Can You Tell the Difference?
While I was reworking some FanGraphs logos I noticed a striking similarity between 8 of the team’s colors choices. These are taken straight out of the team’s logos I found at sportslogo.net. You would think that there would be a little more variation in the colors used, with three of the teams even using the exact same red. You can hover over the images to see which team is which:
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David Appelman is the creator of FanGraphs.
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I’ve noticed that before, especially when the Twins and Indians play. Glad to see there are still the A’s in their green and Orioles in orange to mix things up!
Aren’t the Red Sox official colors also in a very close spectrum?
Yeah, I definitely could have put the Red Sox in there, but their newest primary logo of just the pair of socks doesn’t have any blue in it.
This makes me like the M’s uniforms even better . . .
USA! USA! USA!
Yeah, it does get a little repetitive. But then again every time a team strays from the “standard” colors (think the DRays’ and DBacks Teal and Purple) they eventually go back to more standard colors as fans simply don’t like them.
I do love the A’s Gold and Green as it really makes them unique but is also a color that most people find appealing. I’m surprised there aren’t more teams with that color scheme.
But some teams’ traditional colours were more interesting. I’d love to see the Phillies in maroon again.
Some of this might be MLB interfering with the teams, though. I recall a few years ago the Blue Jays changed their uniforms and ended up with a really ugly dark grey hat. The reason for this was that they’d wanted their entire road uniforms to be that dark grey, but after the hats were made MLB told them they had to use the same pale grey that everyone else (except the Padres) uses.
I don’t think MLB would allow the power blue Royals unis or the non-standard shaped Pirates caps anymore.
Although it may not be in as their “official colors” (probably red and white), the Cardinals use the same color scheme in their road uniforms as well.
It made me feel like I didn’t waste my childhood when I looked at the color stripes, said “that one is the Cubs,” and then was right on the first try.
Wait, did I say “didn’t”?
Anyone else a little freaked out by this?
The Angels dont actually have any blue in their uniforms. While they logo has a trace of blue, the actual uniforms are Red and White and Grey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ALW-Uniform-LAA.PNG
Great post. This is totally ridiculous.
I’ve been so caught up with hating the Blue Jays/Padres/Brewers for switching to drab blue/grey stupidity that I somehow missed the fact that fully one third of the league WEARS THE SAME COLORS. Why isn’t there a green team? Green is a great color!
Thanks for this.
The A’s use green pretty predominately.
There’s really very little creativity in color choices. The O’s and Giants are the only teams to use orange, but they both use it with black. The Pirates are the only team to use yellow, which they do sparingly.
I like how the A’s uniforms stand out, but there’s few problems with it. From a uniform stand point, the mandatory white shoes always bothered me. Secondly, it’s a little tougher to sell jerseys/tee’s to non-A’s fans as most people like to wear conservative colors.
On a side note, I’d like to see the Cubs break free and don orange/purple to coinicide with the Bears – screw tradition! It’s not like ditching the red/white/blue wuill be bad luck or anything. ;)
Don’t forget the Mets orange. Their BP uniforms a few years back were orange and blue.
I can’t see which team is which. I’m using firefox.
The Mets don’t use Orange anymore? I’m partial to the Rox black and purple. More teams should use purple. How about Yellow? Does anyone but the Pirates use yellow?
Are you serious? The purple is awful! That’s why the D-Backs dropped the color and went to red and black.
I think the red and blue is definately having to do with baseball being America’s Pastime (I guess you can argue that now…).
MLB leadership = reactionary, conservative a-holes, always a step behind. meanwhile, the NBA, light years ahead in everything from women refs to global marketing, continues to suffer and image problem. hmmm, wonder why?
Vast right wing conspiracy.
No offense, but most of those color examples aren’t very accurate. For example, the Nationals and Phillies actually use the exact same Red.
I spend an inordinate amount of time researching team colors…you can see the EXACT color schemes of all pro teams here:
http://www.ssur.org/research/TeamColors/team_colors.htm
ColorWerx: Thanks for the link on the official colors. The colors I took were eyedropped directly out of the logos, so I’m pretty sure they’re very very close to whatever the colors are in the logos minus any color difference in image compression.
If you’re eydropping colors from those logos, I can guarantee you that they’re not very accurate at all.
About 99.9% of raster images that are produced in Illustrator or even Photoshop are going to have incorrect RGB values (derived from Pantone spot colors)…it’s a long story, but most graphics programs convert these RGB values based on different (but flawed) algorithms.
The whole idea of adjusting RGB (to the sRGB color space) is something that I have been promoting on Chris Creamer’s message board…I have a number of threads where I am “color-adjusting” official vector graphics to more closely match the intended colors.
That’s why the White Sox are better. Black and white. =D
Is that an Obama joke?