Thursday: The Devil's in the Details

Happy April, ladies and gents!

The Regular Season concludes this weekend and harkens a time of great change for hockey fans across North America where each game means so much more to the fans of playoff teams and those of non-playoff teams play the Dating Game to find a new team to support until mid-June.

With this idea of change in mind, I'm trying something different this week. Gone (for now, at least) is the "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" format that has characterized my time here as a reviewer and in is the paragraph format adopted by a number of the other daily writers here at HJC. My hope is that this will allow me to give better feedback to each designer by flowing between areas of strength and opportunities for improvement as I see them, rather than constraining them to their own sections.

Give 'er a read and let me know your thoughts on the change in the comments section below. Also, if you're one of those orphan fans, let us know who you'll be backing in the Playoffs and why.

REMINDERS:

 COTW March 23-29 vote (ends Friday @ noon ET)

Colour Swatch Competition entries (due Friday @ noon ET)

On to the concepts!

_____________________________________________________________________________

Ben S.- New Jersey Devils

 

Tuesday's writer, Ben, continues his Thirds Series with his take on a new jersey for New Jersey. With the Devils' in the midst of a youth movement looking to propel them back to the playoffs, a BFBS alternate is appropriate. That said, the abundance of white here plays off that well to keep the jersey from being too dark. Also never thought I'd say this, but I think this jersey may be served better with a bare hem. With the chest stripe, arms stripes, yoke, and logo heavy on the white, the hem adds just a touch too much white for my personal preference. Not sold on the white #OB for similar reasons, but I'm not sure there's a better way to do it. Great job on the treatment of the back of the yoke, the Rangers-esque breaking of the yoke stripe around the Adidas logo looks great.

Execution Note: There are still some loose red pixels around the chest logo, so keep an eye out for that in the future. 

Overall Rating: 8.0/10

A solid BFBS option for the Jersey Boys, but a touch too much white for this designer's likgin

Daniel A.- Amur Kharbovsk (KHL)

Daniel makes his design debut with this logo retool for Amur Kharbovsk of the KHL, who currently adopt an orange and blue tiger logo on their uniforms. Seeing as a tiger is orange and black and nature, I think the more natural color pallet is a step in the right direction. My main concern with this concept is it appears that it may already be used by the team in the alternate jersey pictured here. Again, a good look, but one may already exist. My advice to you is take this inspiration and fashion a jersey around it. In my experience, logos are hard. Jerseys, less so. When you design a jersey, you do most of your work with straight lines (striping, yokes, etc.) and there's a wealth of template out there to help you get started. Logos are a lot more free-form with complicated curve structures and little support beyond your own ability. Even as a writer on HJC, I've only designed a handful of logos in my time (and only one of those was hockey related). As with anything, start with the basics and you'll be designing with the best of them in no time.

Overall Rating: 6.0/10

A good starting point. Now let's see where it can take you when you explore it fully

Lucas D.- Dallas Stars

With our final concept of the day, Lucas takes us to my stomping grounds; Dallas, TX. As much as I typically enjoy seeing Stars' concepts on the site, just the thought of the Stars is enough to make me sick giving their atrocious collapse the past month (but I'll do my darnedest to keep that from influencing my review). With the amount of silver in the stars logo, its nice to see it take the forefront here. Each of these concepts looks great in their own right, especially the road look with the white body playing nicely off the lack thereof on the arms. My main concern with this however, is the design connections to one of the Stars' old division rivals the Red Wings. At its heart, this design matched the Red Wings look with some different color blocking (right down to using the same arms on both the home and road). Now this may not be as much of an issue to other designers, but to one with an older brother who's an obnoxiously dedicated Wings' fan its too much to overlook. I'm really intrigued by the numbers here as the outlines seem to connect and would suggest that each set of numbers would be one piece applied to the jersey. What I'm less excited about are the white numbers white numbers on the white sweater (big no-no in my book). Also, one note on the shoulder logos because I'm close(er to the situation than most), while I prefer the state outline take the shoulder spot over the roundel, the player's actually rejected the Texas logo on the shoulder because it's complicated shape obstructed their motion a notable amount when tested as a prototype.

Execution note: The road chest logo has a green outline on the 2D template but a silver outline on the 3D.

   

Overall Rating: 7.75/10

A Stars' look that hits me Deep in the Heart, but one a touch too Red Wings-esque for my tastes

Since I'm trying out a new review style today, I'll take the week off from my COTW Nomination duties and leave that up to you in the comments.

Got Questions? Send 'em our way by stuffing the HJC Mailbag.