Florida Fire Frogs unveil cool look in new jerseys

The Florida Fire Frogs are just over a month from taking the field for their first season, and we know now what they’ll be wearing when they do. The team, formerly the Brevard County Manatees and now the new high-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves in the Florida State League, unveiled home, away, and alternate jerseys at the Osceola County Fair.

The Fire Frogs’ home whites will feature the team’s new logo, an emblazoned frog clutching a baseball in its yellow tongue. The road grays highlight the all-caps word “Florida” across the front, and the pinstriped alternates go a different route, with an embossed serif F on the chest. All told, the jerseys are fairly traditional, especially compared to the team’s not-so-conservative branding.

Like the logos, the Fire Frogs’ uniforms were designed by Brandiose, with significant input from the team’s staff.

“The staff knew exactly what they wanted,” said Brandiose partner Jason Klein. “The entire uniform look was guided by David Freeman on the ownership side. He had a very clear vision for the uniforms. He wanted the primary logo to be reinforced over and over again.”

The Fire Frogs’ color scheme, which takes up the warm half of the color wheel, may seem like an intuitive choice, but is has its roots in an unexpected source.

“We chose the Fire Frogs colors to tie in to the pre-existing ballpark colors,” Klein said of the team’s new home, Osceola Stadium in Kissimmee, Florida (just south of Orlando). “It almost looks as though the ballpark was built for the Fire Frogs.”

That color scheme gave rise to a series of logos representing different species of frogs.

“There’s a whole family of logos—a literal family of frogs,” Klein said. “There was this whole idea of family, fun entertainment, so we have a mom frog, we have kid frogs, the crazy uncle bullfrog, which in short term has gathered quite a following.”

The team’s ballpark also inspired another feature of the Fire Frogs’ identity. Osceola Stadium has been the Spring Training home to the Houston Astros, who are moving down to West Palm Beach.

“They had a lot of these giant circle Astro logos everywhere in the ballpark,” Klein said. “So part of the design challenge was that we knew we were going to have to change all of these circle logos on giant metal backings throughout the ballpark. So that’s one of the reasons that the roundel became the primary, because we knew it would fit over the Astros logo.”