Final Winning Logos Unveiled!
Sunday · Jun 23 · 2013 | 11:55 AM PDTLast week, everyone cast their final votes in the logo design contest portion of the IceHL's 13 Weeks of R&R project. After the first round of polls, five races were still too close to call. So one more set of polls has determined our winners!
 The Olympiques become the IceHL's first single-color team with this rebrand by Francis Matte, who picked up 64% of the vote over the incumbent from Craig Wheeler. Francis now has three logos in the IceHL. |
 Prepare to witness the domination of Matt McElroy. With 65%, he topped Francis Matte's entry for the newly-relocated Aces. This gives the IceHL two warplane logos, but from very different eras and in very different color palettes. | |
 Unseating the existing Sharpshooters/Snipers logo by Dave Delisle, Matt McElroy wins another one, this time with 56% of the vote. Going forward the Snipers will have this updated look. |
 Is that Matt McElroy again? With a whopping 73%, his Lumberjacks logo win gets him a fourth logo in the league, overtaking Francis Matte for the most wins this summer. | |
 Lastly, like a cherry on top, Matt McElroy completes the sweep with four winning logo designs in the final week of voting. His efforts beat the existing logo by Rik Oko with 56%, as an eagle, instead of a solider, now stands watch over the capital city. | ||
It was truly Matt vs. Matte this summer with some epic logos from both designers. The pair combined for eight of the 10 new logos we got (Calgary's remained the same). Eric Poole revisited his Colonials concept and Slavo Kiss added a fourth winning design with his take on the Chargers.
Designer updates Huskies branding
Speaking of Slavo, he joined Eric in refining his work from five years ago. Today, I get to introduce updated branding for a 12th team! Check out the revised Alaska Huskies logos from Slavo Kiss.
Only slight updates to the primary, but certainly for the better. The secondary is also much-improved but it's the new wordmark that really solidifies the Huskies' identity. If you'd like to compare the new logos to the original, I recommend downloading a free copy of the 2012 IceHL Yearbook.
By the way, here's the email Slavo sent me with his redesign. Thought I'd share it with you guys.
[A] lot of teams will get brand new logos, so I thought I'd make some improvements to these old designs. Hope you don't mind.
It's nice to see some great new designs and artists showing up and participating in this project. Hope the uniforms will be as good as the new logo sets produced! And maybe we could come up with some new uniform designs for some of the old teams as well... similar process as we just did with the logos. It's just suggestion.
[For the Huskies,] I kept original color scheme because I think that dark night sky blue along with the silver and white is quite a unique combo and represents [the] cold Alaskan wilderness well. Hope new secondary logo, where the mountain and sea wave form the letter A for Alaska is clearer and more readable now. I also simplified the primary logo and created brand new wordmark.
I'd also love to thank this way to all the fans, who supported me and voted for my designs. I appreciate that! It's [a] really great feeling to have designed official identities for four IceHL teams. It's a 100% success for me as all four logo sets I've ever submitted to the IceHL design contests won (Huskies, Archers, Narwhals and Chargers), which makes me very happy and thankful for the support my work and I have had from Icethetics readers and fans of the IceHL.
Thank you guys! Thanks for your support!
Reader Comments (11)
For all their winning logos, my favorites by McElroy (Chargers) and Matte (Aces) didn't win. Bummer.
Olympiques: CLASSIC. LOVE the maroon touch and the official name being "Club Olympique de Montreal."
Aces: I really would've preferred the playing-card concept (especially one of the spade-Liberty Bell hybrids), but this biplane is SOLID.
Snipers: While I'll miss the old design, I'm glad to see Matt McElroy retained the faceoff circle...plus the "VIGILAMUS PRO TE" is BEAUTIFUL!
Lumberjacks: FINALLY...we got away from that Canucks-Giants hybrid to something unique!
Sentinels: While I'll miss the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier guard, the eagle-monument design is AWESOME! Would make a solid identity for the Canadiens.
Overall, an impressive job by all-Matt McElroy is the FUTURE. Now comes the REALLY fun part-the jersey designs! (Also, the yearbook said this August we'd start the process of the IceHL Global to begin play in 2014-15. Is that still on?)
@Burmy: I'm sorry to say we're going to have to push back the timetable on IceHL World. I'd love to get it started in August, but if I do that on the heels of the third jersey design contest, I'll never have time to make THIS year's yearbook. Too much to do. Too little time.
I'm not killing IceHL World by any stretch. Just moving it to the back burner. Probably get it started some time in the winter. That should still give us enough time to have the fantasy league start in 2014-15 as planned.
Happy with 3 of the 5
Really thought Schellenberg should of got Vancouver, but am ok with McElroy for that.
The one that really dissapoints me is the ACES. I really strongly felt Matte's was the clearcut winner. Oh well.
Other 3 are fantastic and great improvements. Congrats to Matt McElroy And Francis Matte on some great work
I feel they all look like soccer shields (like the Utica Comets...they feel very uninspired and all come from a template). Since many of the winning designs came from one person, maybe you should reconsider limiting how many 1 person can submit.
I disagree with all but Sentinels, but the one I really disagree with is the Lumberjacks. Schellenburgs was one of the best looking logos ive ever seen. I really like the secondary
Great job on all the winning designs. The only one I'm surprised about is the Sentinels as I thought, like a lot of others, Rik Ono's logo was solid and minor rebranding was the dominant vote during the early R&R. Sad to see the soldier go, but all the teams look really sharp. Also I got to say that I love Slavo's minor tweaks to the Huskies. The updated logos and new wordmark really raise this team design to an NHL level of quality. The uniforms are already awesome so I'd vote for Alaska as one of the next jerseys to go into production.
I'm back!!! Sorry for the absence this week , but in one of my former comments { in the Aces section] I said that McElroy had a chance at multiple logos. I guess I was right. Congrats Matt!
McElroy's Sentinels logo is a great design. But I still have to go with Rik Ono's original logo. Given the Sentinel name, that logo should have stood the test of time.
For what it's worth, as GM of the Huskies in the IceHL West, I've got to say, I absolutely love the updates to the logo set. As Chris said, the wordmark really stands out as the biggest upgrade (though the updates to the secondary aren't far behind) and I couldn't be happier about it. Overall, there's not one aspect of it I don't like better now than before, and I certainly thought it was great before. Thanks to Slavo for the work.
Congrats to Matte and Matt! And thanks Slavo for the awesome extra surprise.
Of the 5 voted for here, I voted for 4 or the 5 winners, and while I'm a little disappointed in the Snipers decision, I can't deny the winning set doesn't fit with the other changes the team has made.
Based on some of the comments (and my own on the past Vancouver votes) you can't please all of the people all of the time, but we've saw some great ideas presented for these clubs and regardless of if personal favorites won or not, it's been an absolute blast and we aren't even done yet.
Thank you Chris for making this league and the associated fun to be had from it possible. And from my position as a simple fan of this project, my thanks to the artists who have given us so much, for so little in return.
Now bring on those Jersey submissions, so we can do this all over again.