The old:
The new:
The reaction:
The Portland Timbers’ supporters are not happy with that new logo the Timbers organisation has developed for the Major League Soccer expansion Timbers team, to start play in MLS next season. The MLS version of the club has based its entire marketing campaign and, indeed, owes its existence to the current Portland Timbers team’s identity, the lower division side that has been playing since 2001.
“You can’t fake this,” screams the Timbers’ MLS site, a not-so-subtle nod to the Timbers’ fans well-known antipathy to the Seattle Sounders marketing machine a little further north. Many supporters in the Timbers Army supporters’ group seem to view the new logo as a plastic imposition on Portland’s soccer tradition that the MLS team was supposed to be building on.
The 74 page thread that has grown in the couple of days since the announcement on the Timbers Army messageboard is full of vitriol about the logo’s cartoonish look and fighter plane styling. As is de rigueur these days, a Facebook group has been set-up to protest. The Timbers Army are not going to let this go easily.
The current logo has its roots in the crest of the first version of the Portland Timbers, the NASL side that existed from 1975 to 1982. The new one was developed by a marketing company called Rare Design, whose portfolio is remarkably extensive in its number of mediocre American sports team logo designs. Yes, the Timbers’ MLS logo incorporates a number of elements of the club’s traditional crest, but only in a manner that suggests mere lip service is being paid to that beloved identity.
Portland’s supporters, “organised” in the Timbers Army with the simple credo that you are Timbers Army if you want to be Timbers Army, have built their remarkable culture around that identity and the history of the club in Portland. It’s been a messy history, but it’s one that has been tied to that logo off and on since the 1970s, an age in American soccer.
If some of the reaction from the Timbers Army seems overwrought, it should have been obvious how sensitive the waters that the MLS team’s logo designers were wading into: it seems supporters were little involved in the project to update the crest over the past year. Incorporating supporters in such a process is just as important to winning their approval for it as the final design itself; minor flaws look much less glaring when one has been part of creating it as a whole. The MLS expansion project has used the Timbers Army extensively from its bid to become part of the league to its latest marketing materials. Paying scant attention to their input when updating an element a supporter always holds dear about the club’s visual identity seems arrogant at best.
Writing on these pages a little over a year ago following the announcement the Timbers would be entering MLS in 2011, Zach Dundas provided a superb essay on the development of Portland’s uniquely vibrant supporters’ culture in lower league American soccer that explains the strength of their rejection of the new logo:
While the club itself clung to viability under absentee ownership—enjoying, for a time, the dubious distinction of being the only football club in world history owned by a pro baseball league—the Army thrived. The fans shared a character-building history. Those of us who witnessed Chugger Adair, a forward with the monolithic stature (and mobility) of an Easter Island totem, will never forget him. On the field, the Timbers have won—to borrow an apt British-ism—sweet fuck all. In the stands, the club is arguably the most dynamic phenomenon in North American football culture. The evolution and internal nuance of Timbers Army culture could fuel many masters-degree theses. Let it suffice to say that the spectacle of today’s Army, which often numbers more than 1,000 fans packed into a surreal, maniacal, Technicolor-green north end, amazes me. The Army embodies Portland’s eccentricity, creativity and DIY spirit, as well as an urban patriotism worthy of a medieval city-state. Major League Soccer has only a faint notion of the monster it is about to absorb.
And there’s the rub, as Dundas hinted at the end of his piece: “The only question is whether the MLS-certified Timbers can maintain the fizzy underground brio of today’s lo-fi club. That is a question that will largely be answered on the terraces rather than on the field.”
That underground brio is now proving a little too “fizzy” for the Timbers’ ownership, led by Meritt Paulson. The challenge is how he will now respond and handle the Timbers Army’s concerns about the logo before this gets ugly; this was not a very good way to start.
Interesting that Paulson hired a firm from Mississippi to create this. With all of the incredible marketing, design and branding firms based in Portland, he goes with a company that may have limited (if any) knowledge of Portland and the Timbers history. That limited knowledge could not have helped with this.
Wonderful article (about such a sad topic). Thank you for getting this out there.
RCTID
It… it looks like the Colorado Rockies puked up a hatchet!
Actually, to me it looks like a BattleStar Gallatica/Star Wars fighter-wing insignia.
Axes and trees don’t exactly mix with spacships and science fiction, dontchathink?
Why even change it? They wanted to play on the “can’t fake it” thing, just keep the history you’ve built.
Logo looks fine and is better than most of the MLS logos out there. I normally agree with them but the TA needs to give it a rest on this one.
I see nothing wrong with the new logo other than a new logo was not needed. The classic logo works because it’s classic but looks classy as well in modern terms. Why are teams so eager to change logos that work?
Welcome to the MLS, Timbers fans. Your front office is just as determined to do incredibly stupid things as the rest of the league. Turns out, you’re not really as special as you thought you were in that regard!
The real shame of this is (and it pains me to say this) the old logo was pretty damn good. The new one sucks logger balls.
And Paulson’s reaction- “you can shove your minor league logo up your ass!”- is priceless, especially when the new logo was leaked the day before the unveiling and the reaction was pretty negative, meaning, he should have had enough warning to be able to keep his temper.
Instead, he revealed how he truly thinks about the present Timbers, the TA, and the history they have there. Minor league.
Which quite suits him, actually. Minor league mentality owner (thinks a new logo makes him big league); minor league mentality supporters; minor league marketing department (saying “you can’t fake this”, then presenting a faked version of a classic old logo).
Not even in the league yet, and already losing.
I’m not really for any sort of logo changes, mascot changes, nickname changes, things like that are synonomous with team’s histories
Brilliant write-up. that about covers it, except the part where Merritt told us to stick our minor league logo up our ass.
Cheers.
The old one certainly needed to be updated, to be assigned proper Pantone colors, improve the typeface, and clean some of the mistakes/misalignments still apparent in even the updated version. It’s not ready-out-of-the-box by any means.
But the new one goes too far. What’s more, there are plenty of sloppy mistakes and misalignments, even in the new badge.
This version is better, but there’s still the matter of the sloppy mistakes and silly line weight inconsistencies.
I like the new one better. It has better typography and more depth.
I just don’t understand the triangle “chevron” shape.
At least the made the ™ smaller!
This new Timbers look is so very Minor League.
The old crest is class. Well welcome to MLS.
Hope the Timbers rethink this.
This explains it, from the Oregonian:
“The mark went through countless drafts and appeared before multiple focus groups, a painstaking process that spanned more than a year.”
it is seriously disappointing that Portland, a city known for both its independent and design cultures, couldn’t be represented in the MLS by a better, less corporate-looking logo.
I know that there’s some sort of sporting event going on in Africa or something that’s getting a lot of press, but as a diehard timbers fan disgusted with this logo, I wholeheartedly appreciate you taking the time to post a blurb about this. As you and other commenters are getting at, this isn’t about a badge, but rather about the larger picture into the route that professional soccer will take in America. I started going to Timbers games regularly five years ago, and there is an opportunity here for soccer in Portland and American in general to evolve in a different route than our other professional “big four” leagues. There’s little I can say that Andrew Guest hasn’t already eloquently articulated, and I know it’s difficult to avoid sounding like some self-righteous “I-liked-them-before-they-were-cool” soccerphile, but I am tremendously disappointed by this logo and some of the other decisions of the Timbers Front Office. Their blatant rejection of the path that the diehard Timbers Army fans and others hoped/are hoping for is especially grating, considering how much of their advertising campaign explicitly features images of the flag-waving, song-chanting fans that are most against this logo. Many of us are not against change, evolution, or the necessary adjustments in ticket pricing and other things necessary to bring us up from the USL, but rather against directly tampering with the wishes and desires of the people who live and breathe this team and are behind the cultural-zeitgeist that is making MLS in Portland and nationwide so exciting, interesting, and (for Merritt Paulson) profitable.
Ambrown, Amen.
This redesign clearly shows a lack of respect, a lack of precision, and poor research.
For a team called the Timbers, we ought to show some concern for the subject matter. The tree symbolism is totally lost in the design of the new logo. And Ponderosa Green? Ponderosas flourish in drier climates; in Portland, we are surrounded by Douglas-fir and Spruce, mostly. Moss Green instead of gold? Far too close to Seattle’s ‘Rave Green’ color. If you can’t understand that sports teams and their fans WANT to be distinguished from their arch rival, you’re not paying attention.
As for the graphic design, I have only one question: are we supposed to be Autobots or Decepticons? I can’t tell.
It is all too common for a design firm to crank out familiar product without really wanting to stretch their knowledge base and place their work in the proper context – in this case, not the current slough of MLS ‘brands’ but in the storied history of world football clubs and their crests. It is also rare that firms being engaged for a redesign approach their task with a light hand. Too many egos involved, and too much desire to show a discernible trademark of their work.
As a Portlander and loyal Timbers fan I feel a sense of loss. It’s hard to see something as iconic as our crest so severely compromised. I hope the front office reconsiders and sees this as an opportunity to show that they truly listen to their fans and respect what has been created here.
@Ray
The design firm, though based in Mississippi is headed by a former Nike Team Sport designer, who I’m guessing once lived in Portland. Additionally, the firm does athletic graphic design with Adidas, colleges, and NBA teams.
They should have just hired murtaugh. He did the red star logo, for those that don’t know.
Don’t Like The New ‘Logo”?
Remember.
THE CHOICE IS YOURS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzNpJid71Jo
It’s not unique for fan bases with some kind of history to reject uniform changes. Look at the New York Islanders in hockey or the Detroit Pistons in basketball. Both changed logos and regret the ‘teal’ years. Unless there are legal issues involved the color scheme is the same so why bother changing at all? Most uniform changes are tweaks to sell merchandise and I’m sure this is no different.
Just the first of many things the TA is going to have to choke down. Welcome to the MLS. Just wait for the dancers, corporate tifo, official smoothie (oh, wait…) and the upcoming unveiling of the Timbers new Nuclear Bark Brown 3rd kit.