After dragging out their new logo reveal through the mud with months of drama, the Atlanta Silverbacks have a new primary logo. The off-season has been busy for the front office, with giving the fans a renaming contest, adding a name to the renaming contest, a fan logo submission contest, Facebook voting, announcing a Facebook winner, waiting, purchasing designer semifinalists, more voting, and waiting…
Finally. After almost 6 months of anguish putting their fans and friends through the absolute wringer all in the name of “fan participation,” the team ended up keeping their name, discarded their winning fan design, and have announced their new logo is the above, another fan submitted design, a monogram in a circle.
At an event at Brewhouse Cafe, one of Atlanta’s favorite soccer bars, the team held a fan forum, and announced the new logo.
The team has a history of strange attempts at using their healthy Facebook following to design and vote for items for the team. Last year, they held a uniform design contest. It was criticized for being judged based on “likes” which would favor individuals with bigger personal networks, as well as those who sumbitted their designs early.
The team learned nothing from the controversy, as they made the exact same mistake with their logo contest. Strangely, their renaming contest wasn’t held solely on Facebook. Perhaps that decision held bigger stakes for the team than to trust it to Facebook.
The official rules to the contest stated the finalist voting would be between A. The original logo. B. The fan design winner. C. Their own design.
Then four finalists were announced. One was the fan-voting-winner design, by Atlantan Michael Jasiczek (@MikeyTKO). Another was also a fan-submitted design, by Wisconsin native Ryan Foose. We spoke with Jasiczek after he won the fan voting. He echoed the concerns about rule “bending” and the FB scoring concept, even though he won. He had been asked by Public Relations Manager Neal Malone to make some tweaks to his logo, but then was told, “The higher-ups think other entrants might find it unfair.” Despite this, it was announced in a later interview with Malone that Foose had been given an opportunity to refine his design. One wonders if those tweaks might have given Jasiczek the chance to craft a winning design.
Those official rules stated the finalist voting would end Jan 2nd. On Jan 10th, the Silverbacks Facebook page announced that “today is your last day to vote!” And now, two weeks later, we have a logo announcement.
All in all, the chosen logo is fine. Its not a dynamic shield that immediately makes the viewer think of their team’s mascot, such as the Minnesota Stars but it is difficult to do so with a monogram. The team did mention that a gorilla will be present in some secondary logos, perhaps the one they showed in the logo finalist, as purchased from Greg Grigoriou.
The side stripes are super cool, and we here at Worldwide Sports Logos Headquarters hope we see those on the jersey and or socks.
Though, I imagine that will be up to the designer who submits a uniform who has the most Facebook friends to vote for it.
