Pittsburgh Pirates to Have New Logo in 2014

It’s Spring Training! Which means once again Pirates fans are already starting to look ahead to next season, but this time it’ll be because of a new logo.

The Pittsburgh Pirates announced on Monday night that they will be ditching the red bandana wearing pirate design they’ve been using as their primary logo for 16 of those 21 seasons in favour of a new look for the 2014 season. What won’t be changing, thankfully, is the gold “P” logo that’s adorned the Pirates caps nearly every season since 1948 (the colours of the “P” and the cap were reversed for a few seasons in the 1970s, but the logo was the same).

Pittsburgh Pirates alternate logo since 2010

“When people see the gold ‘P,’ they know it stands for Pirates, It’s something you don’t mess with.” – Pirates VP Louis DePaoli foreshadowing that the new logo will probably feature the P in some way.

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, beginning this week the Pirates will bringing in four focus groups – season ticket holders, corporate partners, suite holders, and random groups of everyday fans. These fans will be shown logos of Pirates past, asked their thoughts on what the new logo should include and a sketch artist will draw them up on the spot. An interesting idea.

Pittsburgh Pirates logos of the past from 1936-2013

The Pittsburgh Pirates have been consistent in their primary branding since the 1930s, their logo always prominently featuring the head of a pirate, either crossed baseball bats or bones, their current logo being the only one in the bunch to not include a traditional pirate hat.

Now, I’m not much of a designer, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict what we’ll see the Pirates using in 2014. No this isn’t me leaking a new logo, this is just me going with the trends… my prediction as to what the new Pirates logo will look like in 2014 is:

Let’s be honest, it’ll probably look something like this.

Yeah, I’m sure a real designer could’ve made it look prettier, but you get the idea. A roundel like all the big boy teams are doing these days, an element from earlier Pirates teams updated to include the familiar mark alluded to by the VP earlier in the post.

Expect to see the new logo, whatever they end up going with, unveiled officially sometime in November. As I’m sure you’re aware we’ll be covering this all season long.