Count the looks! Collect all the styles! The San Diego State University Aztecs announced a slightly tweaked logo and new uniforms across all sports. Unfortunately, rather than take the opportunity to unify their athletics terms, wordmarks, stripes and colors, they went with a myriad collection of assorted appearance.
In football, the Aztecs took a refreshing step by having TWO uniforms, and ONE helmet! Hooray! SDSU deserves an award for restraint and taste based on this decision alone. If they’d only swap pants to avoid the prison jumpsuit look, they’s be great. Or, preferably, red pants to match their helmet, that would be perfect.
The Aztecs football team will have “San Diego STate” across the front chest. A contrasting neck band, the abbreviated shoulder stripes made de rigur by the vanished sleeves of today’s football players, and a matching stripe on the side of the pants.
Here you can see the pant striping. Clean, simple, traditional football.
But you can also see the tennis uniforms. The women, white tops and black skirts, with the opposite color thin, even trim. The SDSU logo at the chest. The men, a white shirt with logo and singular black shoulder stripes that come to a point, red shorts also with the logo.
The Men’s soccer team has a red and a black jersey. Both feature a wide vertical stripe on the left chest, a thick arm band on the right arm. The number is center chest, with the logo inside the stripe. Socks seem to have a diamond pointed stripe.
Surely we’d have a style match between the Men’s and Women’s soccer teams, right? Nope. They both have the pointed sock stripe, but thats where similarities end. The women’s jerseys have a feint horizontal striping which appears to be a pattern of some sort. They have SDSU across the chest, and no vertical stripe.
Women’s volleyball sports an all black, no stripe look, with a center number, and the logo at top left chest.
Looking at the group picture, one notices just how uneven the teams look. Rarely will they all be standing in a line such as this, but their athletics website will surely have photos of the athletes in action. This seems to use as a missed opportunity.
Recently, UConn released their new uniforms across all sports, and they came a lot closer to one unified look across sports. All with UConn at the chest, all in white or navy with thin red accents. Seems a shame SDSU didn’t go this way. Lots of factors at play, including clothing budgets, existing graphics, differing sport uniform considerations. But it doesn’t seem like it would have been too difficult to pick a tertiary color to be standard, or carry one of the striping styles across all sports.
What is different about the logo?
The outline seems to be the most obvious change, and perhaps the default is without now, though they added the outline for its appearance on the helmet. Looks like the handle shortened, the spear has less “notches” and State seems to have disappeared. A massage, not really a “new” logo.
We sat around the 14″ thick mahogany oval table here at SportsLogos Design Command Center and Bourbon Bar, and discussed that we thought of the look. Individually, each team seemed to upgrade.
The football team gratefully abandoned the piping-heavy, modern-font look. They added very tasteful, traditional striping that is consistent from jersey to pants.
Its just a shame this constancy didn’t apply between sports.
What do you think about it? Is this mixed up look OK by you? Are the football uniforms too plain? Should the Aztecs win the 2013 college football best look award simply for having only one helmet?
