Four years after their last major rebrand, the Nashville Sounds overhauled their brand once again. The “remastered” Sounds look is a departure from the wackiness that has defined minor league baseball in recent years. While the last few weeks alone have seen the introduction of the Amarillo Sod Poodles and Rocket City Trash Pandas, the Sounds went with a classic look featuring a roundel primary meant to look like a record album and a suite of alternates that play off the heritage of the area.
“It’s a simplified logo, our primary,” said Sounds’ director of marketing Alex Wassel, quoted on MiLB.com. “We like to think it’s a more classic look. It’s pure baseball. The stripes on the logo, those are pulled from the Tennessee state flag. Our colors touch on our Tennessee state pride and flag as well as [being] kind of a modern take on our original colors from 1978, which were red, white and blue.”
One reason that this new look feels different from what minor league baseball fans have grown accustomed to of late is that the marks were produced by a firm—RARE Design, based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi—that does most of its work in another arena (as it were).
“They’ve been known for doing a lot of the NBA [redesigns] with the Atlanta Hawks, Minnesota Timberwolves,” said Adam Nuse, Nashville’s general manager and chief operating officer, quoted on MiLB.com. “When we started looking at all the options out there, our eyes gravitated a lot toward what the NBA is doing. I think the NBA has done a great job with their look and hitting the younger, millennial crowd.”
The Sounds unveiled a series of uniforms featuring the new identity, with tidbits of Tennessee and music heritage mixed and matched throughout—for instance, a red jersey with a treble-clef S is paired with a cap logo that features a home plate encapsulating the three stars from Tennessee’s state flag.
While it might seem soon to update a brand that was well respected, the new look coincides with the beginning of the Sounds’ tenure as an affiliate of the Texas Rangers. The new-look sounds will debut April 4.
