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I‘m a fan of the New England Revolution and of good logos.  Unfortunately, the former does not have the latter.  It’s taken me a while to arrive at a finished design that I liked, but I finally got there this week.  I should note that I drew a good deal of inspiration from other proposed crest redesigns I’ve seen online (especially this one).  Here’s the logic behind my design::

I began with a hexagonal shield, the six sides representing the six states of New England united behind a single soccer club.  Next, I reshaped the it such that the top and sides of the crest resemble the shoulders of the blue jackets worn by American soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and I added diagonal white stripes to resemble the white straps that these soldiers often wore across their chests.  Then I added the club name with “REVOLUTION” on a banner raised in front of the crest.  As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I think that one thing that MLS gets wrong is that it often forsakes American sports culture and instead just imitates European sports culture.  One symptom of this is that club nicknames are deemphasized or absent altogether, so here, I put the nickname front and center.  Then, I added six white stars in the top quadrant of the crest, representing the six states of New England and also paying homage to the club’s original stars-and-stripes logo.  Lastly, I added a pine tree in the bottom quadrant of the crest, a common symbol of New England that can be found on the flags of Vermont and Maine, the former flag of Massachusetts, and the flag of New England itself.  The colors of the pine tree, red and white, were drawn from the flag of New England, and the number 96, written in pine tree green, commemorates the year that the New England Revolution was founded.

The only thing about this design I’m currently unsure of is the font.  I think it fits really well stylistically, but I’m worried about how similar it is to the font used on the Houston Dynamo crest (I think it might be the same exact font, actually).  I’d love some feedback on the design, so let me know what you think!

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Another flag redesign, this time for my home state of Massachusetts.  The color scheme and pine tree are from Massachusetts’ old flag that was replaced with the current flag in 1971.  The blue and white represent water and land, respectively.  The white triangle represents the Massachusetts mainland while the two stripes represent the cape and the islands (and yes, I do realize that Cape Cod is connected to the mainland, or at least it would be were it not for the Cape Cod Canal).

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It is my opinion that a lot of the team names in the MLS could be better.  I think that more teams should be going with names that contain nicknames (eg. Los Angeles Galaxy, New England Revolution, Portland Timbers) rather than names that follow European soccer conventions (eg. New York City FC, Atlanta United FC, Minnesota United FC).  To be clear, I have nothing against European soccer culture.  However, I feel that team nicknames are an important part of American sports culture that are being cast aside in MLS, only to be replaced by cheap imitations of European soccer culture.  So, in an attempt to combat the “FC City United” scourge that is sweeping the league, I have come up with a concept for David Beckham’s expected Miami expansion team: the Miami Strikers.

The Fort Lauderdale Strikers, who currently play in the second-tier NASL, have gone through several different incarnations since they first came into existence in 1977.  Six clubs out of the twenty currently in MLS moved to the league from lower-tier leagues such as the NASL, and another NASL-to-MLS move will be happening again in a few years with Minnesota United FC.  Thus, it seemed natural to do the same with the Strikers.  However, a good team nickname should be specific to something in the team’s home to make the team name more meaningful to fans.  With that in mind, I decided to stick with the nickname “Strikers” but reinterpret it to refer to a lightning strike, an allusion to the thunderstorms that are common in southern Florida.

The team crest depicts two inward facing lightning bolts, with “Miami Strikers” across the top.  The bottom half of the crest contains a horizontal stripe pattern, an homage to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers’ classic red and yellow striped jerseys.  Lastly, I included the number 1977, the year of the Fort Lauderdale Strikers’ origin, written in the middle stripe of the crest.  The team colors are dark gray, for the clouds of a thunderstorm, light yellow, for the sand and sun, and sea foam green, for the tropical waters.

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So I recently watched an awesome TED talk by this guy named Roman Mars (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnv5iKB2hl4).  In a nutshell, he talks about city flags and how so many city flags in the US are just downright crappy and says that we should really have better ones.  After watching the video, I realized that my beloved city of Boston doesn’t have a great flag.  Boston’s flag is what Roman calls an SOB: a seal on a bedsheet (i.e. with the flag hoisted high up on a flagpole, there’s no way you could ever read what’s on that seal or tell it apart from another city’s seal).  So I set out to re-design Boston’s flag and came up with this.  Here’s the logic behind the design:

Colors: Yellow (Gold) and Blue (Light and Dark) which are the official city colors of Boston (technically “continental blue and continental buff” according to Boston’s website).

The Diagonal Cross: The light and dark blue are meant to symbolize land and water, respectively.  The bottom left leg of the cross represents the Charles River, the top left leg of the cross represents the Mystic River, and the right side of the cross (which is filled in) represents Boston Harbor/Massachusetts Bay.

The Eight-Pointed Star: The star represents three separate things.  First, it marks the location of Boston on the stylized map depicted by the light and dark blue.  Second, the star shape represents the bright intellect of Boston and its many universities.  Lastly, the eight points on the star are meant to resemble a compass rose, alluding to Boston’s close relationship to the sea and nautical travel.

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Haha, nice.  Sports logos for the major Game of Thrones houses.

These are unbelievably amazing! http://society6.com/Vanadium buy them from this site by this guy :D I certainly will :D Hmmm… toss up between the Starks (because I love the Starks) or Arryns (because the logo is epic)

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It was recently pointed out to me how ridiculous it is that despite all this cinematic success that Marvel's been having, there are still no plans for a female superhero movie.  So I've been trying to think up some cool ideas for female superheroes.  Here's an idea I put together over on Heromachine3:

Name: Andrea Cruz

Hero Alias: Vulcana

Description: A biotech engineer by day, Andrea was accidentally infected with an endosymbiotic bacteria that had been engineered to produce biofuels.  She wears a special flame-resistant suit that can collect and ignite this secreted fuel in controlled flames at various points on her hands, feet, arms, and legs.  When not throwing fire at people, she fights using titanium escrima sticks.  Also, because the superhero world could really use some diversity, she's multiracial (Filipino on her father's side, half Black/half white on her mother's) and a lesbian.

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Another soccer badge.  This team is Golden Gate F.C., based in San Francisco.  And yes, I do realize that it looks very similar to the Fulham F.C. badge.  That was not intentional.

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Another soccer badge.  The name of this team stems from (Haha, stems. Get it? I love wordplay.) Portland's nickname "Rose City".

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I've always enjoyed making up names and logos for imaginary sports teams.  Here's the first of a couple soccer team badges for an imaginary league based in the US.  This team, Boston Athenians F.C., is named as such in reference to the Boston nickname "The Athens of America".  The nickname refers to the many institutes of higher education in the Boston area.

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My First Post

Whoa.  Weird.  I'm typing something that will in a matter of minutes be posted online to be viewed by anyone (though, let's be realistic, likely by close to no one).  Anyhoodle, my name is Evan and I'm kind of new to blogging or really doing much of anything on big public sites like this.  Here's to new beginnings.