On Griffins Jersey Concepts

The Grand Rapids Griffins unveiled new jerseys on Thursday and, as I said at the time, there are four things that stick out out to me as feeling a bit sloppy.  As such, I’ve drawn up some tweaks to the design that I think resolve those issues.

I’ll say off the top that, no, I don’t expect anything to come of this. The Griffins had plenty of time to work on these new jerseys and if they agreed with me about these issues, they would have fixed them before announcing anything.  I have a long track record of disagreeing with design choices from the Griffins and Red Wings and I’m okay with that.

My primary concern with the new jerseys is one specific to the black set. I disagree with the gold-outlined red numbers as I think the black-gold-red combination looks muddled.  To resolve that, I’m switching the numbers to white.  This adds some symmetry with the white set, as the white jersey features gold-outlined black numbers and my black jersey features gold-outlined white numbers.

While I was changing the numbers, I also updated the name font.  Generally speaking, I don’t like italicized nameplates.  As such, I’ve switched to lettering that matches the numbers a little bit more.

The only striping change I made was to simplify the shoulder yoke outlines.  It bothers me how the shoulder stripes don’t match the sleeve/waist stripes.  The Griffins are already using Boston Bruins-style sleeve and waist striping so I just went ahead and used the same shoulder striping as Boston uses.  This is the change I’m least sold on as I’m not sure it actually fixes the problem I’m trying to solve.

Finally, I updated the Griffins’ GRG shield logo to include gold instead of silver.  I really, really, don’t understand why they’re waiting a year to make that change when they already know they’re going to do it.  It makes me think this jersey redesign was cobbled together at the last minute.

All that said, that’s what I would do if I were trying not to deviate too far from what the Griffins actually unveiled.  If it were my project, I’d go one step further.

I’m not sold on those jersey numbers so I’d stick with a basic athletic block.  Additionally, by going with a block font for the nameplate, we can bring back the gold outline that the Griffins are using on the nameplates of their black jersey.  Technically we could have done that with my initial concept but I didn’t think it looked right with that nameplate font, while it does here.

But if I’m deviating from the Griffins’ plan, I might as well go all the way…

Let’s bring back the blue and the original team logo (sans wordmark).  I think gold and blue look great together.

Again, this is just me spitballing.  I think the new Grand Rapids sweaters are an upgrade, there are just a few things about them I think could have been cleaner.