A Look at Some Original Proposed Toronto Raptors Logos

It’s always fascinating to get a peek into the designer’s studio and see what could’ve been.

This week we were treated to a series of proposed designs, ultimately passed on by the Toronto Raptors in the years leading up to their 1995-96 expansion season courtesy an article in SLAM!.

Here’s a look at just some of the proposed logos from that article and subsequent Tweets from Alex Wong, the author of the piece (hey Alex, was my voicemail full? ?):

We see a few familiar looks in here, the raptor attacking the basketball (top left) was eventually used as an alternate logo, in the bottom right we see the dinosaur the team ended up using in their primary combining it with the larger logo on the bottom left.

That bottom right logo in the above graphic would’ve worked just as well as a primary, I think.

The SLAM! article focuses on the entire history surrounding the creation of the team name, logo, and those infamous purple uniforms, I recommend you give it a read, includes such gems as the club originally considering using Huskies as their name (before the NBA reminded them about the Timberwolves), and how they wanted to avoid using a maple leaf anywhere in their logo.

Canada eventually made its way into the design, the raptor was originally slated to be lime green (pic top of this post) before they figured they’d change it to red to represent the country.

For more check out the article over at SLAM!.