Raleigh Legends Baseball Team Logo

The Raleigh Legends Baseball Team

With Major League Baseball looking to expand, Raleigh is hoping to be one of the destinations. I created a logo for the potential team.

With a recent design event which generated twelve teams and logos, I was inspired to create my own.
While I really like the designs, they're more fun in the style of minor league teams. Major League logos are a bit more buttoned down.

Development
The first question was whether the team location would be Raleigh or Carolina. I decided on Raleigh as a few major league teams already sport a predominant C. I also wanted to use an Old English styled font hearkening to Raleigh's founder Sir Walter Raleigh and the R just looks better.
I used wikipedia to research the founder and the city for inspiration. Sir Raleigh searched for El Dorado, the city of gold, and he founded the "Lost" Roanoke colony. I liked the sound of an alliteration like the Raleigh Royals, but there is already a Royals team.

I wanted the R in the logo to intertwine with the first letter in the team's name. I just wasn't sure what that letter would be. I considered different names and letters. I had considered quite a few "L" names, and L fit well with the R. It would be the Raleigh Legends.

The Hat Logo
I reviewed a bunch of Old English style fonts to get a feel for the style before sketching my own style. I rarely sketch by hand, but sometimes it's easier to rapidly generate some ideas that way. My concern with this style of font is that it can become too flowery and unreadable. I wanted to generate a font that looked similar, but was easily readable. Once I had a sketch I liked, I redrew it in Sketchup to normalize line widths, spacing, etc.

Colors
With colors I always start with black, teal, and silver. Those are my favorite colors because they just pop, but they didn't work in this instance. I liked a dark red as it ties to Raleigh's colors, both the city and the family. I also liked gold. It ties directly to El Dorado and it fits the idea of legendary.

Uniform
I got this template from rsaline on Sports Logos. I didn't want to create a uniform template for an image that just conveys an idea of color combos. Of course I couldn't keep it simple and detailed a home, away, and alternate jersey.

Full Logo
I went through a few drafts of a logo. I wanted to incorporate the font and/or cap logo. I like the idea, but it's rough.

I revised the logo to use the team font and reduced the figures to three which I would prefer to tie into offense, defense, pitching, but I don't want to have to redraw them at this point.
I'd like for the guy on the left to be in a set pitching pose.

I redid the full logo again, trying to simplify it again. Something that has a bit of pop and would screen print better. It's still rough, but I like the concept.

Conclusion
I really like the cap logo. Each time I see it, I like it more. I also like the colors as they expand past the typical MLB team colors. The full logo is getting closer to a final product, but I'm done with it for now.