If people like the old logo for the sake of liking it then fine. I just draw the line that the old logo was “unique” or “authentic”.
OK Well look at it this way amigo mio. Around Houston and around Texas, for folks that like soccer, our logo was associated with winning MLS Cups.
it's not liking it for the sake of liking it, it looks better. and associates with better times. the new logo is nondescript to the degree of pointlessness. part of the point of a logo, like store signage pre-dating broad literacy, is symbolism that easily tells the story without a word written. we for trendy reasons don't want symbols like soccer balls that actually communicate what we're about. it defeats the point to a logo. to me it's basically like we had our unis monogrammed like a dress shirt. bo-ring. the logo is brutal. hold it down is brutal. the whole thing carrying this now is the color scheme. start over. we're starting over in 20 other ways.
i deleted my other response because a history lesson is appropriate. in 2006 we got SJ's team. our logo was an evolution of theirs, because the team moved, with the coach and players. but it reflected our identity. SJ did not have a team. that actually makes it "unique" and "authentic." SJ rebooted 2008 with a logo similar to their old one. by that point our "unique" logo is symbolic of 2 championships and seen by the fans as unique and authentic. tad unfair to act like them grabbing back to the same fountain -- after us -- makes ours a xerox or inauthentic retrospectively. we didn't know SJ would ever get another team and they'd grab their old logo. that's our history too. also, as of 2014 SJ wandered down the weird MLS colorblocking logo route with a new look. that point it "becomes" unique. and the fans never thought it wasn't. in contrast, while we have sporting "history" with the revs, that's a graphic design xerox not based on some sort of geneaology between the teams. and some fans noticed how we seemed to go to a well of historical soccer logos eg rangers.
i mean, no one would say the titans' look is derivative or inauthentic. that's literally the oilers. they can be columbia blue and have a derrick. what gets weird is if the texans come in and have the same colors or similar logo.
Figured this was the best thread for ownership quotes "We looked at purchases all over the world, & decided on #MLS for several reasons, biggest of which is national media rights. We think @thesoccerdon has set up was key in our decision to buy @HoustonDynamo & @HoustonDash vs. #soccer clubs." Ted Segal #sbjdm #sportsbiz pic.twitter.com/YxVtWmVaJC— Joe Favorito (@joefav) December 1, 2021 "We expect to sign the largest #sportsgambling deal for an #MLS club very soon." Ted Segal @HoustonDynamo. #sportsbiz #sbjdm pic.twitter.com/pGGY9zjKfe— Joe Favorito (@joefav) December 1, 2021 The second one is surprising because I figured that gambling related deals would be a league wide package and not down to individual teams
Good. There were years under Canetti that we lacked income from not having a jersey sponsor. Which if anyone knows our energy, medical and aerospace business scene here in town is just inexcusable!
MD Anderson is a noble choice but in practice it only works out financially positive if fans still show up to watch a loser while we accumulate tax breaks for having a non-profit sponsor. If the revenues go down as fans buy less tickets to watch a worse team, you've just trimmed taxes which is evened out by lost revenues. The team has no actual money to spend because the tax situation doesn't help us get profitable. I assume it's a shirt sponsor which is basically spiritually from the heights to the gutter. I would note that if the idea is use sponsor money for added resources we're still playing the "self sufficiency" game with OPM. Is Segal going to throw in more, or are we just going to monetize this all more then spend that?
re the logo, a graphic designer friend was explaining logo creation to me. our logo fails a couple basic tests of logo design. 1. take the logo. shrink it in size. or look at in a format that does it for you. if i pull up the website on a laptop it does it. effectively, turn the logo into a thumbnail. the balance is off. when shrunk, the initials hold up but the name text becomes a blur and the lightning bolt disappears. ironically, disappearing is probably better. it won't mess up reproduction or communication. a part of the logo that blurs when turned into a thumbnail, not so much. you want a logo that scales both up and down. or a version of it that steps in. our logo when viewed from any distance turns into an eye test for the bottom half. what is the point to a tiny line of text that can't be read unless you are looking at the shirt in your hands? solution: trim down to the HD part. that's the real logo anyway, repeating the initials as a name is redundant. why have a "name logo" repeated twice? does HD not say enough? need it spelled out some more? that what prompts the blur? maybe dumb logo then. 2. look at the logo. trim it down to HD if you want. what is it selling. on ours, maybe you catch the hexagon ball patch, maybe not. the initials themselves are what they call a "logotype" and not a very communicative one at that. the HD doesn't convey a thing about it. you wouldn't know if it was soccer or rugby or a spark plug distributor. my impression of good logos, based on his explanation, is they are either icons that speak for themselves, or the logotype references implicitly the business in some way. far as i am concerned we have gone from kitschy and perhaps overdone, but beloved, to minimalist to the point of nothingness. it's a monogram on an oxford shirt. that kind of boring. as with such monograms, they don't communicate much to the viewer, who has to ask, but rather property rights. "mine." my initials. as i said before, a flex that they own the team now...... please revert the stupid logo or find some happy medium simplifying the old one.
I actually agree a lot with #1. The solo HD is good to the point where I bought a hat featuring it. It looks so much better on clothing than the full version and the last logo. I don’t think they’re ever going to change it back. There’s no real groundswell to get it changed. It’s not popular among some people but there’s been no revolt like in Chicago, Columbus or Montreal.
We're stuck with it, get over it. We probably don't even have enough fans to even begin to make enough noise to have them change it.
While I feel you are correct, I did reach out and sent a nice note to our new GM right before the holidays welcoming him back to Houston. In addition to that welcoming back I as well asked him to please return our club to the past traditions of a club with tremendous connection to the soccer loving community and a return to the crest that he himself wore when the club won MLS championships.
yes, i am at a loss why if you were trying to return to a particular era of the team that wouldn't also include the look. rockets, astros, everyone else has done it after they hexed themselves with cartoon unis after a period of success. re "get over it," (not your comment but for economy's sake address it here) far as i am concerned it's the owner's monogram on our shirts, and it's lame. the reason we don't have many fans is they have departed from the roster level, coaching, and every other tradition around. including the logo. it's like we're trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible. no one wanted the logo changed. to be fair, i went down the league list, and a decent chunk of MLS has lame logos or at least ones a graphic designer would question. "won't go on a business card," etc. but the old one, while slightly goofy, was pretty close to universally liked. i reiterate, there was no reason to do it other than to stamp their power on the team. if they're so intent on flexing i have a list of things for y'all to unf*ck.
I actually appreciate the effort and thought that went into you doing that. It goes a lot further than random people showing up in social media comments with 3-4 word commands. That being said Pat’s responsibilities aren’t in branding so I don’t think it will have much affect. But you still went well above and beyond 99% of people that complain about it so I commend you.
When the team starts winning again no one is going to put significant care into what the logo is. Some people won’t like it but if the team hosts a conference final having a different logo won’t cause it to not sell out. Also as far as I can tell the people that want to change back don’t actually want to put in the effort to do anything about it. Which is surprising because we’ve seen it work multiple times in MLS and if it is as hated as the people online say it is shouldn’t it be easy to galvanize that effort?
Who are you talking about? It matters because context matters. For example, if you're comparing us to the Crew that was happening almost right on top of a "save the team" movement. The fans were up in arms and well organized already and the league was trying in multiple ways to placate the long term MLS fans Precourt was messing over. They also had few other pro sports options. Here, have a new team. Ooops, sorry about the logo, let us fix that. That and Columbus was at the time a better team with occasional cup runs where the fans had not been beaten into submission by suckage. The poster who said words to that effect was closer to true than this counterfactual "but the fans are going to be excited about the team's playoff run without your logo quibble" argument. It's an endurance test. "What else do you want to f*ck up now?" Look, fair enough, the logo is just a logo, we could recover fine without it. But surely you can see my point that a team that made a bunch of poor choices over the past half decade, and now has hired Onstad and wants to harken backwards, could further close the loop by bringing back the logo? It's a superficial thing but it's like another obvious thing off a list where one could show, we are going back to the 2006-7 team. FO, HC, roster effort, how they play, and down that list, in a way tangible to a fan beyond wins and losses, bring back the logo. It's not entirely pointless, it might stoke some enthusiasm and sell some more merch. That and it would send a sincere "oops" signal around the league like we're getting our crap back together. Fine, the field stuff is more important, but this is an easy fix that aligns with the rest. Houston Astros, QED. The heavy lifting was the payroll and minor league work but they also offered the fans an olive branch of bringing back 1980s type feel. A set of actions saying, sorry, this went off the rails, we are listening, and we are spending. You do this your way, second tier name players, incremental payroll, lot of roster continuity, no name coach, green GM, keep the new logo, you will meet the same fan skepticism until they actually see the results change. The logo itself is symbolic and somewhat superficial but short of signing Insigne you might want to be sending some signals to get back on the train. I don't expect us to do a thing because we're very much into corporate, top-down, this is my asset, I know what's good for you. This is not a connection with the fans. It's market research. The fans get that and will therefore wait until they see the team they want, and more specifically, the results shifting. Go back and look how the fans responded to 2017. They had burned goodwill by that point and the fans actually modestly responded. The attendance was not immediately fixed. If you want fan response you need to more emphatically do things that excite the fans. Here is the old logo. Here is a name brand coach. Here are some players "like we mean it."
Thank you amigo. Correct. no one was demanding a re-brand, but we sure as heck got handed one. That is what was odd. But putting the crest aside for the American sports scene where rebranding is done in every league, what I was confused on is with the rebranded crest in a town that is so significant in our diversity and connection to the Americas as they look at Houston, with pro soccer being such a global sport as we all follow it, then the fans of other clubs in our hemisphere and their club's FO's surely viewed our old crest as one that was Houston MLS! An MLS team that is not the normal home stadium MLS atmosphere combined with a team that takes regional competition seriously, dem Dynamo men battle Pachuca and America and Santos with valor. The rebranded crest has no connection with this. That is what we got handed which just screams no insight to the international side of soccer. the rebrand was very insular in mindset.
The most effective action taken in the offseason appears to be firing Tab Ramos. 9/11 of the players who beat Miami away -- a rare road win -- were already at Tab's disposal last season. This includes Quintero who he benched last season from day 1 and is the fan favorite of the moment (whether he ball hogs at Seb's expense or not). 1 of the 2 new acquisitions, Seb, has been largely ineffective. The only new impact starter is Clark. Thor was the only new sub last weekend. What has changed is we play team defense and a retasked Quintero has given the team a "Poor Man's 10." Not a very good one, but enough where everything doesn't have to go wide and be crossed back in. People took a comment I made last year as cynical or something. I said I thought we sucked but not so bad we should finish where we did. That we should have been closer to the line on talent. Well, you fire the coach and actually play some defense, and..,....QED. I do believe we need more talent, but that's to get above the red line and keep moving up. But this properly coached should have been more like a 10th place team than a last place one. Bad enough the talent and payroll should be ripped on, but not so bad as to be a HC excuse. I'm sure you want to discuss how awesome Onstad is and how much money Segal spent, and "has that changed your mind," but look at the offseason and how much impact it really has had so far: Clark, to be fair, upgrade and stabilizing force Thor, occasional lively sub Zeca, occasional subs Seb, struggling starter Raines, HD2 Valdez, HD2 Thiago, not playing games yet HH, not here yet Gitau, not even signed yet There have also been some debatable options and extensions (and perhaps purchase options) among veterans. This is more of an HC shift and maybe morale boost and less GM and owner effort. The HC is simply making more competitive most of the same people Tab couldn't win with. In large part because we play actual defense now. That does not hurt. The offense we set out to fix continues to struggle outside of bottom-table clashes. 3 goals on Miami only barely got us above a goal a game average. The money being thrown around is superficially appealing but thus far largely ineffective. The most effective adds are a MLS free agent followed by a GA draft pick. Not the U22s or the splashy free agent or the old fart too hurt to play for Atleti. One could debate how well Onstad has really done and whether a lot of the money has been wasted.
And I find the fact that the pivot point thus far is firing the coach amusing as a certain blogger took a stand the coach should stay.
onstad's most effective work might be how HD2 has been stocked. hoffmann, castilla, raines, maples, ndoye, etc. and the U17s like gitau. but how much of that is really the academy's credit. this and conservatism are the senior coach's two obvious weak spots (i am sure he has more but this much is already evident). the team is organized and tougher to break down. but it often lacks offense and has placed exaggerated emphasis on mediocre veterans to try and offer it. when the varsity is mediocre but the JV excellent that tends to suggest the varsity coach has been over cautious or too seniority driven in his selection decisions. such decisions are too often framed as "he won't start" when all he should have to do is be better than the subs seeing time. a JV star shouldn't have to beat out a varsity all district starter just to make the varsity. their competition should be that last-dressed senior who spent 3 undistinguished years on JV and you would barely trust to play 10' off the varsity bench. junqua saw time last week, as have ceren, steres, bartlow, and others. i am pretty sure we can do better than that.
I don’t care about current roster construction in this thread. @TX Bill had several very thought out posts where he believed that the team was not long for a future in Houston. I wasn’t making this as a “gotcha” post but wanted to see where someone who thought long and hard about the issue now stands. Yes, even with HH the roster is still a work in progress. But Bill’s posts touched on things that were more than just the roster. When he does reply I’m not expecting him to say everything is sunshine and roses, I just want to see what he thinks.
No one asked my view, so I'll give it anyway The new owner fits the profile of a guy who would say all the right things and put his money hard into making it a go in Houston but in the end would move the team in a heartbeat for better ROI if his partners (owners of other teams) would let him. The league will loath to give up on the Houston market. It will get easier to do so as more cities want a team and the league is hitting practical limits. It will take sustained winning to rebuild the brand. The front office behaviour has done tons of damage. It is very hard to sustain winning in this league without off-years. SSFC, SKC seem to be the models.