Petition started. Hopefully one of many. https://www.change.org/p/joe-mansue...dium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard
Dropping by to encourage y'all to fight hard as hell to dump that piece of crap. Get in front of media, send emails to team, post signs around city, keep crushing social media. Get organized, get consensus, get buys before it's too late. It's your team it should represent you, the city and the team history. This does none of that. Fight the badge, fight the colors. It can be reversed, but you have to fight it!
Change the letters to sky blue. Replace the yellow around the red star with one white stripe down the middle with sky blue on each side of the white stripe (to represent the Chicago flag). You have your new badge. I have zero design experience. This isn't that hard. I still think the BEA guy whose work has been linked here has a far better design idea (and the uniforms he designed are great as well), but if the Fire front office is bent on this type of badge, it can be fixed without a major effort. My favorite team is SKC, and overall I think their rebranding was well done (granted, the room for improvement was much greater coming from the old Wiz/Wizards branding). The crest and the interlocking logo is something I like. I don't really like the club's seeming move to more black instead of the light blue/navy color scheme, but what they have is better than what the Fire is trying to implement here.
We can only hope! Chicago is a city plagued by gang violence. It's estimated that 80% of all murders in Chicago are gang-related. Gold/yellow is a color linked to the city's largest gang, the Latin Kings. Further, a crown is first amongst the gang's "sacred markings". What's to prevent items bearing Chicago Fire SC's branding - which features a gold/yellow crown as its central device - from being co-opted by members of said gang? Worse yet, what if someone who was innocently wearing Chicago Fire SC apparel was mistakenly taken to be wearing a Latin Kings gold/yellow crown and, as a result, targeted for violence? it doesn't matter what the likelihood is that the scenarios I've just posited actually take place. Simply put, it's bad enough that they could take place. It doesn't matter if, while developing a new team logo package, the powers-that-be within Chicago Fire SC ownership and management were unaware of the symbolic significance of a gold/yellow crown to the Latin Kings street gang. Now that said significance has been brought to their attention, there's no excuse for ignoring the fact. Ditto for whatever blissful ignorance the branding professionals at Doubleday & Cartwright labored under while designing the new Chicago Fire marks. Double ditto for the suits at MLS headquarters. Suffice to say, they've all been made aware of the situation in the here and now. So, it's time to do something about it. Quite frankly, at this point, I don't see how the league doesn't step in and direct Chicago Fire FC to - at the very least - remove the "fire crown" device from the team's identity package. Purely out of self-interest, you'd think that the league would want to cover its keister and avoid the public relations nightmare that would result from someone getting gunned down in cold blood because they were wearing licensed team apparel that could be mistaken for gang colors. Ignorance resulted in an important symbol for Chicago's largest street gang being incorporated as the central device in Chicago Fire FC's new branding. Arrogance would be for the powers-that-be to allow the implementation of said team branding to go forward now that the situation is open knowledge. Acknowledge the mistake. Fix the mistake. Move forward. It's the mature and intelligent thing to do. Digging in as part of an effort to save face and/or salve the organization's collective bruised ego will only make matters worse. Worse still, would be insisting on sticking with the rebrand because of the financial hit the team would take if it were to abandon said makeover and suddenly have worthless uniforms and souvenir merchandise on its hands. Yes, there would undoubtedly be a fiscal penalty to be paid for acknowledging and fixing the mistake that has been made. That said, what would the cost to the reputation of Chicago Fire FC and Major League Soccer be if - whether out of concern over losing the money they've already invested in uniforms/merchandise/signage bearing the new logos, or simply out of embarrassment - the club went forward with this mark and, God forbid, an innocent kid wearing new team merchandise was gunned down by a rival gang-member looking to dis the Latin Kings? Imagine the nightmare of that scenario. There's a tremendous amount of goodwill to be garnered by club ownership and management if they're willing to recognize this particular rebrand for the clusters**k that it is and pivot away from it... particularly the problems surrounding the gold/yellow crown element.
While I have great appreciation for the aesthetics of both the traditional Fire iconography and the Chicago Flag, I do think it's fair to say that those aren't the only permissible inspirations to draw from in a badge for the Chicago MLS team. They like their "rising from the flames" schtick, they like the color scheme they've cooked up, and I don't think they've too far missed the mark in either case in a vacuum. The first six-pointed star on the Chicago flag literally symbolizes the Great Chicago Fire. It's a recognized emblem of the city, and it is not the primary symbol of one of the city's most notorious and deadly street gangs that preys on a community the team was hoping to attract by making this move in the first place. Fix that much, it's the bare minimum. It still serves all of the branding schtick that they've released so far, it would not be admitting defeat.
It's a petition website and probably uses engine coding or big Republican advertising dollars to drive the site.
The ONLY problem with your theory is that this club has been driven entirely by IGNORANCE & ARROGANCE for the last 10+ years. We were hoping that era had ended but since this brainchild idea was formed 18 months ago clearly we haven't turned a corner yet.
Latin Kings are symbolized by a five pointed crown, not a three pointed crown, and they're part of the people nation, which is represented by a five pointed star- the rival, folk nation, uses a six pointed star, and gangs in the people nation generally stray from iconography that incorporates six pointed anythings (which the reflective 3 pointed crown is). Like, this shit about it being mistaken for gang stuff is a stretch of a stretch- latin kings colors are black and gold. I get people wanted to make this into a thing, and sure, it could (and my recollection of gang iconography from more than a decade ago may be a off a bit), but it very likely won't and to see people draw up these hypothetical situations where somebody gets hurt just because they want a less shitty logo/brand (I do too!) is kind of sad. There's plenty else wrong with it, and this angle isn't the right one to push. We can do better.
I would like some public assurances that this has been thought through by the club. I don't know about this stuff in detail, but I know enough to know it's not something to be taken lightly.
I mean, if anyone involved with this grew up in the city/went to Chicago Public Schools it’s probably ingrained enough that it doesn’t require thought, I dunno. There’s a big diff between not marketing directly to gangs (this isn’t) and not letting perceptions of a gang dictate what your marketing looks like (changing this for that reason would)- I think as long as a business isn’t blatantly doing the former, most businesses would fight against the idea that they have to do the latter. If you’re just talking basic due diligence though, sure - I think I saw a comment that the team said they didn’t see any reason the gang concerns were valid but I’m not quite sure where.
I've lived in Chicago proper 1991-2010 (and now near west burbs, have always worked downtown, take L daily) and wearing a gold crown with a dark background is 100% something I wouldn't do. No way. I have been told so by actual Latin Kings. Plus, these little gangbangers are not the most detail-oriented individuals, I wouldn't trust them to distinguish the finer details of .... well....anything really .... Maybe 'cause I'm actually Hispanic and I'm ofter south of Cermak unlike all the Lincoln Park transplant yuppies who have lived here 10 years but don't know there is a Chicago south of Cermak ....
Yes and no. It is a 5 point crown but it is often depicted with three main peaks with two smaller within, as so: That in turn will occasionally get abstracted to a three point crown:
Hey, I'm south of Cermak literally as I type! Now, south of Cermak and west of Halsted on the other hand...
I am volunteering to take a 1 mile stroll through turf hostile to the Latin Kings with the new logo. I pick the day, you pick the route and time between noon and 8 PM. Will live tweet the experience. #cf97— Don Walsh (@Don4Fire) November 22, 2019 Unless there is another suggestion, we have a location. Ordering the shirt today. https://t.co/kBf5ifNuQz— Don Walsh (@Don4Fire) November 22, 2019 Having a normal one, I see...
I have started to get used to the NSC logo over time. It's not quite as bad with just the crazy N without the octagon and words. I'm not sure I could get used to this Fire abomination though. I would be furious. Just keep your old gear and rep the original look.
I’ve never heard anyone (king or rival) say that, especially with regards to crown that doesn’t have 5 points on it, especially especially combined with the colors red and anything blue (particularly since blue is/was disciples colors- and maybe things have changed but I don’t recall them and kings ever getting along/wearing each other’s colors), so that’s surprising to me. Granted, I recall south side kings taking pride in being ‘tougher’ and there even being a bit of a rivalry between north/south side factions, so I absolutely believe you (internet stranger), and that what you’re saying is true. As far as attention to detail, again, maybe it’s different now. I remember when the Houston Astros changed their logo in 94, a kid got beat up at my old high school (Steinmetz) for wearing their hat, because it supposedly disrespected people nation by having a 5 pointed star with a break in it. It’s a level of attention to detail that had me questioning every detail of every item of clothing I wore for anything with 5s and 6s on it. Win the conflicting colors and iconography on this logo, I wouldn’t have thought twice about wearing something like this then, personally.
At least the "sound N" or whatever they're calling it can kind of stand on its own and the badge shape can morph over time. The Argyle Flame thing in Chicago not so much.
An abstraction is quite different than an official symbol, though. The Latin King’s crown has 5 points on it. You can abstract to it to any number of points, I’d imagine. Yeesh, I’d ask what’s wrong with that dude, but some questions I don’t want to know the answer to.
The whole twitter thread is hilarious. How does Western from North to Chicago sound?— Don Walsh (@Don4Fire) November 22, 2019 The biggest threat to gang members in that neighborhood is gentrification.