Style

Weren't They? Pretty in Pink

justwide — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 15:03:15 GMT

Secure in their unassailable masculinity, USHL officials donned daring pink-and-black jerseys last Friday as part of an American Cancer Society cancer awareness campaign. As a more tangible gesture, league refs and linesmen also donated all of that night's game fees to the ACS. Together with the projected proceeds from auctioning their eye-catching, game-worn, new-wave-looking pink sweaters, USHL officials will give something like $3,000.

Beneficence looks good on anybody, really.

Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 04:45:00 GMT

OK, all year I've been seeing road teams in their traditional home whites. I assumed that was going to be the rule for the year, thinking maybe some league honcho decided the away sweaters weren't selling as much as they should. Whatever. I don't care. Just so there's a system, 'cause it helps me figure out where a game's going down when I tune in mid-period.

But tonight, in their 3-2 home win over the Central Division doormat St. Louis Blues, the Detroit Red Wings had their white jerseys on.

What gives? Detroit doesn't have a "third" jersey — and neither do the Blues, as far as I know. Are there no rules for this anymore? What are they?

Sutter to Junior Hopefuls: Get a Haircut! Get a Job!

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 15:50:00 GMT

Selection camp for the Canadian junior team is under way at Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, and Head coach Brent Sutter has some timeless advice for young players hoping to make the cut:

‘‘For starters, some of them have to get haircuts,’’ said the erstwhile Kamikaze Liner. Indeed, how else to tell the jocks from common hippies? Explaining his player grooming requirements, Sutter echoed Mike Tyson:

"I like ears."

Team USA Goalie Helmet Design Contest

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:23:00 GMT

Just Wide readers under the age of 18 can enter USAHockey.com's contest to design the helmets Team USA's goalies will wear in the 2005 World Junior Championships. Details, contest rules, and a PDF template are online. The contest only runs through the 15th of November, so hurry!

According to the rules, "designs should reflect the themes of the United States," whatever that means. Should kids draw the separation of powers? Something that shows power bestowed on government by consent of the governed, rather than by divine right? What if a kid just wants to draw a really bad-ass-looking eagle?

Were it not for the age limit, I'd submit this entry:

Too bad for me (and for Team USA), I'm old enough to be three entrants in the upper age bracket and one in the lower one. If, like me, you're disqualified from official competition, feel free to post your design on the message board.

NHL Logo Tournament: Round 2: Week 9

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 20:22:00 GMT

After a week of rest, the divisional winners and the wild card are ready to do battle in the conference finals. The winner of this week's contest will go on to battle the winner of next week's western conference winner.

Which logo fought the hardest? Read on.

4th place: Washington Capitals

The Capitals were solidly outclassed in this grouping of great logos. Skating by in a division with the awful Tampa and Hurricanes logos clearly led to over-confidence, and the awkward blue outline, stretched stars, and gold tones earned them an inarguable last place.

3rd place: New Jersey Devils

The final 3 finishers are extremely well-done logos, and this final placement feels a bit arbitrary. Still, a decision must be made, and the Devil's more casual curves and slight cartoonish feel cost them a higher finish.

2nd place: Philadelphia Flyers

The match between the remaining two teams in the Eastern Conference was extremely close. Consider this Flyers loss as a triple-overtime game, with the Flyers going down because of their reliance on the thin doubled white-black outline and the questionable decision to extend a diagonal line from the border to the center white circle. It's a bit of a stretch to call those flaws, but there must be a divisional winner, and these two questionable design decisions allowed the Maple Leafs to push through that final shot.

1st place: Toronto Maple Leafs

Toronto's simplicity ultimately won them a trip to the Logo Cup finals, even with their questionable insistence on spelling out the team name and location. The solid shape, high contrast, and pleasing color choice of their logo is extremely difficult to beat.

Congratulations to the Eastern Conference winner, Toronto, and good luck in the Logo Cup finals.

How would you rank the Eastern Conference divisional winners?

NHL Logo Tournament: Round 1: Week 8

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 21:26:00 GMT

The teams in this week's rankings all lost in their earlier division contests. If they win this week's wild card, however, they will advance to the next round, along with each of the 3 division winners.

So how did these losers stack up? Click on through to the other side:

12th place: Minnesota Wild

A well-deserved last-place finish, with a logo far worse than any other logo in the West because of a complete lack of any positive attributes or qualities. Subpar color choice, bad overall sillhouette, regrettable concept, and poor execution send this team to the basement of the whole selection of losers. Watch for their upcoming match-up with the Lightning for worst logo of the NHL.

11th place: Columbus Blue Jackets

The Blue Jackets eke out a penultimate finish above the Wild due to better, more traditional color choice. Still, this doesn't stop it from being an awful logo.

10th place: Anaheim Mighty Ducks

Above BJ and the Wild because, aside from the humiliating name and the adoption of an already-made movie logo, it's technically a decent design.

9th place: San Jose Sharks

San Jose loses to the Predators because they rely on the graphical-crutch triangle needlessly housing their shark and the double-border outlines, blurring the edges and creating a less bold overall shape.

8th place: Los Angeles Kings

Given an excellent name, LA fails to keep it simple, placing 8th for gaudy excessiveness.

7th place: Nashvile Predators

Saddled with an overly broad name, the Predators come up with a decently produced representation of their mascot.

6th place: Vancouver Canucks

Even with the annoying Orca connections, the Canucks own a well-drawn and nicely balanced logo. Vancouver is mostly disappointing because of the high quality of their old logo.

5th place: Phoenix Coyotes

The Coyotes beat the Canucks because their logo represents their mascot and not some parent corporation. Phoenix also wins the green ribbon for Most Improved logo in the NHL.

4th place: Chicago Blackhawks

The Blackhawks rate higher than the Coyotes mostly for visibility (contrast in colors and less shading) and shape recognition (the actual coyote takes a second to parse).

3rd place: Colorado Avalanche

Colorado just barely steps over the Blackhawks for the simplicity and quality concept, though that background blue oval continues to be annoying and extraneous.

2nd place: Edmonton Oilers

Edmonton's logo has none of the annoying flaws of the Avalanche logo, but is lacking a bit of the simplicity and boldness of St. Louis's mark.

1st place (and Wild Card Winner): St. Louis Blues

As close as they were to winning their extremely strong division, the Blues solidly take the wild card win among the losers. Almost a perfect logo.

And, like last week, check out each division's ranking, based on how their member teams did; lowest score being better. (For instance, St. Louis's 1st place adds 1 point to the Central total, while Minnesota's 12th adds 12 points for their Northwest division.)

3rd place: Pacific, 32 points

Holding 3 of the last 5 place finishers and none above 5th place, the Pacific division is officially the worst logoed grouping in the NHL.

Tie! 1st place: Central, 23 points

Tie! 1st place: Northwest, 23 points

With the Central Division taking 1st and 4th, the Northwest taking 2nd and 3rd, and the Pacific staying out of the way, these two divisions end up tied for the best division in the Western Conference.

Congratulations to the wild card winner, St. Louis, and good luck in the later rounds.

How would you rank the Western Conference losers?

NHL Logo Tournament: Round 1: Week 7

Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:20:00 GMT

The competitors this week and next are those teams that lost their divisional competitions. Now they're back for one last chance to advance by winning the single wild card spot available in their conference.

Read on to see the best and worst of the losers: The logo rankings mostly fit into a few categories. Rather than redo the descriptions and analyses of each logo, this grouping characterization is reviewed.

Bringing up the rear of the group are the natural disasters. Aside from being very expansion-ish, the actual catastrophic theme isn't an impossible one to overcome, but these versions fail to keep to simple, coherent ideas that would raise them above their awkward names. To be clear here, while the Hurricanes are not near the quality of the top logos, the Lightning are far and away the worst logo of the Eastern Division. As has been said before, they would do well to completely scrap every aspect of their current version and start over.

12th place: Tampa Bay Lightning

11th place: Carolina Hurricanes

Thankfully the Islanders are the only members of the map-as-mascot club. It doesn't work on a state's quarter, it doesn't work on a nation's flag, and it certainly doesn't work on a hockey team's sweater.

10th place: New York Islanders

The next grouping are the animals. Buffalo, the Thrashers, the Penguins. the Panthers (and, stretching a bit, the Senators) all use an angry, forward-charging animal, and their placement reflects the adeptness with which they render their mascot. The better ones stylize their characters by taking out all but the necessary details, and keeping to consistently thicker lines with a minimum of shading.

9th place: Ottawa Senators

8th place: Florida Panthers

7th place: Pittsburgh Penguins

The final group of logos fit into the generic words and symbols category. Montreal, Boston, and the Rangers all only barely bother to symbolically identify the mascot, location, or sport, other than by initial letter, or spelling the whole thing out. They do, however, make good use of color, clear letters, and bold, solid lines. New Jersey breaks out of the group with typgraphic tweaking that pulls in the Devils mascot, without over-complicating the letter forms.

6th place: New York Rangers

5th place: Boston Bruins

4th place: Atlanta Thrashers

3rd place: Montreal Canadiens

2nd place: Buffalo Sabres

1st place (and Wild Card Winner): New Jersey Devils

Just for fun, check the relative success of each division by adding up its members' rankings; lowest score being better. (For instance, New Jersey's 1st place adds 1 point to the Atlantic total, while Tampa's 12th adds 12 points for their Southeast division.) Here's how the Eastern Conference divisions stack up:

3rd place: Southeast, 35 points

Saddled with the two final finishers and no one breaking into the top 3, the southeast division is fully — and, barring league reorganization, permanently — in last place in the Eastern Conference.

2nd place: Atlantic, 24 points

With the big winner and a couple of strong middle of the pack logos, the Southeast take second place. A few slight tweaks, and a revision of the Islanders logo and they'll have a good chance at moving into first.

1st place: Northeast, 19 points

The veterans of the league pull out first place, with solid, consistent, just-above-average classic designs. The turtle wins the race in this division competition.

Congratulations to the wild card winner, New Jersey, and good luck in the later rounds.

How would you rank the Eastern Conference losers?

NHL Logo Tournament: Round 1: Week 6

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 22:02:00 GMT

The final divisional contest is here, and, yes, I saved the best for last. Any of the Central Division's three top teams easily could have won some of the other, weaker divisions.

Who is our final round 1 winner? Read on, reader.

5th place: Columbus Blue Jackets

While Columbus manages to create some graphical magic by forming the CBJ out of the ribbon and hockey stick, the overall effect is too busy. The red starred ribbon element comes out of nowhere, as does the star on the stick's butt end, and both leave you wondering what the heck a Blue Jacket really is. (A short Internet search gives the impression the team may be named after an early Indian leader, "Blue Jacket", which I suppose results in a better name than the Columbus Little Turtles.)

Columbus does deserve credit for good, traditional color choice, as it's hard to go wrong with dark blue and red. The dark blue negative space within the ribbon, however, causes far more visual confusion than if the space had simply been left transparent.

Advice: Decide what your team name means and go with it in a new logo. Or, at the very least, simplify by removing the inner blue fill, the top star, and the hatch marks on the hockey stick.

4th place: Nashville Predators

For an expansion team with a dumb, overly generic name, the Predators have at least latched on to a very specific mascot. The overall execution of the logo is good, and the exaggerations of the size and angle of the saber teeth are smart. Overall, the slant of the animal's head and the angles of its eyes, ears, and mouth work to create a very forward-moving logo while still keeping an overall balanced shape.

The details of the logo are a bit odd, though, with an underlying orange edging that appears nowhere else on the team colors, and a strange stitch-like patch on its cheek. Additionally, while the skin cutaway works to integrate the team's blue, it mostly weakens the otherwise solid outer border and jumbles the sharp contrast of the animal's interior, relative to its border.

Advice: Clean up the interior details, removing the blue and orange interiors and, instead, continuing the gray and light gray horizontal shaping marks.

3rd place: Chicago Blackhawks

These final three teams fought the hardest in the tournament, and the results will likely be the most controversial. The Chicago Blackhawks head is sharply drawn, implementing the color scheme of the team while seeming to fit in with traditionally Indian colors. It's easy to do Native American mascots insensitively, but this excellent depiction avoids the offensive mistakes of some other similarly named teams.

Ultimately, though, the illustration doesn't quite fit logo constraints. While the varying line widths do properly emphasize some of the facial characteristics, they disappear at smaller sizes (or longer distances), leaving the facial paint on the chin almost looking like clown lipstick. Also, while the yellow thread accent in the hair adds style to the overall drawing, it is slightly overpowering, due to the color contrast and line thickness, diminishing the more important elements, like the eye and feather. In the end, while the Black Hawk logo is to be commended for its traditional-yet-unoffensive illustration, it does not earn a place as the best logo in this strong division.

Advice: Thicken/alter some of the mouth and nose features, possibly remove the yellow line.

2nd place: St. Louis Blues

The Blues benefit from an perfect team name, affording them both an implicit team color and a general music theme (plus an unusual added bonus: they inherit a good stadium entrance song).

The simple note design serves to both get the music idea across and provide a block of color, without resorting to other, newer teams' insistence on extraneous shading or detail. This logo is extremely readable at tiny as well as large sizes, and its slight slant and bold, thick lines emphasize speed and stability. The thick yellow border surrounding the logo does an excellent job of both complementing the blue color while allowing the logo to show up well on a dark or light background.

The wings off the edge of the stem are adapted from the flags of an 8th (or, given the 4 flags, possibly 64th) note. While they add an additional speed reference to the team logo, they also add a new element to the identity, which somewhat dilutes the clean, straightforward theme with elements that are already tied into at least 2 other NHL Teams (the Flyers and the Red Wings). This, however, is the slightest flaw, and essentially the benefit and detriment of the wing detail cancel each other out.

Ultimately what puts the in Blues second place rather than first is the recent (1998, apparently) addition of the thicker white border surrounding the note's yellow border, with a thin blue border surrounding that. This is an improvement over the earlier ('84 to '88) version that excessively introduced red (and the oddly placed "St. Louis"), but is overall a diminishment of the cleanest logo, the 1967/68 original. As mentioned above, the Blues logo would easily win in many of the other divisions, but being in the Central, they just miss first place.

Advice: Go back to the original one-border logo. Or try out a simple, non-winged quarter note version.

1st place: Detroit Red Wings

The Red Wings cheated somewhat with their logo, with owner James Norris having "appropriated" it from the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association Winged Wheelers (winners of the 1893 Stanley Cup, and apparent motorcycle enthusiasts), then changing Detroit's team name from the Cougars to the Red Wings. The reasoning behind the Red Wings name, however, is elusive.

In any case (and design theft aside), the winged wheel serves well to depict both the Red Wing and the team's "motor city" Detroit location. The exact details of the logo have evolved over the years (note the inverted shading of the '73-'84 version), but the overall concept, and general implementation have stayed fairly constant.

The Red Wings logo wins primarily due to its excellent adaptation of a somewhat difficult concept (you must have an object that has wings, of course, but how do you prevent that object from becoming the primary focus?), but the overall job of the illustrator in adding exactly the right balance between the wings and tire, as well as the expert shading of the tire and wings clinch first. The extra thick outer red edge (missing from the earliest versions) also creates an extremely memorable silhouette. If the logo has any faults, they're in the slightly over-detailed aspects of the mark. Over the course of this logo's history (and, indeed, most logos' histories) the line widths have been made more consistent and any unecessary details has been removed. There remain only one or two small areas for this process to continue in the Red Wings logo.

Given the perfect curve of the wing top and the expertly placed feathers, the slightly jagged edges of the feathers are unneeded, and at smaller sizes only add visual noise. Additionally, the smallest lines of the spokes are lost at far distances, and make the interior of the logo go a bit pink. Even with these minor issues, though, this is a near perfect logo, and can largely remain untouched for the rest of the team's existence.

Advice: Continue down the simplification path, removing the feather jags and possibly reducing the number of spokes (followed by at least doubling their line width).

Congratulations, Detroit, and good luck in the later rounds.

What are your rankings for the Central Division?

NHL Logo Tournament: Round 1: Week 5

Thu, 08 Jul 2004 20:17:00 GMT

Four of the five Southeast division team names were thought up in the '90s. The 5th (Washington) is only from '74. We're back to dealing with some new designs and, consequently, greatly varying quality.

How did they turn out? You're a click away from finding out.

5th place: Tampa Bay Lightning

Aside from the annoying aspect of a singular noun team name, the Lightning have a pretty clear and easily identifiable icon to work with. Unfortunately, they appear to have decided it was so easy they'd let the owner's nephew draw it up. The first mistake: When you have an obvious symbol like lightning, you don't need to put the word "lightning" on the logo.

But then, who chose that Tampa brushed stroke font? Why is "Lightning" in another font? What's with the white outline and thin black outer outline? All of this before we even get to the unnecessarily 3D-ish bolt jammed into a circle that only serves to further obscure the text. Even aside from the expansion-ish colors, Tampa Bay is fully deserving of this last place finish.

Advice: Hire a designer next time. Dump everything and start anew with a stylistically interesting bolt.

4th place: Carolina Hurricanes

Carolina narrowly avoids the singular team name by throwing an S onto their natural disaster. Again, aside from the awful mascot idea, it would seem a Hurricane would be pretty easy to iconize. However, unlike the Lightning, the Hurricanes seemed to have hired too many designers.

While the general idea of depicting a top-down shot of the Hurricane isn't an awful one, this version should have been dropped in the thumbnail stage. The shapes formed by the red and black jagged outer lines, and the inner black swoop are awkward, off-balance, and difficult to reconcile. The gray outline around the whole shape is a weak attempt to group the random shapes together into one solid mark. And the over-emphasized circular eye only serves to further muddle the spiral suggested the outer lines.

Advice: Two choices — a) remove the eye and inner black swoop, get rid of the jaggies, and go for a Yin/Yang-ish simplified swirl. b) Give up on this logo and do a more easily recognizable side view of a stylized tornado.

3rd place: Florida Panthers

While Florida wins for being a new team with a solid, traditional team mascot, they end up with a logo — or rather, a cartoon — that is hard to differentiate from that of the thousand high school panthers out there. To be fair, it's a well-executed and professional depiction, but it doesn't quite work as a full team logo. It's over-detailed, so it looks chaotic and a bit scraggly at smaller sizes, or when surrounded by any other colors.

It's good that the logo uses only the 4 colors, but the red is strangely over-used. Red mouth, good. Red eyes...Perhaps. Red paws? A bit stranger. Red tail tip? Did the cat just walk through a ketchup factory, or what? A few other details are weird too, though some aspects may be clearer in a larger version. What's with the bump on the top of his head? Is the cat really supposed to be cross-eyed? How does he walk around on such tiny back feet? (Just kidding on that last one.)

In any case, the strength of the Panthers name, and a reasonably strong start for such a young team bodes well for the future of the Panthers logo. It will not be a surprise if they move up in their division in coming years.

Advice: Simplify, simplify, simplify. Less angular hatching, get rid of unnecessary details, and drop most (if not all) of the red.

2nd place: Atlanta Thrashers

Thankfully the Atlanta Thrashers — new team, formed in the "extreme" era, with a seemingly ridiculous name — did not decide to team up with Thrasher magazine for a skater mascot. While Atlanta is fully justified in using the Thrasher (Georgia's state bird) as their team name and mascot, it was imperative, given the current environment, that the logo not mislead anyone as to what sort of thrasher they were alluding to. One skateboard wheel, one flail, one swiping claw, and everyone would miss the literal animal meaning.

The designers also seem to tacitly acknowledge this by leaving the Thrasher name off the logo. If you'd never heard of the Thrashers, you'd be forgiven for thinking they might just be another Atlanta Hawks team. Outside of their (wise) choice to not force the team or city name on the brand, the Thrashers logo is well drawn, and intelligently thought out. The smooth curve of the lines of the bird, combined with just the right amount of shading, create an easy to recognize, bold, dynamic mark. The beveled badge outside of the bird, seems unnecessary, however, and somewhat interferes with the comprehension of the hockey stick, and seems to be something of a crutch to justify the cropping of the animal's body.

While the hockey stick is consistently drawn in the style of the rest of the logo, and is at least somewhat appropriately incorporated, the logo would be bolder without it. All in all, this is a strong logo from a new team, and they would do well not to mess with it too much.

Advice: Drop the beveled badge, consider dropping the hockey stick, slightly thicken the blue line dividing the bottom of the head from the wing.

1st place: Washington Capitals

The Capitals luckily have a national icon to identify with, narrowly avoiding (or at least relegating to alternate logo status) the idiocy of having players represented as the tops of buildings. Washington wins this round for the overall clarity of the shape and simple execution of their drawing. This logo would be easily identifiable in silhouette form, and at postage-stamp sizes. The curve of the shoulder and swooping wings creates an active, interesting shape, and the extended claw balances the opposite wingtip without the need for exact symmetry.

The eagle is surrounded by a thin blue edge, presumably to indicate that it's moving through the sky. This seems pretty unnecessary, and somewhat blurs the otherwise sharp edges. Additionally, while the stars fill the space in the wings reasonably, and not inappropriately, the attempt to stretch and scale them proportionally doesn't quite work, considering the flatness of the rest of the illustration.

Advice: Redo the stars, also trying out white instead of gold. Remove the blue border.

Overall, a pretty weak division, though I think all of the teams have possible ways to improve their logos to match the quality of some of the better divisions in the NHL.

Congratulations, Washington, and good luck in the later rounds.

What are your rankings for the Southeast Division?

NHL Logo Tournament: Round 1: Week 4

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 21:42:00 GMT

The Northwest Division is full of letters. Three, possibly four of the division's teams use a city or team name initial letter as the basis for their logo. And, the fifth team would do well to follow the trend.

On with the rankings:

5th place: Minnesota Wild

Quite an easy start in the rankings, this week, as the Wild have an awful logo. This sylvan scene, forming the head of a ferocious something would make a pleasant wall mural inside the Xcel Energy Center, but it doesn't make a good logo.

Let's see some contrast, some character, and, above all, less ambiguity! The Wild are burdened by an expansion team name, but it's not insurmountable. They need to choose a "Wild" symbol, and go for it, rather than attempting to waffle between two possible metaphors. And they shouldn't choose the wilderness, because no one knows how to, well...root for some trees.

Advice: Drop everything from the current idea, start with bold, black W, possibly add some fangs, and call it a logo.

4th place: Vancouver Canucks

The Canucks gave up a logo that cleverly integrated hockey and their C for a logo that celebrates their parent company, Orca Bay. Boo. The whale's breaking through a sheet of, presumably, hockey ice, which works all right, but depicting the lower part of the ice as a thin curve simply to indicate a C is clumsy and forced.

Like the Canadiens, the Canucks would have a hard time creating a mascot for their team identity. Who else but Canadians would use a derogatory term for their countrymen as a team name? Technically, they could go with a horse, since it seems that's originally what a "Canuck" was, but wouldn't it be fun to see a ridiculously stereotyped Canadian caricature, dressed in much-too-large hockey gear? Ok, maybe not.

Advice: Go back to your old logo, it was classic for a reason.

3rd place: Colorado Avalanche

The Avalanche are saddled with another obvious expansion name, but they've managed to do all right with it. The A forming the mountaintop with the cascading subtle C of snow flowing down does a decent job of illustrating their team name, while getting a letter or two in. It's a clever idea, but the actual rendering leaves much to be desired.

Too much of the A is covered. At the very least, more of the crossbar needs to be shown, and preferably at least some part of the right leg, to clearly get the A across. And what is with the blue oval behind the A? It only helps confuse the boundaries of the avalanche, having the same color and line width as the snow edges in front of it. Additionally, the snow wave itself has been excessively messed with, given, for some reason, a black ashlike end and fingeresque tips. It feels like a good designer drew up a logo and then passed the paper on to the other party guests to add their own touches.

Advice: Clean it up. Remove the oval, recolor that black end, and let more of the A show through.

2nd place: Edmonton Oilers

To be honest, the Oilers typography has always seemed a little bizarre. Extending the letters down to the edge of the circle matches with some oil ideas of underground reservoirs and holes drilled through the ground, but it also messes with readability. The R, for instance, is nearly indistinguishable from a B, and the E could nearly be an F. If OILFBS was a word, it would have cost them their second place finish. They get the benefit of doubt with the strange non-circular drooping of the letters, in that it somewhat mirrors the drop of oil falling from above.

Even with all of that, it's a good logo. One advantage of having a team name starting with O, though: Full justification in placing your logo within a circle. And the dropping bead of oil, bending down the border is an excellent way to fill what would otherwise be an awkward empty space. They might want to drop into the mechanic, though, as that oil's looking a bit dirty.

Advice: Clear up the letter identity without losing the metaphor. If nothing else, a little wider and more consistent kerning of the letters would increase the legibility quite a bit.

1st place: Calgary Flames

The Flames logo is so good, it just seems too obvious. It's hard to realize that there were much stupider ways to implement the idea. It would have been quite easy to have overextended the flames, distorting the C. A lesser designer might have attempted more realistic vertical flames, creating a goofy spiky-haired C. And almost certainly one of their first drafts involved the entire word Calgary, silhouetted in front of a towering fire.

But they avoided all of those faults. Not only that, they got all the details right. The thin black line surrounding the mark ensures proper contrast against the white background. Edging the red in a just-different-enough orange looks great, and makes all the difference in identifying the left edge as flames, and not just shredded fabric. And the forward leaning, sans-serif C adds just the right modern touch.

Advice: Don't touch your logo, but stay far away from that third logo.

Congratulations, Calgary, and good luck in the later rounds.

What are your rankings for the Northwest Division?