Brooklyn Nets REBRANDING Project

[Jason X]

I was noticing the other day when the New Jersey Nets announced their new Brooklyn Nets team colors and logos, designed by minor team share-holder Jay-Z, that the new Logo is kinda underwhelming...



Now I understand the concept here. Minimalism. I dig the colors, black and white. They should sell many black jerseys. Its simple but its cool.
The logo(s) however. Traditional-looking. Kind of a 'throwback' vibe. The problem I immediately have is that the new Brooklyn "B in Basketball" logo is incredibly similar to the Boston Bruins classic "Spoked B in Circle" crest. The logo is also very plain.

I'm not from Brooklyn, or even New York, or even the Northeastern United States. I am, however, a sports fan and an observer of the aesthetics of athletic clubs, their logos, and uniforms.

Now lets address the team name. The Nets? I know that they have been "The Nets" since their Long Island ABA days, but this is a NEW Era. A New Town deserves a NEW Team with a Fresh, new Identity.

So I got to thinking about some nicknames. I volleyed about several monikers in my brain for an hour or so. I settled on a Name and set about designing a concept for a logo...

I decided to keep the basic colors of black and white because I think its great for them. I also decided to retain concepts from Jay-Z's original designs, like his "B" Logos and shield designs, and his "BROOKLYN" Word-mark.

For the official team nickname I settled on the "Knights". I liked it, The Brooklyn Knights. Sounded alright. A little reminiscent of the KNicks, but it was a coincidence. The name actually started at "Nets... Nets..." and sort of mnemonically mutated in my mind into "Knights". Also, which would you as a man rather be, a net or a Knight?

So, with a new color scheme and a fresh new identity, I give to Brooklyn their new NBA Basketball Team, the
Brooklyn Knights





As you can see, these are kinda rough. They definitely need to be re-worked and touched up by a professional graphic designer (which I am not) but you can see the concepts at work here. Obviously they would want to re-work the Knight, change the way he's drawn, maybe change the lance thing to a sword or something...

I kept Jay-Z's original drawings and concepts in place wherever I could and expanded upon them.

I was so inspired by my impromptu rudimentary design project that I decided to Tweet the ideas to several key New Jersey Nets people including:
Jay-Z (@jayz), Minor Team Owner and Designer of Brooklyn logos.
Mikhail Prokhorov (md_Prokhorov), Russian Billionaire and actual owner of the Nets.
Billy King (@bkdefend), Nets General Manager
as well as the Nets Public Relations Department (@nets_PR) and several Nets beat writers and bloggers.

I'm not sure what I really hope to get out of this. Nothing, I guess. But I had an idea and I just needed to share it with the world. Thanks to the Twitternets maybe the right people will see it and ponder...

I tagged my messages with the hashpound #NBABrooklynKnights
If you like my idea maybe you can bounce it around Twitter and we can get some sort of mini-movement started.

[DanThompson]

Not a bad design at all, I vote the team should be called the Brooklyn Brawlers.

[Gee Hall]

May 3, 2012 16:42:57 GMT -5 DanThompson said:

Not a bad design at all, I vote the team should be called the Brooklyn Brawlers.

Yeah, I too dig the designs... but this team would be awesome if they took the Brawler name. LOVE IT!

[A-Rob]

i like the knights logo..

[Dylan Harris]

Yeah, I think you actually did a sweet job, way better than the Jay-Z logo/Nets name. Honestly not a fan of Black/White as the color scheme though, for either team though. It immediately takes me to some crappy middle-school team that didn't get enough funding for better jerseys or something, I dunno.

Hope your project takes off, man. Not only is your stuff better than the Knights. I agree with your philosophy on new team needs a new name as well. Leave the Nets for New Jersey fans to hold onto and give new Brooklyn fans a fresh start. Same thing that happened for the Sonics.

[stevekasan]

I don't know about the logo, looks very Above the Rim-Inner City ish

Although I really like the Brooklyn Brawlers nickname

[Jason X]

May 4, 2012 10:13:36 GMT -5 stevekasan said:

I don't know about the logo, looks very Above the Rim-Inner City ish

Although I really like the Brooklyn Brawlers nickname

I get what you are saying. I was concerned while designing it about not wanting it to look too much like a crazy 1990's minor-league hockey team logo.

I saw many knights that were way over-the-top:





There was even a 90's logo where the knight looked like Spiderman. I wanted to avoid that kinda stuff, along with big, puffy cartoon fonts.

There were even a few existing logos that I liked quite a lot:





As far as Black & White as team colors go, those colors are always in style and are very cool. Also there is only one other team that uses Black & white (silver, gray) and its the Spurs. Room for one more, I say.