Ontario Tower Buzzers bring bee-based brand to baseball

The first full rebrand in Minor League Baseball’s offseason celebrates both a famous quote from a 1986 movie and a 100-year-old airport 40 miles east of Los Angeles, California. The Ontario Tower Buzzers, Single-A affiliate of the nearby Los Angeles Dodgers in the California League, unveiled a brand that features a bee—who clearly feels the need for speed—buzzing the iconic tower at Ontario International Airport.

The nickname derives from a quote in the orginal Top Gun movie, in which Tom Cruise’s character Maverick, just before engaging in an unauthorized tower fly-by in his F-14 Tomcat aircraft, says to his wingman Goose, “Sorry, Goose, but it’s time to buzz the tower.”

The identity, created by Dan Simon of the Louisville-based firm Studio Simon, is centered around two versions of a bee—one graphic representation in the primary logo and wordmarks, and a character wearing old-timey pilot gear in secondary marks. The bee character is shown catching a baseball rather than swinging a bat, in part to distinguish it from other bee-based baseball logos, like the Salt Lake Bees, Burlington Bees (which Dan Simon also created), and the erstwhile New Britain Bees.

But the catching pose also presented an opportunity to bring some childlike playfulness to the identity:

“I chose to have both of his arms straight out so it looks like he’s a little kid running with his arms out to look like he’s flying,” Simon said. “It’s a baseball pose, but I also wanted it to look like he was flying like an airplane.”

The bee pilot character is wearing gear that is decidedly of another era—perhaps a wink and a nod to the fact that Ontario International Airport, the naming rights partner of the team’s new home, ONT Field, has been around since 1923. But there’s also a simple design reason.

“Frankly, from a design standpoint, old-school pilot headgear is a lot more pleasing than a modern pilot helmet,” Simon said.

While the bee character was the first element of the new brand created by Studio Simon, the primary logo and a pair of wordmarks incorporate a more graphic version of the bee instead. The goal was to create a brand that conveyed the serious professionalism of the team’s fancy new ballpark.

“I wanted something that stood on its own as a logo without the character having to carry it,” Simon said.

A cap logo sets the letters ONT—Ontario’s airport code—in an interlocking stair-step that evokes their parent club’s iconic LA.

“The goal was to have this brand identity, when you saw it, you knew this team was a Dodgers affiliate,” Simon said. “With the proximity to Los Angeles, you’re in Dodger Nation territory. It certainly made sense to stair-step it like that so that it was reminiscent of the Dodgers logo.”

Finally, a tertiary mark combines familiar pilot’s wings with a behive, two shapes that seem like they were made to work together, and came together seemlessly, per Dan Simon.

The Tower Buzzers exist thanks to a minor league merry-go-round that will see the Modesto Nuts (Mariners, Single-A) move to San Bernardino to assume the mantle of the Inland Empire 66ers, the Inland Empire 66ers (Angels, Single-A) move east to become the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, and the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (Dodgers, Single-A) move into brand-new ONT Field in Ontario. The shuffle leaves Modesto without a team, San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga with old teams that have new parent clubs, and Ontario with a new team and a new brand.

The Tower Buzzers will debut in April 2026.