrate a little bit of basketball imagery in a literal way.
01:18And the way that they did it is to add the texture around the ship.
01:21Historically, the NBA has generally been anchored in very literal basketball imagery.
01:26They're really trying to go back into finding a balance of how do you create something that both is
01:30anchored in the culture of the place, the culture of the team, the culture around the name,
01:35but then bringing in a little bit of that literal basketball imagery to try to find a balance.
01:39I am gonna design my own logo.
01:41But before we do that, we need to take a look at the logo through time. Started here,
01:451970 to 71, when they were in Buffalo. Very endemic of mid-century design at the time in general,
01:51even going outside of sports. Attributes, I would say, flat, literal, with the actual silhouette of the Buffalo.
01:5771 to 78, retaining the flatness,
02:00but you can see that they tried to make it somehow feel, I would say,
02:03energetic with the slanted type, while still maintaining some of the visual references from the logo before.
02:09It's almost more like a 3M or IBM kind of mark than a sports team.
02:13So from 78 to 82, they use this mark when they change the name to the Clippers. Much loved by the fans,
02:20I feel like there's, you know, a lot of kind of like retro love for this. This pennant was developed in 2018,
02:25so I think that just the fact that people still want to buy this merch with this mark on it tells you something about how
02:31much people have kind of like a latent love for this, even if the team looks different and behaves different from a brand perspective now.
02:37So for me, the main elements are the sails. Downward-facing sails that are very
02:43specific to what is the historical Clipper ship. The Clipper ship was an old-school
02:49massive sailboat used for the initial global supply chains.
02:53One thing I think was smart through the filter of mid-century modern design is the allusion to the basketball.
02:58Is it a basketball? Is it a sun? It brings it into the narrative around the logo,
03:01but it's a step too abstract, I would say.
03:05They had this mark from 82 to 84 while they were still in San Diego.
03:09There's some inherent challenges in the way that the initial logo worked,
03:12which they eventually walked away from. These sort of like energy lines that are going through the basketball were shooting off the front.
03:18They got rid of that. This one is the first one that brings in the actual basketball, which helps to address the challenge of the name.
03:26I don't know the history behind the type, but this was very like a distinct piece of type.
03:31It's very close to the Lakers type, but obviously, you know, that started while they were still in San Diego.
03:36So I think that was a little bit of a happy accident, to be honest.
03:38The team moves to Los Angeles and from 84 to 2010, they used this version.
03:44So they had four logos from 1970 to 84. Why did this logo stick from 84 to 2010 when they moved to Los Angeles?
03:51I mean, to me, the obvious answer is it was just like baked into the zeitgeist at that time.
03:55It just felt like something that was a
03:57a defining visual of the NBA. Teams like the Lakers, the Bulls, the Celtics.
04:02Those are all kind of like the classic teams that come to mind when you think about sports identities and timelessness.
04:08And I think that this logo falls into that category.
04:102010 to 2015, they did a subtle update.
04:14They switched the typeface. It spells out Los Angeles.
04:16They made some adjustments to the core script of Clippers, which, in my opinion, still has some readability issues.
04:22And they made some subtle adjustments to the basketball.
04:24So you can see that the lines here are moving in a different direction as opposed to here.
04:282010, 2015, you're moving fully into digital design at that point.
04:32Whereas the 70 to 71, all the way up through 84, those are hand-drawn, cut down into PhotoStat.
04:39They had to photograph them with a camera, go through all these photographic processes to actually add color and render the final logo.
04:45These are all hand-constructed.
04:472015 to 2018, they're taking the city name out of it in an obvious way.
04:53It gets put into this lock-up.
04:54So the city name is very subtle here.
04:57It's really just in this LA, which alludes to that classic LA lock-up, you know, like this thing.
05:03So here, subtle change, but you have 2018 to 2024.
05:08You know, they really didn't do much beyond a tweak to the colors.
05:11So they toned down both the red and the blue, added a little bit more black to both of those tones just to make it feel like richer and deeper.
05:18And so this, we just broke this one down, but this is where we are in 2024.
05:22So we've been looking at these flat logos, but in order to really understand how they work, you got to look at it on a jersey.
05:27Starting in the top left, you can see in the original San Diego Clippers logo,
05:31they were trying to go with something that felt a little more endemic of the time,
05:34as opposed to the Celtics, who were doing something that felt a little more timeless and more in a varsity style.
05:39From here, this is how the logo adapted to the jerseys in that iconic era.
05:43And it's interesting, you know, you start to see how you have your logo,
05:47but how does that then translate to a pretty like distinct style of lettering that comes out in the jersey?
05:54Top right, you can see in the more modern era, they transitioned into just like a pure script.
05:59If I wanted to be a real nerd, this is definitely Stahl's script, which is a pretty standard varsity script.
06:05It really has no direct visual reference to the logo, but that's intentional.
06:09And that's something that you see a lot of teams do in the modern era.
06:11That rebrand that happened in 2015, it brought this really bright, vibrant red and blue,
06:17which on the black works pretty well.
06:19But you can see where that kind of like vibration would potentially cause a problem for, you know, filming the games itself.
06:25On the left, this is much deeper.
06:27It screams a little less.
06:29And on the white jersey, it stays extremely readable.
06:32I have a couple of physical jerseys here.
06:34You get a feel for how these colors were breaking down, how this script comes in, only for the jerseys.
06:39So as we move into the 2015 era, they were using the wordmark from the actual logo
06:45and just literally pasting that on the front of the jersey.
06:47You have the city jerseys, which you have this black letter type,
06:50but then you have the logo in the bottom corner that is anchored in the core identity.
06:54And it's used as a support to this thing that's meant as like a more kind of like cultural extension of the brand.
06:59That's always the first step in making a new identity.
07:02From here, we're going to take a look at making our own.
07:05Ideally, this kind of exercise, you spread this out over as long of a period of time as you can
07:10and figure out different narrative ways in to the identity.
07:13My first thought is this thing just needs to function as a circle.
07:16For me, that's kind of like the main parameter of it.
07:19But then within that, I mean, you know, it can be anything.
07:21After going through where the team's been,
07:24I think there's a real opportunity to explore the original San Diego identity.
07:29We've done all this work to kind of look at where the team came from,
07:32trying to find some reference points.
07:34How can that just work in a more modern context?
07:36The two ingredients at play, you've got the sales,
07:38and we're trying to create some space to make a little bit more of an obvious basketball reference.
07:42So for me, it's an easy way to just split it in half.
07:45Conveying energy and forward momentum in a logo is not easy,
07:49especially something like this, because you're given parameters.
07:52You know, usually you don't have too many colors to work with.
07:54You don't have a lot of space to work with.
07:56These things need to operate at a variety of different scales.
07:59They need to be quick.
07:59They need to be able to break apart and work in a lot of different places.
08:03So I think in theory here, you know, what I'm really trying to do is just map out
08:06how does this thing work from a formal standpoint
08:10and what's the positive and negative space.
08:12In its most reduced form, you want this thing to work in one color.
08:15The color that you add to it is just an additive ingredient.
08:22I've got the sales.
08:24I've got like a basic framework for how I think the basketball can work
08:27alongside that to help carry that upward momentum.
08:30I'm building now what that outside container is going to be for the type.
08:35One thing that I think is a little bit missed in how
08:38some of these roundel logos are working,
08:41there doesn't tend to be a lot of other elements that work
08:43in this outside capacity outside of the type.
08:46How can we bring in another element that could set the framework
08:49for a larger brand system?
08:51Kind of like a nice idea of these little like diamond anchor points
08:54that are referencing the sales.
08:56You can imagine these breaking off and becoming a pattern
08:58or becoming a design element for the jerseys.
09:01So this, what I'm really just trying to map out is not so much the lettering style,
09:06but it's really just trying to think about,
09:08okay, how can this type wrap around?
09:10And so part of the reason that I wanted those diamond elements in there
09:15was to think about something else to help anchor the mark
09:19because usually it's kept a little blank.
09:21This is all subject to change based on how this actually works
09:26once I'm doing the real type setting.
09:28In all of my brand work, I always start with typography.
09:32Brand ideas like this can be a different kind of challenge
09:34because it's so dominated by the visual story that you're trying to find.
09:39So it sort of forces me to work in a different way
09:41than I'm like more naturally inclined to, which is nice.
09:44There's no one size fits all way of approaching these things.
09:47Could you imagine rebranding the Bulls?
09:49Could you imagine changing that Bull?
09:51Absolutely not.
09:52That's what you're aspiring to, in my opinion.
09:55The aspiration is not just to change the design,
09:57the aspiration is not just new, it's to be lasting.
10:01Right now, I'm just filling out the type a little bit
10:04just to try to get a feel for the balance.
10:08Probably needs to be a little bit more angular
10:10to tie back to the diamonds and the sails and that sort of look.
10:13But weight-wise, this is starting to feel right.
10:18So the first sketch that I'm going to take into Illustrator
10:21is the main logo, starting from the inside out.
10:27So...
10:50One thing that I'm missing a little bit in how the new logo functions
10:53is like a little bit more color contrast.
10:56If it becomes too navy dominant, you lose some energy.
10:59Thinking about how to select the right typeface for this.
11:02One that like immediately comes to mind that I just picked up a bit ago.
11:07It's this typeface called Octic, which I got from Future Fonts,
11:11which is a really great typeface supplier.
11:14I feel like I evangelize for them pretty like endlessly,
11:17but it's basically like a like a Patreon for type almost.
11:20I had bought this a while ago.
11:21It's engineered, it's got some of the angles,
11:24but the straightness of it feels like it has like a nice counterbalance
11:27to some of like the roundness of the shape of the overall logo.
11:31So something like that that's not perfect,
11:32but it's close to what I'm talking about here.
11:35So here, little diamond shapes.
11:37I don't know if the scale here is totally right,
11:39but something like this.
11:40Something to just help kind of like ground the logo on either side.
11:43They probably need to be a little bit taller, but it's close.
11:47All right, so I feel pretty good about that.
11:49I tried to make it so that the exterior navy outline
11:52reflects the line work that's happening in here
11:54after I was able to finesse that a little bit.
11:56The light blue to give a nod to that portion of the color palette,
11:59and then you've got your little diamonds.
12:01So those feel like a good holding shape,
12:02and then you have this white type that sort of knocks out.
12:05All right, I think I'm good here.
12:06Time to move on to the jersey script.
12:08This book in particular is specifically about
12:11the history of graphic design in France,
12:14but what I'm looking for is this one reference
12:16that pretty much immediately came to mind.
12:18A lot of people have seen this, the old vintage Saint Raphael.
12:22This style, it was developed by a designer named Charles Lupo,
12:26which was also developed into an actual working typeface by someone.
12:29It's called Lupo.
12:31So that's a benefit is that it would actually be a digitized usable thing
12:34for the brand to be able to use moving forward.
12:36You know, there's still some pitfalls here that I need to be careful of.
12:38Like, I don't want to go too retro with it.
12:40So I need to figure out what is a way that this can be updated
12:43and used in a dynamic way that is speaking about it
12:46in a way that is relevant to sport and not just like a decorative thing.
12:49It's very dense and very thick.
12:51So I think one thing that I would do is
12:53I would also just like make it a little thinner,
12:55make it a little more fine.
12:56Imagine one of those little diamonds from the logo snaps off
12:59and that becomes the basis for the L.
13:00So that's the point is like just trying to figure out
13:02how you make these kind of like visual connections
13:04between the disparate elements.
13:06You know, the digital version is only going to get you so far.
13:08One thing that you'll notice in the P in my reference is that it's open,
13:13but I would want it to be more closed off.
13:15You know, like I want it to feel a little more like this.
13:17Like I want to figure out how to stay with the same sort of energy,
13:20but need to retain some readability.
13:23Part of the reason that I think this works well
13:25is if you put this type in a sport context
13:28and you take it out of this kind of like art deco,
13:30old school liquor advertising,
13:32has a really kind of like interesting aggressive energy
13:35that I think it adds a complementary piece to the equation
13:39where you have your round logo
13:41that's containing all these round shapes,
13:43but then within those shapes, there's these angles.
13:45So it's kind of like an interesting balance
13:46where then this script is like entirely about this aggressive angular thing.
13:52So this part is kind of tough thinking about that connection.
13:55I'd have to see how these letters actually connect
13:58once I get them into the computer.
14:02The S is probably like the toughest form
14:05in the way that this type was built out.
14:07He really built that for this Saint Raphael lockup,
14:10which you can see he emphasizes Raphael.
14:12So the Saint was supposed to be a little bit reduced.
14:14So I think the S is gonna be something
14:16I'm gonna have to take in a totally different direction to make it work.
14:18Part of it is like his constraints
14:20and the way that he built it out.
14:21You can see there's like a little grid
14:23and kind of like stayed within this grid in a really specific way,
14:26but here we don't have to stick to those rules.
14:27It's just, I'm just trying to capture the spirit of it.
14:30It's probably gonna require an outline for holding the color.
14:34That's something that you almost always have to do
14:36with these Jersey logos anyways,
14:37because you need to figure out a way
14:39to express all the elements of the color palette.
14:42People love vintage advertising that looks like this
14:45for the same reason that they love the vintage logos
14:47that I was talking about,
14:48where like they love feeling that human hand.
14:50For me, that's also a big balance of what I try to do
14:53is I try to not over-engineer the type intentionally.
14:57People don't want perfect.
14:58People want something that feels real.
15:00I feel really good about where we're at.
15:03Because I think that the color
15:04is actually a little bit more integral
15:06to the way that this is gonna work.
15:07I'm just gonna go ahead and give myself a red base to work on.
15:11So like I said, there's a version of the Lupo script.
15:14So that'll be my starting point here,
15:16which obviously gets me pretty far
15:18in terms of what I was trying to sketch out before.
15:20So to get this font working the way I want it to,
15:23I have to, one, I have to adjust the spacing.
15:24And then two, the biggest thing is just these Ps
15:27are like too unreadable.
15:28For our purposes, we need this thing
15:30to be on the front of a Jersey
15:31and it just has to be immediate.
15:33You need like a two second read.
15:34If that, you need like a half second read.
15:36It needs to be punchy.
15:37It needs to stay clear.
15:38That can be solved pretty easily.
15:41I need to open it up a little bit
15:42because it gets a little chunky.
15:43Immediately feels more readable.
15:45For consistency's sake,
15:47I don't want to be making the same moves twice.
15:49So I'm just gonna copy that P.
15:52Good trick that I learned also
15:54from design type graphic master Kimo Meyer,
15:58who was a partner at Doubleday
16:00when we were working on the Bucks project.
16:01A little sheer tool on this stuff
16:03gives it a little bit of a skew
16:05and it can like help to create like a little bit more
16:07of like an interesting shape.
16:08Because the challenge with doing this stuff on a computer
16:10is trying to maintain like a little bit of like a human hand
16:13and Kimo is probably like the best at that.
16:15I've never seen someone use the computer
16:17and manipulate it the way he can.
16:19So definitely learned a lot from him.
16:21Don't have to over-engineer it.
16:23But I feel like that's pretty close.
16:26I could work on these things forever, but I feel good.
16:28Let's send them off to print.
16:37All right, feel good about it.
16:56That like deep navy on the red definitely pops,
16:58feels really, really strong.
17:00This I feel very good about as well.
17:02You know, there's still some work to be done, I would say,
17:04in terms of like how it gets applied,
17:06how it would appropriately fit on like a jersey or a short
17:09or where the seal would live.
17:10But as a core lock-up element, like all put together,
17:14dead center in the middle of the court,
17:15I think it would really punch.
17:16I mean, think about these as like a package deal.
17:18I mean, for me, I think so systematically
17:21about the way identities come together.
17:22So like if I had these two components,
17:24I could build a whole brand world out of this thing
17:26in like a week's time.
17:27This typeface separating out
17:29and becoming kind of like the core basis
17:31for how you do your marketing and your messaging.
17:33And then, you know, this diamond could break out
17:35and become like a little diamond pattern
17:37that you build out.
17:38This script, not just on a jersey,
17:40imagine that on like a hat,
17:41it could reverse out into the other elements
17:43of the color palette.
17:44I'm feeling very good about this as a starting point.
17:47Also got to print it up on a shirt
17:48just so we could see how it feels.
17:51In a more kind of like, you know, literal, like tactile way,
17:53thinking about this as something that sits on a garment.
17:56I feel like I could see people actually wearing this thing.
17:59A lot of people will say like,
18:00does it pass a t-shirt test?
18:02And that's something that I do.
18:03Like even while I'm developing things,
18:04I'll just build a little like t-shirt mock-up
18:06and throw something on it to see if it's working.
18:09And I have to say, I feel like this passes a t-shirt test.
18:11Thanks for watching.
18:13I hope you found this insightful
18:14and let us know in the comments
18:15what team you want us to take a look at next.

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