Bad Conduct | What’s the ugliest sports logo?

Every week, sports journalists from The press answer a question with pleasure, and a little insolence as well. As we needed a bit of expertise in the matter, our special guest this week is Julie Grimard, graphic designer in our newsroom.

Julie Grimard, graphic designer at The press

I thought the exercise was going to be easy. Fault. I’ve spent far too much time scrolling through professional sports team logos. The winner, or rather the loser, is the Carolina Hurricanes logo. I like the simple, symmetrical and aesthetic logos, and the Canes’ logo has none of that. It looks more like a clip art (pictogram) meteorological that has been accidentally stretched and distorted. The eye of the hurricane, which also evokes the hockey puck, is completely out of proportion. Not very harmonious. The wide, black, curved line above the bright red oval – let’s call it the big eyebrow or, more scientifically, the hurricane wall here – adds sharp angles that upset the balance and dampen the effect of the vortex. Red and black, reminiscent of the colors of the hurricane warning flag, are used at equal force, but unnecessarily complicate the logo since our eye cannot focus on one of its elements. To top it off, a gray outline surrounds the logo, at the same time trapping the hurricane … as if we wanted to control it! It lacks a lot of refinement.

Mathias Brunet

This team did not make an impression, but the ancestors of the Detroit Pistons, in the National Basketball Association (NBA), can boast of having created the ugliest logo in the history of the sport. This kind of robot, who looks like the Tin Man character in the classic 1930s film The Wizard of Oz, was rife between 1948 and 1957. Not only is this logo ugly aesthetically, but it also seems to have been designed by an elementary school student. When the team moved to Detroit in 1975, a more sober logo was chosen, with the team’s name and city inscribed inside a basketball, red on white. The current logo has been slightly modified with red as the background color. Simple, and above all far from this robot, sympathetic, certainly, but dreadful.

Miguel bujold

The Tampa Bay Lightning has been the premier organization of the National Hockey League (NHL) for a number of years now. GM Julien BriseBois and his predecessor Steve Yzerman have built a well-oiled machine that is the envy of many rivals. Thanks to BriseBois, coach John Cooper and players like Andrei Vasilevskiy, Victor Hedman, Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Steven Stamkos, the Lightning will continue to excel. But you certainly can’t say that its logo is very impressive … Simplicity is often tasteful, yes, but the lightning bolt on the Lightning jersey is a little too simple for my taste. It is not necessarily ugly, but we will come back for the originality. My 9 and 11 year olds could have done better in an hour.

Richard Labbé

Let’s say it, it’s impossible to respect the Detroit Lions. First because this team has won about three games since 2004, but also because its eternal mediocrity has completely ruined the careers of two of the greatest players in American football, Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson. In addition, there is this logo. Have you ever watched it for more than five seconds? Usually a lion is big and mean and scary. But the lion of Lions looks like a cat that has caught fire and is trying to get out of the house. In fact, the Lion of Lions looks so distressed it looks like he’s just spent the day listening to Taylor Swift ballads. It’s impossible to win with that on your head. Impossible.

Guillaume Lefrançois

If you have an uncontrollable urge to play Tetris, our apologies. That’s the main effect of that old Denver Nuggets logo. A decade before the arrival of Mutombo (Dikembe, not Samuel), the Broncos released this logo whose Tetris bars represent the buildings of downtown Denver, in front of the Rockies, all in a multicolored environment. The team played from 1982 to 1993 with this logo. It’s the kind of design you like or don’t like. In some compilations, it is ranked as the most beautiful logo in the history of the team! We chose our side: we don’t like it.

Jean-Francois Tremblay

Nothing and no one will make me forget the logo of the Washington Wizards, from their birth in 1997 to 2015. This kind of square-shaped magician, throwing both an incantation and a basketball, all under a half-moon in basketball ball shape. Oh yes, have you been told that the trunk of said magician, clearly delimited by a white beard, formed a W. A nameless horror. The logo, originally brown and dark blue, at least acquired (a little) its letters of nobility by taking up the blue-white-red of the American flag in 2011. Certainly one of the least glorious moments of the illustrious career of Michael Jordan … tied with his stint with the White Sox.

Alexandre pratt

Bottom of the barrel? That. Believe it or not, this was the official Milwaukee Brewers logo. Not for one night. Not for a year. For eight seasons! Special mention to the Detroit Tigers who, in 1927 and 1928, increased the proportion of distressed children in Michigan by 8743%.