Entries in hartford (2)

Friday
Apr122013

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.

Monday
Apr022012

Polls: Expansion Team Names

The IceHL Project is growing. Our crowd-sourced fantasy hockey league is expanding from 30 to 32 teams for the 2012-13 season. And it's now time to choose the names for the newcomers.

Last month, your vote decided that Hartford, Conn. and Yellowknife, N.T. will join the IceHL ranks in 2012. Then over the next few weeks, you made suggestions for what we should call the teams. Now, once again, your vote will make the final call.

More than a hundred names were suggested. I've narrowed the list down to 25 for each team. You may choose as many as 5 to vote for below. (Vote only for the names you like. Don't pick five just to fill a quota if you only like three of them. Otherwise, you may not like the results.)

Choose up to 5 names per team. Polls close Sunday, April 15.

I need to clarify something. A few weeks ago, I wrote that an upcoming poll would deal with realignment of the league. I've decided to hold off on that because there's a chance some teams could be relocated this summer. As always, your vote will make that determination. We'll begin the relocation and rebranding discussion in June. If any teams are selected to be relocated/rebranded, the process will run until early September. We'll start the search for new GMs after that time. I, for one, am excited about another season of IceHL fantasy hockey!

Note: If you have questions about how the names listed above were chosen from all those that were suggested, please feel free to email me. (There's a red Gmail button at the top of the page.) Comments on this post are deactivated so as not to taint the voting.