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Old 09-23-2019, 11:30 PM   #21
Eugene Church
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Ruwisc, I really admire the thought you put into the town selections and the nicknames... there is nothing haphazard about your thinking.

Plus you are very talented graphically.

I really enjoy your thread.
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Old 09-23-2019, 11:46 PM   #22
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I have an update, actually - in one case to fix a slight error, and also to add a new secondary logo for the Blackbirds and some caps to go with. First, a new rendering of the primary logo:



It was impossible to see here on this white background, so I didn't catch it before, but there were some white patches in the top right corner that didn't belong - white outlines from a previous version of the logo that was right next to it in my Inkscape window that mistakenly got exported too. Moved things around so there would be sufficient empty space and redid it. I'll edit the new version into the original post as well.



It never crossed my mind until after finishing the previous post to try a WTX cap monogram and I think it turned out well enough that some might want to use it! Here's a new set of hats too:

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Old 09-23-2019, 11:55 PM   #23
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Ruwisc, I really admire the thought you put into the town selections and the nicknames... there is nothing haphazard about your thinking.

Plus you are very talented graphically.

I really enjoy your thread.

Thanks again, Eugene. I've never thought of myself as much of an artist, but I like to think I can pick out what looks good when I find it - combine that with a lot of time and the results start to come. "Careful" is the word that I'm trying to embody so I'm glad that comes across.
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Old 09-26-2019, 05:27 PM   #24
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PORTLAND BEAVERS
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It's been a few teams since I covered one of the cities that's a legitimately popular expansion choice - it's gonna be weird for me not to have to twist and turn to make the case for why this city should be an expansion target. The case for Portland is pretty clear, but let's talk about it anyway. In terms of metropolitan areas without MLB teams, Portland is the US' third-largest, after the Inland Empire (San Bernardino) and Orlando. That means, it's the largest available metro area out there that would not have potential problems dealing with territorial rights (San Bernardino being close-ish to LA, Orlando to Tampa). There are about two and a half million people in the area, making it well within the small-medium market range in MLB.

There's also not a ton of sports saturation in the area - they are big soccer fans up in PDX with the Timbers (and Thorns), and the Blazers have a nice history, but that's all there is to speak of, so MLB could also fill somewhat of a market gap there. Not to mention, a Portland expansion into the American League would lessen the travel burden for the Mariners and instantly create a huge rivalry. It's an easy pitch, really, and it's no wonder Portland is one of the most popular expansion choices in OOTP. I have always chosen them in leagues where I expand from 30 to 32, and I imagine many of you do the same.

Back near the start of this thread with Sacramento, I mentioned my fondness for the classic team identities of the Pacific Coast League and the Beavers are no exception. (There's at least one more coming besides this one, too.) The only problem with the name is the coinciding of it with the Beavers of Oregon State not far to the south, but it's only natural that that might happen in the Beaver State. The names coexisted for quite some time during the heyday of the PCL so I'm not concerned with that overlap.

I liked the logos and employed by the most recent incarnation of the Portland Beavers (2001-2010; moved to Tucson after that season and are now the El Paso Chihuahuas). Those logos can be seen here - I'm going to reuse a couple of assets here, but remixed with my own spin on the team. I wanted to try out a team identity based on a more realistic, less cartoony beaver (a la the 1990s Orioles), and I wanted to switch the color scheme away from using navy (these are the Mariners' new arch-rivals, after all). Here's my attempt!



So blue and orange it is - Beavers teams have used a number of different color schemes going back over a century, but orange seemed to be the classic color for them. This blue is meant to serve as a continuation from the previous Beavers team, which used two shades of blue, while still making a good match with the orange. The only other thing worth mentioning on this logo is the shape at the right end; it's maybe too small to be any good in OOTP (unless your screen resolution is crazy high), but that's the shape of the state of Oregon, with the number 1903 inside, representing the year that the first Portland Beavers team began play (along with the founding of the PCL). On my Mac I just see a shape that kinda looks like Oregon with a few non-orange pixels inside, but maybe your experience will be different

(The beaver in this logo is not a totally original creation, but it's a heavily modified stock image.)



The P cap logo used by the Beavers from 2008-2010 was a really strong mark, in my opinion, and so I've co-opted it for use here in the new colors. There are several options here - I'm partial to the orange version myself, but the choice is yours. The shape of Oregon from the primary is more visible here if you'd like something more complex than just the P.

Jerseys and caps:




Pretty classic look for this team - this is an expansion that could definitely fit in a few eras of MLB. I prefer the standard home whites & road grays, but there's also the orange alternate for those of you who are fanatical about having city names on road jerseys (I don't care about that myself).

That's it for Portland! No idea which team is next, but I'll try to go east.
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Old 10-03-2019, 05:09 PM   #25
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NORFOLK NAVIGATORS
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One of the ways that I liked to learn about geography as a kid was through sports - I'm guessing many of you could say the same. Learning where different cities were located and being able to point at a spot on a map and think about all the different athletes that played their games there, where my heroes had been on their last road trip or just where there were a lot of fans that cared about such-and-such team. Aside from learning all the state capitals or visiting different places through the Midwest where I grew up, that was how I liked to learn. I guess that's a long-winded way of introducing that I was probably well into my teens by the time I'd ever even heard of the Hampton Roads area. It wasn't relevant from a sports perspective, so I guess my eyes just sort of... skipped over it, you know?

So why is it that southeastern Virginia has been without major pro sports, and what case can we make that they should have an MLB team? Well, for starters, this area has sprung up really quickly. In 1950, less than half a million people were living in this area, and the area's now-largest city of Virginia Beach had yet to be actually incorporated. Adjusting for nationwide population growth, putting a major sports team in Hampton Roads in 1950 would be like putting one in Bakersfield today. But it's exploded in population since then, especially in the 1980s during which the area grew by about 80%, and it's now well within the limits of plausibility. It's no surprise that efforts to bring major pro sports to southeastern Virginia really began in the mid-90s, after MLB's latest rounds of expansion were already well underway.

But those efforts, to this point, have been unsuccessful for a couple of reasons. For one, there isn't any one principal city that this area is built around. (Five cities of more than 100,000 people, none of more than 500,000.) That makes it difficult to attract public funding for a stadium because no city wants to foot the entire bill - see the similar issues with the Arizona Coyotes and the city of Glendale, AZ a few years ago. It also makes it hard to name the team, if I'm being honest. Hampton Roads, IMO, is clunky, just "Virginia" isn't specific, "Tidewater" is a possible name for the region but no one outside Virginia really knows what that is, and beyond that you're just picking whichever of the smaller constituent cities you like. I had actually planned on this being a "Virginia" team until I found a name that made for some pleasant alliteration. The other problem seems to be apathy from fans in the area - not because they wouldn't support a team in their area, but because they've tried so many times and failed that people in the area seem burned out. They were in the running when the NHL was expanding from 26 to 30 teams, and missed out. They were in the running to land the original Charlotte Hornets, and missed out. And they were in the running for the Expos, and missed out. You can see why people start to believe it'll never happen.

Let's make it happen! The truly wonderful thing about doing this in OOTP is that we can bend the rules of financial realism. There are a bunch of people here, so let's give them a team; it doesn't need to be any more complicated than that, really. I actually quite like the Norfolk Tides, both as a name and as a set of logos, but having already done a couple of weather-based teams (Omaha and Syracuse) I decided to switch gears. Navigators is a compromise between Hampton Roads' place in American history (Jamestown, the first permanent settlement made by Europeans in North America, is located here) and Norfolk's distinction of having the country's largest naval base.



Kind of an old-school look for this team - I was thinking 90s as I was putting it together, but it turned out looking like it maybe fits better in the 80s. At any rate, this is a team that wouldn't be out of place if you decided to use it outside of 2019. Thought this team for sure needed to be green, both to match the current Tides logo set and because MLB could use a handful more green teams. (Especially a dark green like this - one of my favorite erstwhile MLB uniform sets was the post-rainbow, pre-sunshine Devil Rays in dark green circa 2006, and I wish there was more of that color.) Sky blue is nice as just an accent color in this spot - the focus would be on green. The boat itself is modeled on the three vessels upon which the settlers of Jamestown arrived, of course sailing west. Each of the sails has a different secondary logo on it:



And here are those secondary logos. There's an HR for Hampton Roads if you prefer the team to be called that (in which case all the Ns just stand for Navigators), and I've included it as an alternate cap logo if that's your jam.

Jerseys and caps:




Nothing too fancy here, just a lot of green.

That's it for Norfolk! Don't have any other teams prepared at the moment, but I think I'll have the whole weekend off so you might get something else out of me soon.

Last edited by Ruwisc; 10-03-2019 at 05:14 PM. Reason: forgot Imgur link
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Old 10-06-2019, 07:50 PM   #26
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Trouble is, there's already been a fairly recent team called the Nor____ Navigators...
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Old 10-07-2019, 02:50 PM   #27
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Trouble is, there's already been a fairly recent team called the Nor____ Navigators...
I have to be honest, I was not aware of the Norwich Navigators... but I also don't really see anything there that makes me desperate to start over with a new name. A minor league team who changed their name 14 years ago, and moved, ironically to Richmond, 10 years ago, isn't really enough to sway me. Maybe not ""realistic"" in terms of obtaining copyrights or whatever (also maybe still fine), but Navigators is still a good name for a Norfolk team & I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

Anyhoo...

MONARQUES DE MONTRÉAL (in game: Montreal Monarques)
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Back across the border we go, but this time into Québec and back to a city baseball fans are all familiar with.

The case for Montréal as an expansion team is really easy, especially within the confines of OOTP. They've already hosted 36 seasons of MLB baseball already, easily the most of any city that does not have MLB baseball right now, the city is already part of the NHL and MLS, and Montréal wouldn't even be considered a small market within MLB (right smack dab in the middle). Plus, fan support is clearly in place, as seen by the crowd whenever the Blue Jays play their spring exhibitions at Olympic Stadium. Those sellouts definitely don't translate to 81 games of sellouts in an MLB season, but it's clear that the support would be there if there were a team and an ownership group that local fans could feel like actually cared about them. (As opposed to, let's say, Jeffrey Loria.) A new stadium probably wouldn't hurt either. Anyway, it's no wonder that the first expansion that people make in their MLB saves is often Montréal, and I hope I can give you a nice backup option if you don't want to reuse the Expos name.

I'm on record as having had some trouble coming up with a name for an Expos replacement team, but I think this is a good one. The problem with Expos as a name is that to new fans who don't understand its origin, it's confusing. It was a fine idea to call the team that in '69 when the '67 Expo was fresh in Montréalers' minds, but growing up as I did in the 90s it was confusing to me. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, but I would personally hope that a new team in Montréal would come with a new identity entirely, especially if the Stade Olympique is out of the picture.

I'd really like to name the team the Montréal Royals (the same as the long-time minor league club that today is best known for having Jackie Robinson), but that's a non-starter with Kansas City still part of the league. I gave thought to going with Royals anyway and coming up with a new team identity for KC (probably the Monarchs, actually, to honor their Negro League history), but in the end I decided to repurpose that name in this location. Monarques is close enough to Royals to honor the history of that team, but it also adds some alliteration and is a word that reads well in both French and English, just like the Montréal Canadiens (despite the difference in spelling in both cases). The proper name of the team probably should be Monarques de Montréal, but in OOTP practice it'd need to be entered as Montreal Monarques (the game does not handle accent marks well).



Two different primary logos here, since I'm not sure which I prefer, but with the same symbolism in each. The crown itself was modeled on French royal insignia, specifically the crowns featured on the royal coats of arms used by the Bourbon kings of France (1589-1830, with some Napoleonic interregna). The shield is modeled using more Montréal-specific imagery: the white cross on a blue field representing Québec, and reinforced by the two fleurs-de-lis; the rosette which is used as a logo by city government (and is reminiscent of the rose on the city's coat of arms, which represents its English heritage); and the M, which is an M. On the crown logo and in non-shield appearances, the M is rendered as a double-M in red and blue, both to represent the alliterative name but also as a reminder of Montréal's duality as an important city for Québec, but also Canada as a whole (blue within red).

In general, I don't think there's a way to have a team based in Montréal and not put them in the same blue and red of the Expos, Canadiens and Alouettes because the imagery is so strongly connected to the city itself. It as a color scheme feels more entwined with its city than any other in North America (more than black and gold in Pittsburgh, blue and orange in New York, or green and blue in Seattle, in my opinion). I guess red is expendable, as the Montréal Impact have done, but it doesn't feel right. I did a lot of experimenting with a light gold as a third color, and it didn't feel blasphemous or anything, but it just didn't work as well.



The M here is surrounded by the same white border visible on the crown logo, so it won't look as thin in game as it does here on this background.

Jerseys and caps:




Definitely took some inspiration from the 90s Expos on this uniform set - I thought that was a really strong look, but the two solid color uniforms offer something else if you're looking for something else. I recommend the fleur-de-lis cap with the home uniform, the M cap with the gray and blue uniforms, and the red with the red, but your taste may vary.

That's it for Montréal - next time I think I'm gonna do something a little more off-beat. Probably out west, and probably a less obvious expansion target as well. Seeya soon!
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Old 10-14-2019, 11:26 AM   #28
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Really enjoying this series. Have you thought about southern expansion into countries like Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, etc? Plenty of opportunities for some interesting ideas in the Latin American countries.
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Old 10-14-2019, 01:36 PM   #29
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Really enjoying this series. Have you thought about southern expansion into countries like Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, etc? Plenty of opportunities for some interesting ideas in the Latin American countries.

I sorta mentioned this when I did the El Paso post, but I haven't thought about it a lot. I don't think I'll be going to Cuba since it seems pretty unrealistic, but San Juan is on my list for cities to tackle once I'm done with the current list in the OP. Mexico I didn't think was realistic because of the nice, tidy relationship between MLB and the Mexican League, but there seems to be demand for it so I may need to find a spot for a team or two. I don't think Mexico City works because of the distance and the altitude together, but a city like Monterrey could be plausible.

BTW, I am putting the finishing touches on the next team, which will be Albuquerque - should be up either this afternoon or tomorrow.
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Old 10-15-2019, 03:46 AM   #30
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NEW MEXICO SUNS (Albuquerque)
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What's the deal with Albuquerque, and why should they get a Major League Baseball team? Well, to be fair, this one's a bit bigger of a stretch than, say, Portland or Montréal, but let's see what case we can make. Until I actually went out to the desert and spent a good bit of time there (my college years), I didn't have much perception of what Albuquerque and New Mexico as a whole were like. I kinda always thought of them as "like Arizona, but east". It's not a very accurate way of characterizing this area that is actually super unique. Think about this - New Mexico is more or less surrounded by Arizona to the west, Colorado to the north, and Texas to the south and east. (There's also a short border with Oklahoma.) You've got a very different perception of all three of those states, and for good reason - they're all really different. But New Mexico, culturally and geographically, is like a nice little combination of all three of those contrasting sets of traits.

Basically, it's a place all its own. There's no reason to expect New Mexicans to naturally feel conviviality with sports teams from Phoenix, from Denver or from anywhere in Texas. I don't think Albuquerque would really be among the first six or eight choices if MLB were to do some rapid-fire expansion, but I feel like they'd be sort of in the next wave. In terms of TV market size, they're right alongside places like Oklahoma City, New Orleans and Buffalo, so if you'd be comfortable with those cities in MLB then Albuquerque is somewhere you should consider as well!

In naming this team the Suns, it's easy to see a path towards a team identity: the Zia sun symbol is closely tied into the state's identity and iconography. Even if you don't know it by that name, when you see the sun you'll know what I'm talking about - it screams out "oh yeah, that New Mexico thing". It's easy to just take that football and run with it, but I think basing the team around the Zia sun forces us to make sure that we use it in a realistic way. In researching this topic I really enjoyed this article that I found in New Mexico Magazine from January of this year. I recommend y'all read it for yourself, not really for any OOTP-related reasons but just because it's interesting - it gets into the history of the sun symbol and the surprising controversy that it's caused out in the Land of Enchantment.

At the most basic level, what I'm trying to do with this team is use the sun symbol in a way that the people of Zia Pueblo would approve of, since I think it's clear from what I've learned that if it's used sacrilegiously, they will raise objection. To me, that means:

- using the Zia sun unaltered and in full as much as possible, so as to not bastardize it
- rendering the sun symbol in the same red and yellow colors as the New Mexico state flag, which also goes a long way to recognizability. In addition to red and yellow, the team's third color is a classic turquoise, a color that represents the entire American Southwest due to its association with native American culture across the desert. (As an aside, the red and yellow of New Mexico are the same red and yellow of Spain - makes perfect sense but I'd never made the connection myself.)
- naming the team New Mexico rather than Albuquerque since it's a symbol of the entire state. This is not as important, because Zia Pueblo is just north of Albuquerque, but I also think New Mexico sounds better here. (Plus, people have a hard time spelling Albuquerque; that first U is tricky.)

It certainly might be OK to violate any or all of these rules (the soccer team New Mexico United has, though they asked permission of the Zia before doing so), but I also liked the challenge of hewing close to an established brand like that while still branching out in other ways.



Fairly simple primary logos, just letting these bright colors speak for themselves. A version without the location is included here, both in case you want to call your team the Albuquerque Suns, and to showcase a unique property of the word Suns - it's got rotational symmetry! Turn your computer monitor (or your head) upside down and you'll see the same logo as right side up, which I thought was super cool. The NBA's Phoenix Suns have also taken advantage of this over the years and currently feature a symmetric logo at center court, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't inspired by that.



Here we see the plainer versions of the Zia sun, both within a diamond and without, and several different colorways of an NM monogram, which turned out to be a very difficult pair of letters to get together. Only after abandoning the traditional N shape did I really get it to work, and it luckily ends up even being a bit reminiscent of the sun symbol with all of the different perpendicular lines flying every which way.

Jerseys and caps:




To be honest it was hard to stop at five jerseys and four caps, but I think I've captured pretty much what I had in mind for this team. The red and turquoise unis are almost in kind of a Color Rush style, and the color palette surprisingly takes on a whole new character when yellow is left out.

That'll do for New Mexico! The next city is one I've been putting off for a while - I think we'll finally make our way down to Austin, Texas.
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Old 10-15-2019, 07:33 AM   #31
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The New Mexico set is definitely one of my new favorites on this forum.
New Mexico is probably an unlikely candidate for an MLB team for the time being but these logos and uniforms would certainly pass as one. I really like secondaries with cross-combined letters and that NM is just that, very creative. I shall use them as an expansion minor league team
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Old 10-16-2019, 02:36 PM   #32
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I like the Suns but I wonder if the colors lean too much into the D-Backs' Southwest identity.
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Old 10-16-2019, 06:34 PM   #33
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The New Mexico set is definitely one of my new favorites on this forum.
New Mexico is probably an unlikely candidate for an MLB team for the time being but these logos and uniforms would certainly pass as one. I really like secondaries with cross-combined letters and that NM is just that, very creative. I shall use them as an expansion minor league team

Thanks, I appreciate that. I agree that MLB in New Mexico is not likely to happen for a long, long time, but it was definitely fun to imagine how it might look.



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I like the Suns but I wonder if the colors lean too much into the D-Backs' Southwest identity.

That's a pretty good point actually - I keep forgetting that the D'Backs have reintroduced turquoise to their identity. I do still feel like they're different enough because Arizona uses so much black and the Suns have none, and the New Mexico shade of red is lighter, but that's something worth thinking about.
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Old 10-18-2019, 02:36 AM   #34
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Gonna preface this post by saying that I'm feeling a lot of inspiration for new designs coming into my head lately, so I think I'm going to extend this series by coming up with some new designs, especially for cities that are closer to the precipice of MLB (Portland, Charlotte, etc.). I am not taking requests, and I am not taking name suggestions; I'm going to do what comes to me, and there probably won't be a logical order to it either. But, I think I only have two more teams to post in here after this one, and I wanna keep the party going, so to speak. With that said, here's another entry!

SYRACUSE BLIZZARD
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To be perfectly honest, we're stretching the boundaries of plausibility here. I think I've been able to make a decent case for why any of the above cities could be landing spots for an MLB team, but there isn't really much here. Even in my league of 60, Syracuse has the smallest metropolitan area. I possibly didn't research thoroughly enough, since I decided on locations early in this process and I always thought Syracuse was bigger than it really is. But here we are; I felt I needed another team in the northeast, and I wound up with a team identity that I personally really like. So if you want an additional team in the northeast and like this set of logos, then it oughta work for you too.

It took me a long time to decide on a name for this team; I had stuck with the Syracuse Chiefs moniker for a while but I never really liked it that much. It's fine, but the logo set has altogether way too much beveling for my tastes, so I was ready for a change. The name Blizzard is perhaps an odd choice for a baseball team, since it's the quintessential summer sport, but the one thing that makes Syracuse seem unique to me (even compared to other cities in its region) is its shockingly high snowfall, higher than any major city in the United States at about 115 inches per year (almost 3 meters). A confluence of factors make it unique in that regard; they're close enough to Lake Ontario that they receive lake-effect snow from being downwind from it, but they are also close enough to the Atlantic and New England that they feel the effects of nor'easters as well.



The focus of this set is exactly what you might guess - a snowflake! That going along with the big letter S in a hexagonal shape produces something pleasing, I think. I tried a number of different things, mostly different versions of that S that wrapped around the snowflake instead of combining with it - this one definitely turned out the best. It's available here both with and without the wordmark, and all pieces of both logos have a white border around them so they'll be identifiable in-game. (As usual, hard to see here but very visible in the Imgur album linked at the start of this post.)



A handful of other snowflake-based logos to fill out the set. Any of these could realistically be a cap logo or the secondary logo - I've got the first two, the basic, lonely snowflakes, on caps for you down below.

Jerseys and caps:




The main jerseys are fairly normal, but the other pair are probably the wildest pair of jerseys I've ever made, with snowflakes streaming across from left to right. A team called the Syracuse Blizzard doesn't seem like the type that would keep it super traditional, so if you're into that sort of thing, there you go. You've got a white cap for the white uniform, a blue cap for either the white or gray, and a dark blue cap for the two snowstorm unis.

--------

That's all I have for Syracuse. Next up will be El Paso, I think, and another team that might be viewed as a weird choice by some... see you soon!
Hey man, I'm from Cuse and used to work for the Chiefs. Something that I have always thought would be a good baseball team name for a Syracuse team is the "Salt City Miners." There used to be salt mines around here, and salt potatoes are one of the silly gimmick names used by the Chiefs/Mets for promotions. What do you think?
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Old 10-18-2019, 01:18 PM   #35
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Ruwisc,

All of your ideas are well-thought out and your graphics are excellent... and I understand your policy that this is your league and you want to do it your way... I am the same way with my dynasty leagues... I just wish I had your graphics skills... I am borderline average at best with justafan excellent software... fortunately, many of the best graphics gurus have done the graphics for my dynasty leagues.

The Syracuse Blizzard logo is masterfully and brilliantly done.
I'm not a fan of nicknames that don't end in "s"... I would pick something other than Blizzard...just my opinion... it might be a good name for a wintertime sport, but not for the "Boys of Summer"... I'm an old-timer that prefers traditional names like Tigers, Yankees, Cardinals, etc...don't like nicknames like Power, Freedom, Eclipse, Empire, Lightning... don't like silly names like Baby Cakes, Isotopes, Biscuits or Trash Pandas, either.

Yes, I am very hard to please.

Keep up this fine thread... I really enjoy it... both your thoughtful writing and your excellent graphics.

Last edited by Eugene Church; 10-18-2019 at 02:22 PM.
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Old 10-19-2019, 02:33 PM   #36
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Suddenly a lot of Syracuse talk!

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Originally Posted by rpf515 View Post
Hey man, I'm from Cuse and used to work for the Chiefs. Something that I have always thought would be a good baseball team name for a Syracuse team is the "Salt City Miners." There used to be salt mines around here, and salt potatoes are one of the silly gimmick names used by the Chiefs/Mets for promotions. What do you think?
I did learn about the Salt City nickname when I was researching Syracuse but I think we can agree that there are some issues if we take that name to a nationwide stage. I can guarantee that very few people outside that part of the country know of the nickname, so it's confusing to outsiders. The main problem, though, is that anyone who doesn't know about Syracuse's history will, I think reasonably, assume that it's a Salt Lake City team. (SLC is still yet to come in this series - I'm taking extra care on that one because it's the team that I'm actually GMing in my game, so I need it to be one of the best.) Because of that I think it's probably fair to say that a Syracuse team, if you're going major league, needs to have Syracuse in its name. Salt City could work for a minor league franchise where attention and geography are hyperlocalized and there's no chance of there being Utah-related confusion.

Still though, I actually did take a long look at Syracuse Miners/Salt Miners before I decided on Blizzard instead.

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Originally Posted by Eugene Church View Post
I'm not a fan of nicknames that don't end in "s"... I would pick something other than Blizzard...just my opinion... it might be a good name for a wintertime sport, but not for the "Boys of Summer"... I'm an old-timer that prefers traditional names like Tigers, Yankees, Cardinals, etc...don't like nicknames like Power, Freedom, Eclipse, Empire, Lightning... don't like silly names like Baby Cakes, Isotopes, Biscuits or Trash Pandas, either.
There is definitely a line to be drawn as far as non-plural team names go, but I tend to think weather is an OK subject to break convention for. I had the same trepidation when working on the Omaha Thunder (almost went with Thunderbolts but it was just too long). A blizzard is one monolithic entity, something that can still be symbolic of nine players working together in harmony or whatever. It's different from naming a team after a concept like some of the ones you mention. I'm sympathetic to the tradition argument but that's not really what I'm trying to do here - I'm going for what these teams might be called if they came around today.


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Next team is just about done - I think I'm happy with the logos so it's just caps and jerseys to do. This is another team name I'm unsure about, but for a different reason - I'm wondering if it might tend too far towards a 19th-century type of creation. Anyway, Austin will be up sometime this weekend, I think.
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Old 10-19-2019, 10:48 PM   #37
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AUSTIN VIOLETS
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It's a little surprising that Austin doesn't already have a major sports franchise to call its own here in 2019. On the one hand, it's stuck right in the triangle between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, three areas that all have more people than the Austin area does (close with San Antonio, but definitely not with the other two). But, Austin has a separate character from the rest of Texas and it's not too far-fetched to imagine a movement to bring MLB to Texas' capital. It's a much younger, "hipper" city with a lot of Silicon Valley vibes (demographically different from the rest of the state), and it's one of the fastest growing areas in the country. Actually, the Austin area has experienced more growth this decade than any other major city in America (on a percentage basis), with the population booming by about half a million people in that time. As a sign of Austin's ascendancy, MLS is coming to town in 2021, with Austin FC beginning play in the spring of that year. The relative youth of the city's up-and-coming consumer class means that maybe baseball isn't the sport they would target, but that's something I'm gonna look past.

Another concern in bringing a major sports franchise to Austin is the idea that Texas may not need another team, but remember that 1 out of every 11 Americans lives in Texas - if you wanted to, you could make the argument that the state might even be being underserved by MLB at the moment. I wouldn't have any qualms with another Texas team on principle, especially one in the National League, whether it be in Austin, El Paso or San Antonio (stay tuned for them).

For a long time, the name of this team was the Austin Mavericks, but that didn't really seem to fit the city besides the straight-up Texas theme. Plus, by a total coincidence, they looked really, really similar to low's Austin Rustlers from his stickied thread, sharing the gray and yellow color scheme, the Western-inspired font, etc. So I threw all that to the side and took a hard left into something totally different, relying on another civic nickname to push me in a new direction. I didn't know of this before my researching, so it may not be widely known, but Austin was dubbed "City of the Violet Crown" in the late 19th century due to its vivid sunsets and surrounding hills creating purple shapes across the twilight skies. It also may come from a desire by the citizens of the time to be associated with Athens, which shares the nickname. At any rate, it's stuck to an extent, and several local businesses and landmarks are known as "Violet Crown" something-or-other to this day. So, we're going with Violets. I have some crown imagery in the logo package as well, but I liked the shorter name, the ability to include a flower as a visual element, and the idea that the team might be named for a color, which is less common nowadays (and a rare color at that). Let's take a look!



There is a ton of variety in actual violet species, so I get some leeway in how it looks for sure. This one gets five petals to match Texas' five-pointed star (which shows up in the secondaries), and a five-pointed crown to match. My sticking point here was always with the color scheme itself, but I've decided to take the plunge. I don't know if a violet/dark green combo would make it through into MLB, but it's definitely appropriate for a team with this name.



Never really experimented with beveling before, but the crossed AV was quite fun to put together with that in mind. With the letters themselves being pretty straightforward, it's pretty plain without beveling. We also have here the crown sans wordmark and just the flower over a lone star.

Jerseys and caps:




With a shade of purple this bright, any jersey looks really loud, so these are kept pretty straightforward so as to not be cluttered. There's a white-paneled cap just for the home white jersey, Orioles-style, and regular violet and green caps for the other three jerseys (although I personally think the green cap works better with all three).

That's all I have for Austin - I have one other team just about done right now but I'm gonna save them for later. Not sure what's next, but I'll be back soon with another team.
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Old 11-01-2019, 03:14 PM   #38
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Great stuff especially Montreal with a non-Expos identity with nods to the Expos. I hope and wonder what your take would be on a team in Brooklyn.
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Old 11-02-2019, 02:12 AM   #39
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Great stuff especially Montreal with a non-Expos identity with nods to the Expos. I hope and wonder what your take would be on a team in Brooklyn.
Thanks! I guess technically I've already got a Brooklyn team, the Burros (middle-ish of page 1), but they're not Brooklyn-specific, that's just a New York team that I happened to put in Brooklyn. Been thinking about reworking that team anyway - it would be a good excuse to explore something that's uniquely Brooklyn instead.

Took a little bit of a break from OOTP for the last two weeks because I had a big deadline coming up elsewhere - that's now passed so I'm feeling recharged and ready to go!

CHARLOTTE FLYERS
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It's not hard at all to make an expansion case for Charlotte - they fit right in with the current makeup of MLB markets (six current MLB TV markets are smaller), they already have teams in the NFL and NBA, and the South is not very heavily populated with MLB baseball at the moment. This is an area of the country that is ripe for an expansion franchise, & Charlotte is kind of an obvious choice for one. At least from games I've seen, they're one of the three most popular expansion cities for OOTP players, going along with Portland and Montréal, so this one will complete the set.

I've seen a lot of names floated for Charlotte teams, but I haven't seen this one yet and liked the idea. (I'm sure it's been done, but I haven't personally seen it.) The inspiration for Flyers is pretty straightforward - North Carolina is very proud of being the home of the world's first powered flight, even displaying "First in Flight" on the state's license plates. Coincidentally, the plates are red and light blue in color; I didn't plan to match that with this team's color scheme, but maybe I was thinking of it subconsciously. I guess I should note that Charlotte and Kitty Hawk are not particularly close to each other - in fact, Kitty Hawk is closer to Norfolk than Charlotte. But this is something that North Carolinians seem to take pride in as a whole so I'm OK with it.



The actual Wright Flyer, unfortunately, doesn't really translate nicely into a logo, at least not from my feeble attempt. So this is a slightly more modern plane, basically WWI-era. There are a lot of colors here, but I like the way they all interplay with each other.



The big C from the top of the primary logo also serves as the main cap logo, here in two color palettes. Due to the first having white outlines, they look different on this forum, but they're identical.

Jerseys and caps:




A ton of jersey options here. This is the first team I've done here where the primary home uni is a vest; there's also an away vest, or a regular away jersey with lots of brown instead of red, and an alternate jersey in both of those colors as well. Red caps for primarily red jerseys, and brown for brown as well.

Nice to be back at this again! I think the next city on my agenda will be Hartford.
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Old 11-02-2019, 11:25 AM   #40
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I like your stuff. What design program do you use? I use Corel Draw a lot although I haven't made a lot of sports logos.
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