How I’d redesign the Washington Wizards uniforms, logo
UPDATE 05.11.2011: New Wizards logo and uniform review and other reactions
UPDATE: The official new Wizards uniforms are here, along with a question — which design is better, theirs or mine?
Last week it was announced that the Washington Wizards would unveil their new uniforms and logo on May 10 (DC Sports Bog, The Post). Ever since Ted Leonsis bought the team, it was apparent that the Wizards were going back to their traditional red, white and blue color scheme like the Washington Capitals did. Their sister team, the Mystics of the WNBA, already went to a new scheme and well, all I can say is at least they are red, white and blue.
I have had a design in mind and I finally got out Photoshop and mocked something up. Now, let me remind everybody that these are just something that I put together on my own with no knowledge of what the future Wizards uniforms are going to look like. Please do not confuse these with something that NBA properties or the Wizards franchise created. ANY SIMILARITY TO WHAT THE ACTUAL NEW WASHINGTON NBA UNIFORMS LOOK LIKE WOULD JUST BE A SPECTACULAR COINCIDENCE
Here my logo concept:
I was specifically inspired by the old Washington Bullets script with the two hands reaching up for a basketball. The Wizards have had a secondary logo with “dc” in it since they rebranded in 1997, but I wanted to make “dc” the primary logo because I think it has a lot of cachet. The overriding theme I’m going for is playing up Washington, D.C. as the team’s identity and downplaying the nickname “Wizards” that few people love or even like. I think it might look better with font from the original Capital/Washington Bullets logo, but I couldn’t find a decent version to work with in Photoshop. I had this design in mind before the Washington Nationals primary image was pretty much the same idea — for the most part, I think sticking with the “dc” sans circle would be sufficient.
Now, for the uniforms:
Putting the District of Columbia flag into the uniforms which is reminiscent of the stars and stripes uniforms that the Bullets wore when won the NBA championship in 1978, but I figured I would go even farther since the DC flag is so good. Like I said, promote them as the team that plays in Washington, D.C. not as the Wizards. Also, owner Ted Leonsis hasn’t been shy in saying he likes red.
The block WIZARDS/WASHINGTON might look better as white with a blue outline, but I did not have time to try it. I went with a block font because custom fonts are getting out of hand these days and with the flag on there I figured anything fancy would be too much. The backs should be solid, but I don’t have a strong opinion on that part of the jersey.
So there you go, an unsolicited Wizards uniform design. Chris Creamer’s sportslogos.net was helpful in creating this design. Any resemblance to what they actually pick would be a happy coincidence.
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