I know I commented on your thread Gritty but I'll go ahead and say something here too. Out of the last few expansion teams; Austin, Cincy, Charlotte, Miami, and Nashville, this might be the worst look yet. Charlottes reveal a few weeks back blows this out of the water. I think the name had some really good potential, I like St. Louis City but that crest is painful.

Sacramento's has a really nice base, but I agree with the removal of shadows.

St Louis City SC is good, but it feels like it's missing something. I'd move the SC by the rest of the words, maybe the "Est. 202X" at the bottom if you still feel like you need something there.

Charlotte just works. I've come around. At first, I though the crown was missing something, now... I'm not sure.

I feel Austin did a good job using the space... but aside from that, I'm personally not a fan of the crest. And I can't point to why I feel like that.

Oh my... I have some thoughts...I actually feel like everything about this reveal is an abomination. 

The name alone is awful.  St. Louis City would have been great, (and even a potential nice tie-in to nearby rival Sporting Kansas City.  Battle of the Cities, anyone?) why the unnecessary SC, (yes I know it stands for Soccer Club, although the Designer Speak also indicates that it stands for Soccer Capital.... which is so pretentious).  So now will St. Louis City Soccer Club will be abbreviated to STLCSC?  Eek, say that 5 times fast.  I imagine for the most part, they'll just go by St. Louis City, (or STLC, which is still too long for an abbreviation), but it's still a miss for me.  This is just as bad as New York City Football Club, or NYCFC, maybe worse.

The color scheme doesn't really feel inspired.  I know it's supposed to represent the St. Louis city flag, which has red, blue on it, but how red and blue teams do we need?  There are multiple teams already in MLS that utilize this scheme, why not try something different?  What was wrong with the Saint Louis FC's blue and green look?  Yeah it's a different team and the color scheme doesn't copy your city flag, but who really cares? 

Frankly, Saint Louis FC also has a better crest too because the STLCSC crest is just... bad.   The name being on the right side of the crest is weird, the SC being on the bottom looks completely disjointed from the St. Louis City part, and the design on the left part of the crest, I'm still not 100% if that is what I think that is.  I think I see the Arch in there, that's nice.  The weird lines I first thought were designed after the city flag, (which has lines that represent the Missouri and Mississippi rivers connecting) but no!  If you look closely, STLCSC's lines are straight, the city flag's line are wavy, like actual rivers.  If you were going to copy the flag's lines, why NOT use the wavy lines?!  That actually is a cool design and it's recognizable enough to where people could figure it out on their own with minimum research.  

I'd have taken out the arch, (or made it gold so that we could actually tell what it's supposed to be), put that stupid SC over to the right where the team name is to at least try to make it look connected, also move that word mark to the left part of the crest where it would make a little more sense, and made the river lines match the city flag, (since the city flag clearly was a big part of this team's design, which they've stated).  Then you get a clear, recognizable, and still locally loyal crest instead of an abstract mess like this is.

For those who like this, I hope I don't offend you.  Of course you're more than welcome to like this.  It's just that I hate this and feel that this is one of the worst looking designs I've seen recently.  If not for Chicago Fire being stupid enough to include a Latin Kings (violent crime gang in Chicago) reference on their logo, this would be my pick for easily being the worst crest in MLS.


EDIT: Since we're talking about the other newer logos, I'll throw my hat in.  I still feel Charlotte FC needs something more on the crown part and there's a couple other issues, but it's overall pretty good.  Austin FC's logo is a bit weird looking, but the color scheme is awesome.  Sacramento I think should absolutely use their current logo, as it's a thing of beauty, (which of course means they'll change it).

Last edited by Stickman (8/13/2020 1:54 pm)

One of my favorite things about this site is that we all can look at an identity and think completely different things.  I just find it fascinating.  I think it is an important lesson for me to remember that something that I make that I think works may not be everyone's cup of tea.  For fun I did a VERY QUICK ranking of the crests of the MLS.  I would love to see what everyone else things. These are not in order but rather in Tiers.