The One That Got Away

Rebranding a professional sports franchise is any designer’s dream job. It’s a challenge that would allow a designer to stretch his wings, work in many creative disciplines, and develop a truly iconic identity that captures the spirit and channels the passion of an entire region. Sadly, we too often see one of these dreams turns into a nightmare. Ladies and Gentlemen… I give you the Miami Marlins.

A Fish Story

The Marlins have always been a bi-polar franchise. One year, they’re World Champions with a team of young, home-grown talent. The next, they’re dead and mounted on the wall after a massive sell-off.  They’ve never won their division, but have won the World Series twice. And regardless of their record, they always rank near the bottom in fan attendance each season.

Management is hoping to change this, and they’ve literally bet house. The Marlins will be opening the 2012 season in a $515 million stadium, complete with retractable roof.  Unless the Marlins’ management can fill the seats, this stadium could quickly be seen as a massive boondoggle, as nearly $350 million of the total cost will be paid with taxpayer dollars. Leaving the politics of public stadium financing aside, it is clear that the 2012 season will be of critical importance to the Fish. A poor showing on the field won’t go over well with a divided public, and the Marlins have quickly made their mark in free agency, ensuring that the fans have a reason to fill the seats.

New Fish on the Block

Along with the new stadium and new talent, the Marlins also decided to introduce a new logo. The original Marlins logo was nothing particularly outstanding. The fish icon is well-rendered, but stiff and uninviting. The typography lacks character and over adorned. The black and dull sea green fail to captivate, have absolutely no real connection the people and spirit of Miami.  Who wants to wear a black hat or jersey in the 100ºF heat of Miami in August? All that being said, it wasn’t a terrible logo. Though a bit dull and uninspired, the original logo would seem a beauty queen when standing beside the technicolor sasquatch that is the new Marlins log.

Smells Like Fish

Now, I’ve seen a few horrific logo redesigns in my day. Earlier this year, shopping mall mainstays The Gap unveiled a bland and insipidly crowd-sourced logo which drew scorn and derision from the public. This Miami monstrosity, however, sets a new benchmark for ugly.

Miami is a vibrant and colorful place, and the Marlins logo should reflect this personality with a thoughtful, balanced color scheme. Instead, it seems they’ve just thrown a handful or tropical colors together, for fear of leaving one color out. Perhaps the result of having an owner who is an avid art collector, the design comes off as a hodge-podge of fine art mainstays. But rather than a fusion of styles, the Marlins color palette comes off as a clashing of Mondrian and Peter Max.

The rendering of the marlin also misses the mark. So highly abstracted,  the marlin is become barely recognizable, and hardly visible. Indeed, the position seems to indicate the marlin is a mere afterthought. Perhaps they wanted to throw the fish back, but were afraid to fully commit to the M logo by itself. Such half-measures always end in failure. The resulting logo looks less like the trademark of a signature sports franchise, and more like a locally-made, folk art Miami keychain sold on a table along South Beach. Such a great opportunity… utterly wasted.

The One that Got Away

The scope of such a branding project is hard to fathom. To understand the size of this opportunity, and this failure, one needs only to look around the sports world. Would anyone fail to recognize the Yankees logo? The iconic colors of the Green Bay Packers? The playful typeface of the Dodgers? Great logos like these stand the test of time, and never need rebranding. This was the legacy the Marlins could have created. Instead they have created shlock - schlock that will adorn uniforms, hats, jerseys, billboards, TVs, websites, and just about anyplace else you could imagine.

As someone who has always dreamed of undertaking a sports franchise rebranding, I can only feel utter disappointment to see this incredible opportunity result in such epic failure. While design is often reduced to a matter of taste, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to taste something that looks this rotten. TOSS IT BACK