Today's Tidbit... Inconsistent Team Logos

I no longer pretend to understand branding in modern sports. It used to be that businesses issued brand guidelines documenting their brand colors, logos, and the proper use of the same, and they expected everyone to follow those rules. Teams and marketers understood that brand recognition came from using the same logo, slogan, or spokesperson appearing time after time after time. Consistently. Always.

Consistency was the key. It allowed people to turn on the television, spot the helmet logos and uniforms, and instantly know which teams were playing. That is no longer the case. Flexibility and adaptability are now thought to provide more value than consistency. While my old-school view takes issue with that idea, it provides the opportunity to point out situations from the past when consistent logo use was also optional, but not for the same reasons as today.

Inconsistent logos were a thing back in the day for two reasons, primarily because many logos were homemade or tailor-made. With logos designed one hundred or more years before PhotoShop, close enough was often good enough. So, here’s a handful of examples of more or less similar-looking serif and non-serif logos that would not meet today’s brand standards, the ones no one pays attention to anyway.

The boys at Oberlin did pretty well for the early 1890s, by the dude on the floor in the middle is logo-challenged.

(1892 Oberlin yearbook)