Major League Baseball today announced its 2019 Postseason and World Series schedule and along with that, the logos for each of the postseason rounds we’ll be seeing everywhere this coming October.
The big feature is the rainbow of colour that surrounds several of these logos – the intention being to represent all thirty Major League clubs and via their colours. The gradient goes from blue to green, purple to red, orange to yellow, all placed on a nearly black (but actually very dark blue) diamond with silver letters.
“The logo is surrounded by an outside border, which is fairly simple on its own but not simple in its colouration,” said Anne Occi, Major League Baseball’s Vice President of Design Services in a phone interview with SportsLogos.Net. “We did an analysis on the colour spectrum of all 30 clubs and we actually broke each of them out; that really became overwhelming and we thought it wasn’t as impactful if we just went gracefully from one colour to another and not necessarily push every single one out in alphabetical order.”
The colours behind the diamond can be customized depending on the team competing; though the actual on-field patches and logos will always show the full colouration. Broadcast, marketing, and other implementations could, for example, show a green and gold gradient for the Oakland Athletics or blue and orange for the Houston Astros rather than the full range.
We see an example of alternate colourizations on the ALDS and NLDS logos which use reduced colour gradients to represent the clubs within the respective leagues. Note there’s green on the ALDS logo for Oakland and purple on the NLDS for Colorado. A simpler colourization is used for the ALCS and NLCS rounds which go with red for the AL and blue for the NL, traditionally the primary colours for each of the league’s themselves.
Across the front of each of these logos is a bold sans-serif silver and white font. “The big trend is simplistic letter forms, it’s speaking to something modern and progressive, which is why the typeface here looks a little futuristic, without going overboard”, Occi added.
Presenting sponsors have been announced for all but one of the rounds of the 2019 Postseason — the Wild Card Game (in both leagues) will be presented by Hanook Tire; the NLDS by Utz, the ALDS by Doosan, and the World Series by YouTube TV. As has been the case the last few years, the logos for each of these presenting sponsors will be present on the official logos for these rounds and you’ll see them during broadcasts — but they will not appear on the field or on any retail merchandise.
As always, a look back at how the new logo stacks up over the course of World Series history, dating back to 1974.
Hey look, there’s no double pennant in there… sorry, Red Sox fans.
The 2019 Postseason begins on October 1st with the NL Wild Card Game, first pitch of the World Series will be on October 22 with a Game 7 set for October 30 if necessary.