Design decisions: Experts react to the slew of NFL uniform, logo changes

Change is endemic to the NFL offseason. The Buccaneers signed Tom Brady and then dealt for Rob Gronkowski to boot. The Patriots were left to plot a future without a Hall of Famer at quarterback. In Los Angeles, the Chargers and Rams are getting ready to move into $5-billion SoFi Stadium, the most expensive venue in football history.

Simultaneously, all of those teams - plus the Browns, Colts, and Falcons - revamped their uniforms, logos, or both.

These aesthetic updates, encompassing nearly a quarter of the league, were unveiled during the past several weeks. Some franchises, like the Chargers and New England, embraced different, bold shades of blue. Others - Tampa Bay and Cleveland - called back to happier eras during which they won a Super Bowl (or, in the Browns' case, NFL titles in the 1950s and '60s; it really has been that long). Some redesigns were lauded; one was maligned by fans and a legendary running back still on the team payroll.

It's a lot to absorb. To cap this spate of activity and spotlight some of the nuances of all seven new looks, theScore asked three authoritative voices in the sports design community - Chris Creamer, the founder of SportsLogos.net; Todd Radom, an expert graphic designer; and Steve Wilson, author of "The Why of Sports Design" - to analyze a signature element of each redesign, from the Colts' tribute to the state of Indiana to what the Rams did to dismay Eric Dickerson.

We start our breakdown, in alphabetical order by city name, with Atlanta's jersey gradient, the first of its kind in the NFL.

Atlanta Falcons

Uniform redesign released April 8
Signature element: Gradient in alternate jersey

The Falcons' alternate shirt features the same "ATL" wordmark on the chest as their new home and away uniforms, but differs in its refusal to settle on one hue. Instead, black segues into red in a pattern the team said is meant to represent "a city constantly on the rise." The design accounts for kinship - Atlanta's Braves and Hawks also wear red - and the Falcons' sense of self: black, they maintain, is gritty, strong, and full of swagger.

The problem, Radom and Wilson said in separate interviews, is the murky middle of the jersey, where the intersection of black and red creates an unattractive grayish mix that's out of whack with the franchise's color scheme. Defined color is paramount in sports branding, Radom said; gradients contravene this principle in favor of a gimmick. "I scratch my head about this one," he said.

The redesign was the Falcons' first in 17 years, but Creamer, weighing in over email, said gradients don't age well and opined that it's the likeliest characteristic to quickly be ditched and forgotten heading forward.

"With very few exceptions, overall I would consider gradients to be a look best reserved for minor-league clubs," Creamer wrote.

Cleveland Browns

Uniform redesign released April 15
Signature element: Simple striping

Unlike Atlanta, Radom said, this revamp aligns with a broader, nascent shift away from the sort of overdone design features that Nike introduced to NFL uniforms several years ago. (The Buccaneers' changes also exemplify this reversal.) Those features were sorely evident in the Browns’ previous threads: the "Cleveland" wordmark situated above orange numbers on the jersey; the team name that lined each pant leg.

"If you're a team that goes out with no logo on your helmet, it's probably not a bad idea to get back to basics on the rest of the uniform," Radom said. The Browns did that by renouncing the wordmark and pant lettering and, essentially, championing stripes. Shoulder stripes. Pant stripes. Sock stripes. It amounts to a welcome return to the classic Browns motif that predates the NFL's merger with the American Football League.

"(The Browns have) always been very simple in their branding. Their iconography has been simple. There hasn't been a lot there," Wilson said. "I think they're better off with a simple uniform, with something that isn't too complicated." Unburdened by words, the new look is recognizably Brownsian, he said. For once, that constitutes something positive.

"They unwound a lot of mistakes," Radom said, "and they got it right here."

Indianapolis Colts

New secondary logo released April 13
Signature element: Outline of Indiana

It has to be said off the top: The Colts' secondary "C" mark, highlighting as it does the shape of the team's home state, closely resembles the creation of a former Indianapolis high school football coach, minus the shamrock that identified the Cathedral Irish. It's an avoidable pitfall that illustrates the importance of due diligence, Radom said: "Regardless of the merits (of a logo), or lack thereof, it puts a little yuck in your mouth if it looks like something else."

On merit, Radom and Wilson said, the "C" is solid: an effectual, if minor, addition to a visual identity scheme long predicated around the horseshoe logo that the Colts brought to Indy from Baltimore in 1984. Rather than displace that famous emblem, this mark can occupy a complementary position on merchandise - the Colts plan to include it on the inside neckline of jerseys - while saluting the support of fans across the Hoosier state.

Crucially, it's straightforward and it's blue, ensuring it doesn't violate the sanctity of the Colts' overall style.

"Every team in every sport needs an array of logos," Radom said. "I think a supporting, secondary mark like this is a very useful thing."

Los Angeles Chargers

Logo redesign released March 24, uniform redesign released April 21
Signature element: Lightning bolt in team name

Lightning streaks adorn the Chargers' new helmets (as do player numbers, for the first time since 1973). The same goes for their jerseys and every pant leg in the vibrant uniform collection that SoFi Stadium's AFC tenants released last week.

One aspect that pales in relative prominence: the bolt that now juts from the bottom of the club's logotype.

It can't reasonably be argued that a subtle tweak - the decision to extend and add flair to the "a" in Chargers - is the standout piece of this particular overhaul. But it's thoughtful and attractive, Radom and Wilson said, and it attests to the benefits of thinking deeply about prospective designs.

Consider the many places that Chargers branding will be featured within their lavish new digs and elsewhere. The field and surrounding signage. Environmental graphics throughout the stadium. Billboards, business cards, and social media. The experts expect the logotype will look sharp in all of those settings, aided by the Chargers' alert deployment of a symbol that's easy to embroider and that's identifiably theirs.

"They know the lightning bolt is 100% Chargers," Wilson said. "Its simplicity - just adding that small little part of a lightning bolt to their wordmark - it does wonders."

Los Angeles Rams

Logo redesign released March 23
Signature element: L.A., front and center

Before we get to the criticism, let's take a moment to evaluate the Rams' messaging here. Four years into their return to L.A., the emphasis on those letters in this logo represents a full-throated claim to ownership of the city - over the Chargers' competing claim, it can be inferred - that the Rams felt was worth stressing in place of their old mark, a portrait of the team's snarling namesake sheep.

"With a few extra decades of history tied to the Los Angeles market, they’d make a good case," Creamer said, referencing the Rams' tenure in the city from 1946-94. The problem? Condemnation of the design monopolized the public reaction to the logo reveal.

Here's how the Rams explained the L.A. mark upon its release: The swoops of the expanded "A" replicate the curve of a ram's horns, which resembles "the spiral of a football and the crest of a wave in the ocean" - images that themselves inspired the design of SoFi Stadium. The intersection of the letters and the horns evinces the club's connection to Los Angeles. The gradient in the "A" changes from white to yellow because those colors have most frequently graced the Rams' helmet horns over the years.

Simply put, the design isn't simple, and unlike the Chargers' logotype, Radom said, it won't translate seamlessly across mediums. Gradients add pleasant depth when a logo is rendered digitally, he said, but they don't appear as pretty when stitched onto merchandise such as hats.

Another issue: As with the Colts' "C," Radom pointed out, the L.A. mark is similar to a pre-existing logo, that of Texas' Division II Angelo State Rams.

"At the end of the day, I'm dying to see, like everybody, what the helmets are going to look like," Radom said. Will the Rams forgo tradition and add "L.A." onto their headwear when they roll out a uniform update later this offseason? Or will they leave it as is, thereby making sure they don't further disappoint the "Rambassador" (who's also the team's vice president of business development)?

New England Patriots

Uniform redesign released April 20 (Patriots' Day)
Signature element: Color Rush blue

The NFL's league-wide Color Rush era lasted two seasons; it ended, officially speaking, in the spring of 2018. Yet the legacy of this vivacious experiment lives on in a few locales - including Foxborough, whose Patriots now have a blue-on-blue home uniform that mostly matches the look Brady and Gronk once repped on select Thursday nights.

Reviews of the all-blue uniform are mixed. Radom prefers jersey-and-pants combos that feature contrast: "The balance of color is usually a good thing." Wilson thinks the concept works in this particular bold shade; were New England's old, comparatively muted navy jersey color spread across the whole outfit, it wouldn't look as nice.

"The new jerseys, we see a much more vibrant red, a much more vibrant blue, more white, and a little less silver in their design," Wilson said. Indeed, the Patriots won the last of their Super Bowl titles with the same uniforms as their original dynasty, a sign of the enduring fruitfulness of the Brady-Bill Belichick partnership - and, as Creamer said, evidence that their attire was getting stale. This revamp happened to synchronize with the fresh start forced upon them on the field.

"The Patriots represent a pretty interesting example: what they are coming away from is so associated with this long era of greatness," Radom said. With this redesign, "they've made a clean break."

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Uniform redesign released April 7
Signature element: Championship throwback

It's funny how football works sometimes. The Buccaneers, mediocrity embodied in the NFC South, attracted the game's GOAT QB away from New England - right as they redesigned their uniforms to recall the franchise's rarest and greatest triumph.

Back on Jan. 26, 2003, when the Buccaneers steamrolled the Oakland Raiders 48-21 in Super Bowl XXXVII, they rejoiced at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium in their familiar home duds: red jerseys with block numbers and pewter pants. By reprising that ensemble today, Tampa Bay is abandoning some of the gaudier properties - the chrome facemasks; the "Bucs" shoulder mark; the so-called digital-clock jersey numbers - that Nike helped initiate in a 2014 uniform revamp in the name of modernization.

"They moved away from a design that couldn’t possibly be any busier (relative to the NFL)," Creamer said via email. "A refreshing change; less is more."

This Bucs redesign seems to speak to the broader allure of throwback uniforms - comfort food for sports fans, as Radom puts it. If the Falcons and Rams are embracing flashy design elements, Wilson said, then the Bucs, like the Browns, have done the opposite, reverting to the sort of historical look that can forestall a negative reception.

"The court of public opinion nowadays, with social media and instant news and instant comments from everybody, it's difficult from a design standpoint. New logos that come out get leaked and they just get bombarded with comments immediately," Wilson said.

"I think that's making a lot of these redesigns, whether it's uniforms or logos or whatever, think about not taking too many steps as far as customizing and uniqueness," he said. It serves as motivation "to make them simpler, more widely accepted - and not adding in so many things that people might have a problem with."

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.