Hartford Mariners Unveil New Logo
Today, the Hartford Mariners sport a brand new logo!
Hartford Mariners' new logo designed by Micah Loyed
It's a great new mark and the Mariners will "wear" it well. But as the commissioner of the IceHL, I'm disappointed, to report the reason for this sudden change.
It was brought to my attention yesterday that the previous Mariners logo bore a striking resemblance to the trident symbol found on the national flag of Barbados. In fact, it was more than a resemblance. The very shape was unchanged.
I contacted the designer, Eric Poole, who submitted the logo to our contest last year to get an explanation. Eric told me he'd never seen this flag but found the trident in a book of clip art and worked from that. Regardless, the simple fact is I've always made it very clear in every design contest that designers are to submit only their own original artwork and not to copy someone else's.
Being that the symbol comes from a national flag — designed by Grantley W. Prescod — this isn't an issue of copyright infringement. A national flag by its very nature is in the public domain. But that doesn't change the fact that this artwork submission violated Icethetics/IceHL contest rules.
With that, we move forward. The Mariners were not among the 13 teams designated for possible rebranding this summer as part of 13 Weeks of R&R. Because, as a 2012 expansion team, their design contest was only held last year, I didn't feel it right to ignore all of the great entries we previously received and voted on.
As commissioner, I decided to reward the runner-up in last year's voting. Micah Loyed's Mariners logo set will now become the team's new look. You saw the primary logo at the top of this post. Now, here's the secondary mark.
They're very sharp and distinct logos and should serve the team well. We should all congratulate Micah on a job well done — even if this wasn't the ideal way for his logos to be adopted.
Next, there's the question of the jerseys. As part of last year's expansion project, a jersey design was selected by voters. Unfortunately, it bears the old logos and colors. I didn't want to punish the uniform creator, Ian Dyck, by replacing his design, but nor do I want to hold another design contest for the Mariners.
Instead, I want you to decide so that I'm not making all the decisions. Using the new palette, I've recolored the top two jersey designs from last year's voting. I've also incorporated the new logos.
First, we have Ian Dyck's winning design — with revamped colors and logos. And then there's the runner-up, created by Alex Hackert. Vote in the poll below for one of these. After a week, I'll tally the votes. And the winner will be the new uniform design for the Mariners.
Cast your vote here:
If you have any questions, please ask. I'd be happy to answer. While it's not my intent to embarrass Eric Poole by executing this change, I do hope it will make future submitters think twice before submitting something that wasn't their original work. I'm all for taking inspiration from other designs, but here, to copy them outright does not sit well with me.
Don't forget, 13 Weeks of R&R starts tomorrow! Look for details on the main Icethetics blog Saturday afternoon. For now, I'll leave you with a look at the Mariners' new wordmark.
Chris
The jersey poll is now closed. The recolored version of Ian Dyck's original design will be the new jersey of the Mariners going forward. Thanks for your votes!
Reader Comments (18)
Obviously, the way things went down isn't ideal, but I do have to say I like the new marks. The primary is solid and I love the secondary--calls to point the city's nickname--"New England's Rising Star." I drew on that as my original suggestion for the team name, the Hartford Astros. In any case, I like the look, so well done to Micah!
In the scheme of things, I also have to commend both Ian and Alex on their jersey designs. I think it says a lot about the quality of the design in that there was a color scheme change, and yet both designs still look very nice with the new colors.
I never made the connection with the Barbados flag, but to be honest, the original Hartford design was a little too reminiscent of the original Seattle Mariners logo and colors, so I'm happy to see a fresher take. Well done on the re-boot ... like it a lot.
Does this mean the Armada jersey will instead be the next jersey produced by RinkGear?
Sad that this had to be done, but rules are rules, and it's awesome how it's been handled.
Love Alex's design, but both would look good on a Rinkgear jersey.
Glen: Good question. That is still to be determined. We may go with the Armada. We may go with the new Mariners jersey. Or we could do a run-off poll between the two. I'll be sure to keep everyone updated.
Just wondering, would the trident shaped like an 'm' violate the rule twice? The Seattle Mariners used a turned trident 'm' for many years. Is that also considered a steal?
The new logo is the same as Barbados aswell except the "serif" on the trident is reversed? I think if you rule out the old logo then you need to rule out the new logo.
Jared: If you can't see the difference between these designs, that's all right. But I urge you to stay out of any graphic design fields.
Chris: I am artistically untalented i can't even draw stick men, so logo design isn't my field (as you know I use Paint
for my designs). All I am good at is designing jerseys (I think i am atleast half decent haha). I agree with your decision 110%, I am not damning it, but maybe its just my eyes that would make most tridents look alike.
Jared: That's fair, and I hope you see that wasn't a dig or anything. All I meant was it's all in the details. Just because they're both tridents doesn't mean they look alike. Even if Micah was inspired by the same trident (which I doubt), there are more than enough differences to separate they two. The fact that Eric did not even change the fundamental shape of the symbol is what did him in here.
It took a couple of days to digest the whole news, but I figured I might as well chime in. I had never seen the flag of Barbados until Chris sent me the image above. I did use an image of the trident in black and white shown above from a legally obtained/legit clip art book. It was just the image from the book, and not the vector file. With the image to reference, I recreated it in CorelDraw. I thought this was okay to do seeing how I was recreating the base image and then adding/editing it make the logo work. But, Chris feels it wasn't, and it's his website and his decision, and I respect it. It is what it is.
Truthfully, when I first made the logo, my main thoughts were the Seattle Mariners and how they used a trident 'M' for their old logo, and knew mine did too. I figured they looked too dissimilar in looks and concept and moved forward, plus I knew if Chris would've had a problem with it, he'd have told me, and I'd have been fine with him not accepting it before voting took place.
I'm saddened the logo isn't used any more, but I'm not really embarrassed at all. The logo was solid (albiet Icethetics illegal), and I am very proud of how it came out from concept to finished logo. And considering it won, it meant people liked it too. And I can't forget about the Poseidon logo too, I was very happy with him.
Oh well, I'm more or less done submitting hockey stuff. I'll just stick to video game fan art for the time being. Go Pens. :)
Chris: Not a dig at all. I'm honest with myself and like Eric said above, it's your website with your opinions and readers need to accept that, and I accept it.
That is pretty unfortunate, but Micah Loyed's Mariners marks are an excellent replacement. Congrats Micah!
I hope this means an Armada jersey is in the works!
If there is another vote for which jersey is made, consider the second to last team's jersey that Hartford beat to be in the mix. I know Armada was the last, what was the one they eliminated before that?
so you are just going to ignore the entire design aspect of the original logo that won the entire contest? the use of negative spacing to form an H, and with the mariners logo upside down to form an M should be enough of a change to not be considered plaigarism. I have always found that sports enthusiats lack vision and artistic understanding, and that is apparent as the runner up design that was chosen by the enthusiat moderator of this site , looks like it was designed for some aquatic themed hotel built in the 1970s. I will not vote for either of those subpar designs as i really liked the orginal for the above noted reasons.
Zilla: Sorry dude, bottom line is it violated contest rules. I appreciated the old logo and its use of negative space as much as anyone. But the trident design was not the original work of the user who submitted it. What do you want from me?
You're free to say whatever you like about a "lack of vision and artistic understanding" on my part. I do design work for a living. Until I see your work, I can't put much stock in your opinion here. But going to the runner-up was not a choice so much as it was obvious. It would've won the vote had the offending logo been disqualified from the beginning.
Also, anyone using the phrase "enough of a change not be considered plagiarism" is oblivious. If it's a "change," it's clearly derived from something else, is it not? And doing this without permission or crediting the source is the definition of plagiarizing.
You don't have to like the new logo, but let's steer clear of blaming me for someone else's rule violations.
Hey guys, thanks for the congrats. Despite the logos/marks/branding change, Ian and Alex's uniform designs were so good, that they were totally unaffected by the change and are both still REALLY good.