I was admiring the new Portland Women's team brand: Portland Thorns and thought it would be fun to poll everyone on what they think of MLS brands (MLS Extratime radio was talking about this as well).
If you had to rank them, what would be the best/worst?

I'll get you started: Toronto FC is a generic name with a decent logo, but nothing particularly catchy, but I think it's a good brand for some reason. Don't know why.
Best brands: Philly Union (oh that crest is genius! Great colors). Portland Timbers (crest is iconic). Chicago fire (again, that crest has character and is iconic).
Meh brands: Sporting KC (they've made it work, but the crest is a bit generic), Montreal Impact (dumb name, I love the fleur de lis, but think it could be a better crest).
Shoot me in the face bad: Columbus Crew (someone should be shot for this), SJ Earthquakes, New England.

Your turn. Agree? Other nominations?

Clever crest design considering the brand. Don’t love the meaningless white spiked bar around the interior grey circle but it’s not the end of the world.



This is basically a rehash of the Mexican side’s crest and it’s obviously a very traditional design. It’s fine.



I think this one is pretty good for an American soccer crest. It has the requisite soccer ball, but it’s not too obnoxious considering overall the crest has a pretty streamlined design.



Barf. Probably the worst crest in all of soccer.



I think this feels very dated, the type looks like the logo from HBO’s Oz. Overall I think it’s pretty bad but I suppose considering it’s history it’s nice that they haven’t redone the thing.



Keep gradients out of logo designs as they do not resize well. The bull itself is pretty fine, I think it’s novel that they wedged the Dallas burn nod into it. Overall it’s pretty middle of the road, I appreciate that it’s not incredibly superfluous and pseudo euro.



This is logo would be great if it was for the USSF and it was 1992 but neither of those things are the case.



Eh, I think it’s not the worst but I feel like there was a very missed opportunity here. The logo nods to nothing excluding the central star obviously denoting Texas, which is kind of flippant to me.



At least the star isn’t five pointed.



Aformention gradient issues aside I think it’s basically good. I thought they really, really, oversold it with their launch video however. Everything should have meaning in a crest, but holy crap did they make sure you knew it.

This would look great on an aluminum can.



I think those smell squiggles coming off the soccer ball are supposed to be the quake part.



I think this is pretty bad. Overly busy, has the acronym and the name of the team on the same crest.



This is one of the best crests in the league. While the design style (not the contents) is a little “Contemporary American” for me, it does a good job of having meaning without beating you over the head.



Don’t love that they just MLS-ified (i.e. made cartoony) their old crest, but it’s still basically the same, good, functional crest. Good work overall.



This is pretty good, the spikes of it are not my favorite but the thing has solid, simple, obvious meaning. The type could have been handled better perhaps. Seattle gets hard to hard to read as soon as it shrinks but at least they didn’t use a serif text.



Weird and bulgy crest. I don’t get it. Bad treatment on the type for SC. Difficult legibility on the Kansas City from the light grey and white.



I love this crest. I love the gunmetal and red, I like the stylized maple life. I like the type treatment. Clever feathering on the banner to make it seem leaf-y. Good all around.



Favorite in the league. Very nuanced nod to not only the name, but the asthetic of the city being on the water and right against the Canadian Rockies. Very simple, very modern. So good.

"I think those smell squiggles coming off the soccer ball are supposed to be the quake part."

-Smell squiggles. THAT'S IT. I have been trying to figure out why those look stupid.
Also, I guess I haven't looked at the RSL badge much. Wow it's dumb. The goofy "e" in Real...

or the fact that there's absolutely nothing "royal" about the team. Real is an awful tradition picked up from overseas. Most probably know that the name Real, meaning royal, was actually given to team in Spain BY THE KING OF SPAIN! Why the hell try and transfer that to a country with no relation to a monarchy. RSL really was one of those ploys by MLS to pick up a certain kind of fan. I like the team and i actually like the blood red, navy blue and gold, but i agree, the logo's a bit weak

I also feel that the 8 6 points around the grey circle of the Fire's has a significance to the city. I'm not sure what, but i feel like i read that somewhere. I'm probably wrong tho.

And before pfutz mentioned it, i've never really looked at Colorado's. It is a decent design.

Lastly, Whitecaps. I never got it til now. maybe i was blind and dumb, or i just didn't pay attention to it, but it makes way more sense now. Now that i got it, i'm impressed with it.

And speaking of logos..... did anyone catch the four finalists crests of Atlanta Silverbacks' contest???



I really couldn't pick one. I'd call for another set... Honestly their facebook album had a few that i would consider a good design, but none of them were picked as a finalist. Have a look for yourself

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.459948847389681.113905.142163815834854&type=3

I'm pretty sure those are the points of the stars used on Chicago's city flag.

[img]http://introvert.net/images/2005/02/chicago-star-full[/img]

The stars on the Chicago municipal flag have six points, so those six "spikes" are the points of the star. That stuff is somewhere in everything the Fire graphic office put out.

my bad