Spiriling Rams
There’s a small team in Los Angeles known for creating some of the most beautiful things you will ever see. Their approach to creating these things, in the words of their owner, is based in “optimization”. So, maybe what they’re doing isn’t so much creating as recreating. See, they take relics of the 70s through early 90s and not only restore them, but make them better than they ever were. This modernization is about preserving what people love about the old thing and making it the best thing it can be by today’s standards. It’s about functionality as much as it is aesthetics.
There’s an artistic nature to the styling. Gorgeous paint and color combinations. Performance upgrades. These old things are pieces of art themselves so it’s no surprise it takes a team artisans and craftsmen to pull off this optimization of things already so beloved and so great to start with.
This is Singer Porsche.
When it comes to this approach of modernizing already great things, making them the best they could possibly be, I don’t believe anyone does it better. Singer has a reverence for the Porsches they’re working with, shared by their clients, that radiates through their work. They balance keeping what works (and what is recognizable) with areas of improvement through modern technology that provides loads of lessons for anyone who considers themselves a Designer. There is a simplicity, artistry, and ambition to these project cars that anyone can admire.
The NFL wants us to believe they do the same thing as Singer when it comes to team Identities. The results of their latest work with the Rams falls quite short of that vision.
To critique well, I believe you have to start with asking questions. Why are these changes being made? What is the goal? If we’re actually the Designer(s), what can we change and what can we keep to achieve that goal?
I believe when working with established Identity elements, good Designers also asks what they can do with it that is new, while respecting its form. While respecting what is already good about it. That is truly respecting the past, and having reverence for what you’re working with. That is not something I see evidence in this new Rams Identity.
Branding is best when driven by concepts as Singer uses. “Canyon Racer” or “As light as possible”, and every decision through the development is made to achieve that singular goal. What we find with NFL identities so often now is far too many ideas in one place and poorly executed. Crashing waves + Ram horn + Sun + Football Spiral + Progress + Tied to the city = Complexity.
The Rams appear to be trying to tell their entire franchise story through an element that hasn’t dramatically changed since 1947. The team has moved from Cleveland, to LA, to St Louis, and back to LA. It’s a team history with a lot of change but one thing that has remained constant is the Rams horn. For 70 years it has been an iconic, consistant design.
[More thoughts on this below].
One thing we can always give Nike credit for is their ability to make harmonious color palettes. Nearly every time, team colors are improved. The Rams colors are improved by just the slightest shift in swatches. A brighter yellow and blue feels like a fresh take for the team; the best set of colors the Rams have ever sported. It feels like a clear evolution based on the their previous stint in LA, taking a step forward.
I’m hoping for a yellow primary jersey.
Oversights and insensitivity to detail are trademarks of modern NFL Identity, loud and clear in the typography. The wordmarks feature what feels like random rounded corners in random letters. The L, because it is obviously prominent in the brand, is maybe the most annoying. It’s the odd choice to round that particular corner that makes a tangent with the O. It makes the L sit oddly next to the O and E; if we’re rounding random corners, why not the southwest one? Details like this and the rounded inside of the R stand out for the wrong reasons.
Where the colors feel like a thoughtful evolution, the typography shows how thin the line can be between progress and randomness. Now, the Identity starts to feel torn between past and present. Clearly reflecting modern streetwear brands, the font is a clash between vintage Rams and modern fashion trends that would better suited for an annual campaign look, and is probably two years too late. Building part of an Identity (which has goals of timelessness) from trends (fleeting goals of novelty) is risky to say the least, but it has been done well before.
I imagine this typography direction may have also been influenced by the Montreal Alouettes re-brand of early 2019. As Massimo Vignelli once said, theres a difference between doing something and doing something with control and knowledge. Streetwear and Graphic Brutalism isn’t just about using a wide sans-serif though, it’s an entire style. For the Als, it works because it’s carried throughout the entire Identity with control and knowledge (and at the right time), and the Rams have simply chosen a font.
The italic version of “RAMS” is a skewed version of the letters that seem to almost grow wider as it goes right — that is, the S dwarfs the R and L. The proportions are wildly unbalanced. Simply skewing letters is not the proper way to create italic letters, they must be redrawn.
Not every italic set of letters need to change as drastically as Conductor (Jonathan Hoefler) to the left, but you can clearly see the difference control and attention to detail makes for typography. Or here with “Rams” and “Rams”.
There’s an argument to be made that these are not simply fonts, they’re wordmark logos. So, should there be a truer italic version, or is skewed okay? I think they should be custom logos, but how they’re being used here isn’t that. It is just a font that is typed out, then copied and skewed. Its use is as type in place of a logo. So yes, better attention to detail is deserved.
The use of gradients and subtle color changes, shading by additional color, does less to modernize an attempt at classic sports logo design and more to confuse as to what is happening or why. The shapes of shadows / highlights don’t make a lot of sense and this logo looks more like a first draft. Though logos of the ‘50s never felt polished, this Ram head logo sits more with the typography that feels like a clash between old and new ideas. To simply go with the gut, it just doesn’t have the feel of gravitas of an NFL quality logo, but more of the quality of logo the NFL should be replacing.
The oddest thing about the new ram is its use of an abstract horn shape with a more realistic head rendering. It’s a fine line; you can see in the St Louis version (left) the abstraction in the face and neck is pushed more (no ear and almost cartoonish features) and the entire logo feels harmonious. The new Ram feels like the horn is out of place and just slapped on top of an attempt at a more true to life rendering.
The new horn as used on the monogram implies it overlaps the A, then curves inward behind the L. This is the opposite of how a ram horn grows. There should be artistic liberties of course, but it’s odd choice.
The monogram feels cheap and complex because it uses every trick possible to show a spiraling horn, then has variations where all the rules change.
- Gradient of color 2) Division of shape with solid line 3) Division of shape with different color 4) Solid shadows below L and left side of A.
It’s odd that any primary logo would still use a gradient these days. It has been popular with auto brands but within the last year, 3 major ones have improved their logos by making them solid colors. A welcome move but a late one as well. Solid form is not an antiquated, old fogey stylistic choice, it is the foundation of good logo Design. You start there because it allows you to build good variations for different applications afterwards. Yes, the on-screen and digital space is important and allows for some different stylistic choices to happen but that is the end, not the beginning. Digital first leaves you working backwards for a much broader scope than the stadium screens. There are other more important applications. Embroidery, print, the helmet; these are the driving applications of football Identity. The ribbon boards in the stadium a small slice of the Identity pie.
I think it’s a great idea to use subtle gradients or 3D versions in specific applications, having a special digital logo system. But even in the digital space you’re viewing it now, it’s not a subtle gradient blending from white to yellow. You can see the banding it produces as the color changes.
This collection of style techniques, of mixing solid color shapes with shapes that have a gradient, is erratic. There’s a complex twist and depth that doesn’t really work. The horn spirals off the A but tucks behind the L and though there’s an attempt to integrate the horn with the A, the L is left to just be slapped on top. Mix in an odd combination of sharp and rounded points in a mono-weight key line and any sense of motion the mark might have is stopped with this tight trapping of it. When you look at great NFL logos like the Falcons, Seahawks, or Texans, the varied width of lines builds on the sense of movement that this one ignores.
The “Evolution of the Rams horn” through color doesn’t accurately portray the facts. This logo uses white, the new yellow, perhaps the old yellow? Plus two oranges. The actual progress of horn color would be: yellow, red, yellow, white, yellow, gold, white... it’s an idea better left out altogether.
There’s as many variations of the monogram logo as there are colors and techniques used in it. Don’t forget about the flat, one color ones not shown here. The first thing I imagine the Rams creative team doing with this new logo suite is simplifying it by throwing out which ones they don’t need.
Final Thoughts
Singer Porsche are masters of going forward. Not just physically, but in concept and execution. Their cars never lose the identity and iconic elements people love about Porsches. In a way, it’s all emphasized.
The Rams new Identity doesn’t feel like its gone forward or in one direction at all. The result is something new that is neither evolved nor a throwback. Like the 2016-19 Rams uniforms, the Identity is stuck in a time warp, simultaneously occupying different eras and too many concepts.
These are bad logos in both concept and execution, and like the other NFL Identity updates of the last 8 years or so, it is not a matter of taste. We’re not talking about stylistic choices purposefully made by competent Designers, but oversights, mistakes, lapses in knowledge and craftsmanship. With the resources the NFL has, is there any good excuse for not leading all sports in Design and Branding, or at least being able to produce solid work? I think we should hold them to that standard because they are absolutely able to do it; they used to do it through the Reebok era of uniforms.
Blame it on a bad client a few times maybe, but there comes a point where the pattern no longer suggests thats the problem. Oversights and insensitivity to detail are now trademarks of NFL Design.
It’s hard to get onboard with the very idea of this new Identity because the Rams had every element to work with outside of the horn itself and though we haven’t seen the uniforms yet, it’s clear what they’re setting up. The Rams have never been committed to a number font, or stripes, or colors. That horn was the first art ever applied to a football helmet in 1947 and has remained almost unchanged since. It’s remained constant and so great for seventy years, until it lands in the hands of the current NFL creative. I think in altering the horn too much, you’ve not only lost the soul of the team, but lost a piece of the game of football itself.
Shouldn’t that matter? Shouldn’t there be reverence for the history of that and what it means when working on this Identity, especially when your whole thing is supposed to be “Respect the past; represent the future” which the NFL seems to have adopted from Nike? To not respect the Rams horn more seems to fly in the face of their own values. Not being capable of designing a decent Logo for 8 years suggests something very wrong with the process. It’s hard to do anything well when there are a lot of people involved but its more than that with the NFL. Down to the very details of individual logos, there are flaws. We might never see if there were better options presented to the Rams but even if the ideas were better, I’m not confident they could have been built well because none have over the last near decade. It’s most disappointing that one of football’s greatest identities had to be put through such violation.
