Pelicans unveil the team’s new logo
I’m a little frustrated, and I sort of like the new name “Pelicans”. But I’ll get to that later. Who’s Idea or what panel sat down and came up with these logos???
The team’s blog says that the lettering in the logo was inspired by street signs that dot the city’s French Quarter. The team will retain the very NOLA-ish Fleur de Lys symbol both in the main logo (up top) and in an alternate logo that replaces the head and beak of the bird inside the flower. The blue in the logo stands for the state of Louisiana, the gold represents the glittery nature of the city of New Orleans, some say choosing the red makes them more “SCARY”
Pelicans, could be quit formidable this year. These are birds of prey that are to be feared, and not mocked. Better yet, the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana has long made the pelican a symbol of their city and state. It was the name of the city’s heralded minor league baseball team for decades, and the bird’s resiliency in popping back from the endangered species list (pelican population dwindled in the latter half of the 20th century due to poisoning from pesticides such as DDT) and the Gulf Coast oil spill of 2010 makes the bird a perfect symbol for a team that is attempting to overcome quite a bit.
(Courtesy nba.com/hornets)What is less impressive is the actual bird in the logo. It’s pretty peeved, as you can tell; and while we weren’t expecting a cartoonish logo to have fun with (probably in response to what was a less than enthusiastic response to news of the name change from late in 2012, by those who were unaware of the bird’s instincts and relationship to the area), this new logo feels like something the Golden State Warriors would have come out with in 1997.
Nobody in Wild Tchoupitoulas garb had to be dunking a basketball into a pelican gullet in our hopes for the new logo, nothing silly like that, but we were hoping for something that at once represented both New Orleans’ resiliency, and insistence on pulling a tuba out to play at someone’s funeral.
The team was cool when they heard the changes with the name and logo last summer, we hoped the pelican in this Pelican logo would represent as much. Oh well. The name is cool enough, the team is young and fun and best of all staying in New Orleans for the long haul. That’s more than enough good news for now.
And we’ll always have this screenshot of the former New Orleans Hornets’ official website, when their countdown to Pelican launch didn’t start off as expected.