Tim Batzinger is a Uni Watch reader who is also a uniform designer, and he too has redesigned (and rebranded) uniforms for all the NFL teams. Unlike the two recent concepters who made slight tweaks and minor fixes to the current NFL uniforms, Tim has gone in a different direction. These concepts are decidedly more radical than more recent tweaks shown on Uni Watch. Today is the final set of Tim’s series.
Here are the previous concepts from Tim’s NFL Redesign/Rebrand:
Enjoy!
NFL Redesigns/Rebranding Project: AFC East
by Timothy Batzinger
The goal for this project is to reimagine each team with all-new (or updated) branding and uniforms. To keep it simple, I’ve created a new primary logo, secondary logos (in some cases perma-memorials), a word mark, and 3 uniform sets – Home, Road, Alternate.
I’ve tried to stay true to each franchise’s history, whether they’re more “traditional” (think Packers) or more “risky” (think Seahawks). For some teams, there are alternate pant and sock combos, but for the sake of keeping this uniform (pun intended) I’ve kept it to what I feel is the best representation of each team’s brand.
Buffalo Bills
Branding: The primary logo is inspired by their original logo from 1960, and combines it with the one they’ve had since 1974, with the charging bison within a football shape. The secondary logos include the charging bison on its own, and a B design inspired by the sign from Shea’s Performing Arts Center.
Uniforms: The primary uniforms are inspired by their uniforms from the 1960s, with the Northwestern-esqe striping and white helmets. The alternates are a throwback to their first Super Bowl appearance in the 1990 season.
Miami Dolphins
Branding: The primary logo features a wave motif that doubles as swimming dolphins in the waters of sunny south Florida within a shield. The secondary logos include the same dolphin/wave design simplified within an M shape.
Uniforms: The uniforms introduce a new striping pattern that harkens back to their classic uniforms, with a modern font bringing merging the old and the new. The alternates are a fauxback to their undefeated 1972 season.
New England Patriots
Branding: The primary logo is an updated Pat Patriot design, giving the legendary logo a cleaner, more modern look, and a clasp on the chest featuring a pine tree- inspired by the flag of New England. The secondary logos include the pine tree clasp from the primary logo, recolored to match the New England flag, as well as an NE American flag-based design.
Uniforms: The home uniform features red and white stripes on the sleeves — inspired by the American flag, and red/white/blue striping on the other uni elements, which is continued on the road uniform. The alternate is inspired by the uniforms worn from 1984-92, with the pine tree badge on the right chest — a reference to the New England flag.
New York Jets
Branding: The primary logo is a stylized NY with lines evoking the speed of a jet. The secondary logos feature an airplane within a football shape, and a pilot’s wings design.
Uniforms: The uniforms feature jet “wings” on the sleeves inspired by the primary logo. The stripe pattern is continued on the pants and helmet. The alternate is a fauxback design inspired by the uniforms they wore from 1963-77 and the unis those inspired, worn from 1998-2018.
Thanks, Tim. And thank you for sharing the entire series with us!
Readers? What say you?
Like the Buffalo Bills tweak/improvements – rest of AFC East I could pass on . . . though the Patriots one could grow on me over time . . .
The primary logo is a stylized NY with lines evoking the speed of a jet.
It looks like an “NU” with an underscore. Very illegible. And even if you accept it as a “Y” with the underscore beneath the “N”….that’s the Giants logo.
He seems to have difficulty with NY logos – I recall the Giants’ one looking like “NU” with a pole holding up a U – but I don’t blame him. NY is such an iconic city with so many great logos in its history, so I can only applaud his efforts.
Sometimes you should execute an idea if only to prove to yourself that it’s not an improvement. Such is the case with his attempts at the Giants and Jets.
I beg you, please stop running these articles where guy spends ten minutes doodling in Photoshop and comes up with a new logo that then becomes the helmet logo and it’s massively inferior to existing logo.
I guess that’s just what this site has become now. Sigh.
What would you like to see on the site?
Counterpoint: I appreciate the work and thought that people put into these designs, even if they aren’t all successful or an improvement of existing looks. At best, these are cool, at worst they’re harmless.
I look forward to these creative interpretations and appreciate the effort. You can always just skip them but for me, I find them fun and thought provoking.
lol……. are you lost? This is a website about uniforms, so I’m glad to see uniforms. Keep them coming. Great job thinking outside the box Tim. Love the Pats and Card’s ideas
Not to be combative but it was traditionally a site for uniform news, not concepts. I would like to see these sorts of things on the sportslogos.net forums, but uni-watch was never where I came to see concepts. I understand things change, but these concepts, harmless as they may be, are not the prevailing interest of UW; at least not mine, and I’ve visited the site for at least 15 years now. Anybody can draw up concepts for praise, I don’t see the value in hypotheticals and drawings when I’d rather see real news or stories, current or historical or otherwise.
I don’t comment often but I think the problem is that it feels like everyday there is another redesign. It’s not that the work being put in to them is insincere it’s just that as readers we do not have the time and space to process them because there are so many. Maybe the cadence can be one a week? I don’t want to diminish the work being put in and the creativity involved but Brodie isn’t alone in redesign fatigue
i gave this feedback in the genuine interest of helping and was told that if i don’t like it to skip it. i know that, but i was just trying to help by suggesting what might draw more readers to not skip (fewer concept articles, more spaced out like you said)
The reason there have been so many concepts is two readers both submitted football redesigns at approximately the same time, and I wanted to make sure all of those concepts were shown before the Super Bowl. Normally I would space them out much more (as has been suggested), but it was sort of a time crunch to get both of the readers’ concepts out before the last football game of the season.
Going forward, don’t expect concepts every day (in fact, there will probably be weeks without any).
Hope that explains why both Tim and Greg Seher’s concepts appeared in such rapid-fire succession.
Okay, starting with the logos.
Not a fan of the Jets primary, too hard to read, but really like the jet in a football secondary. Pat patriots face just seems off to me… can’t quite explain why, otherwise, its good enough. I don’t mind the dolphins logo, but I think i would like it better in an oval. I do really like the Bills primary though. Good use of their current design and just giving it a bit of a tweak. Wouldnt mind seeing that on a helmet.
As for the Uniforms proper: too many white helmets. Jets at the very least should probably be green. Bills should be colored as well (blue or red, I have no opinion). Miami, maybe? Patriots look good, though I prefer them as a primary blue team, unlike their current administration. The jets I like in their current green which is a bit darker, aside from that the design could grow on me. Miami and Buffalo a perfectly acceptable, though more traditional than some other designs you have done. Maybe miami could use a little more spice, but it works.
Overall not a bad set. I personally would make some tweaks, and I much prefer the Jets secondary to their primary logos, but otherwise a solid effort. I am quite enjoying this series.
The Patriot’s face looks straight out of a George Romero zombie movie.
Amen. It’s like an April Fools version of Pat.
The Jets logo and the “wings” on the jersey look more like the aluminum louvers on the outside of Metlife Stadium. I actually like the Pat the Patriot update, but I am partial to Flying Elvis. As it pertains to the Bills and Dolphins uni’s, I do think that the classic logos are superior. I would love for the red Bills lid come back on a full-time basis and the same goes for the Dolphins set. Keep it simple and keep it more classic.
Re: Jets (since I always have to weigh in on the Jets): Ugh, no. The green on the primaries is too bright, the helmet logo is too reminiscent of the Giants’ 1975 “disco” helmet (link) and could easily be mistaken for “NU”, the sleeve stripes are too Oregon, and I strongly, strongly dislike slanted numerals. I do like the football-shaped airplane logo, though; wonder what that would look like on the helmet, horizontally-oriented.
The jets redesign screams north texas mean green with those colours and “wings” on the shoulders
Your NE and HOU sets are almost identical. I think Houston should have a red primary jersey and helmet.
thoughts
bills unis great, logo looking like Penn State nittany lion
pats – agreed on blue primary with a pat patriot. not sure the need for tree secondary logo, seems random even though it is pulled from the primary
dolphins – looks good uni-wise, secondary logo looks like GMail, not sure what the shield tie in is other than being a shield (SFSS?)
jets – i like these unis a lot (striping and number font). however, logos not as much. “NU” underscored, and “Jets” looks like “JFTS” with the way the E is rendered. Replace priimary perhaps with the little NY in the wing logo which is kinda unique
I know it takes skill that I don’t have to do this so appreciate the effort, hope it helps some
Penn State logo immediately jumped out to me
All told, Tim, this is a weak grouping. Two teams with asymmetrical helmet stripes is doubling down on a dubious trend. Admittedly, the Jets and Dolphins real insignias were concocted on Friday at 530pm (I much prefer the current Miami helmet) but even so these are half-baked at best.
Timothy, I have to say that I have been enjoying this series. Sure there have been some misses, a few home runs, and overall I would categorize most of the suggested improvements as mild at best.
I think the response has been hurt by two things:
1) The fact that you are yet another person to add to the recent string of concepts. Having said that, I think you’ve put in the most effort and your approach has been the most worthwhile. I don’t understand the point of posting an article where somebody has changed one sock stripe, and many of the teams are given the “too good to touch treatment”.
2) The failure of the readership to understand what you’re doing. I’ve lost count of how many people have said “Don’t touch _________’s helmet” or “Why are you messing with ___________?” Seems like many readers fail to understand the purpose of setting ground rules for a project like this and having no room for exceptions.
Overall, great work, and I for one appreciate your efforts!
^seconded
Agree.
As someone who does concepts that really just involve small changes to existing designs to improve them, Tim’s work is far more original, takes far more work, and deserves many more kudos than any design I have come up with.
Whether I like his concepts and designs or not, or if they are better than existing NFL IP isn’t really relevant when looking at these, because he is deliberately trying to do something new and different with each team.
I’m glad you’ve enjoyed this series, and thank you for understanding the point of the project haha
There are definitely teams that shouldn’t be touched, and that was something I wanted to challenge myself with. Especially since the reason for this project wasn’t to “improve” anything, but to explore what updates might look like. Many of them are far from perfect, I’ll be the first to admit that.
It’s truly disappointing how many people either didn’t understand or chose to ignore the fact this was an experiment/exploration and not me saying “I can do better than a classic design that’s been around for 50+ years.” Maybe I didn’t state that clear enough in my intro, but I never said it was an “improvement” on every team. Oh well. Can’t please everyone.
I understand taste is subjective, and my taste as someone who grew up in the 90s-00s is different from someone who grew up in the 70s-80s, and is different from someone growing up today, and that’s one of the things that makes this comm-uni-ty so great. But some form of thought going into the comments, good or bad, would’ve been nice to see. So, thank you (and everyone else who had thoughtful opinions) for doing so.
There’s a reason these kinds of rebranding efforts often take years to complete in reality.
Overall, it was a fun project to work on, and I’m pleased with how it came out on the whole, and I appreciate the feedback!
Bills- Strong design. I would prefer with the current logo, but it’s well done.
Dolphins- That wave/dolphin swiming combination logo has a lot of potential. Darker teal is a must for the Dolphins.
Pats- Decent, but the P in the Patriots wordmark is giving me major GI Joe vibes.
Jets- Not my favorite, to be honest. I feel like the right look is some commbination of their current look and the Namath era uniform. I did like the jet/football combo, but I almost think a 45 degree tilt would be better. More like a jet (or the ball) taking off.
I’ve really enjoyed this series and looked forward to looking at these posts each time there is a new one. With that said, my two biggest concerns with the designs are that the helmet logos often look to small and there have been a lot of shield/crest-esque logos.
Agreed with Charlie S.’s points as far as gauging readers’ reactions. My own thoughts here:
– I like the new Buffalo logo on screen but worry about its application as a helmet logo. I would think from far off it just looks like a blue oval.
– The opportunity to have a dolphin logo (a unique mascot and a cool animal) is too good to pass up, so I gotta pass on the new Miami logo.
– Love Patriot Pat and the asymmetric stripes, but I’m thinking the grey pants should have stayed.
That’s a good point about the Bills logo on the helmet. I think the same could be said about a number of teams that maybe I should’ve used a secondary logo for the helmet in some cases.
The Dolphins were one of the more difficult teams to design. I think their logo is perfect (well, the old one anyway) with the dolphin jumping in front of the sun. In the end, I wanted to do something different that, personally, I think works really well, but might’ve been better as a secondary logo. You live an you learn. Their unis were tough too. It was hard not to just go with the throwbacks, but that felt lazy to me, and I’m very pleased with where I ended up.
As a Pats fan, I’m indifferent on the gray, but to me, red, white, and blue (sans gray) makes much more sense to me. As mentioned in a few comments, there may be too much white, or at least white helmets in the division, seeing it all together, so maybe a green helmet for the Jets and keeping the gray for the Pats might’ve been a good way to go. My personal taste is that I prefer the Bills with white helmets over red, and the Jets with white instead of green.
Overall, I like these.
I don’t care for the Dolphins helmet logo.
The Jets helmet logo and trade or branding mark, looks like NU; not a good look.
The Patriots look good but I would like silver pants with the blue jersey. Not sure how it would look with a white helmet; but I am one who doesn’t think pants and helmets must match.
Bills look good but I would not be a fan of red pants and a red helmet (too much red)
So now that this series has ended, some thoughts. My past comments, I suppose, make it clear that I was not an admirer of the output. Most of this is due to my belief that whenever someone tries to do or re-do a whole league (which I’ve done myself when I was 12) they fall into patterns and ruts. You see the same motifs over and over and over. Here, there were a lot of forward-facing head shots for logos, for starters.
It also seemed there was at least one really questionable idea per division. Someone noted the use of California’s walking bear design for the Bears, R. Scott Rogers pointed out how it was silly for the Texans to have a star-shaped logo with the Cowboys around, someone pointed out a proposed Jaguar logo that was never used precisely because the car company complained, and just today I saw a NY logo for the Jets that was simply a mess.
My suggestions would be to stick to one team or no more than three; do a really deep dive into the history and traditions of a team so that if you divert from them you do so with a well-grounded base of knowledge; keep things legible — not just for the fan but the broadcaster, the referee, etc.
And just keep at it. I mean, I’m just an idiot with an opinion.
Might be a good time to bring back the redesign the fill in the blank contests.
Commanders, Titans, Jags, Dolphins, Falcons, etc.
There are levels of abstraction in each of these that I really like in terms of ambition and intent. But most of these don’t quite work for me in that regard. The Jets, for example, reads as an underlined NU even though I know what it’s meant to be and I’m actively trying to see the Y shape. It feels like it’s maybe 95% of the way to perfection, but that missing 5% is the difference between a pass or a fail grade here. I want to emphasize how positive my opinion of all of these is; I don’t offer the previous critique as any kind of hard negative assessment or discouragement. Patriots are chef’s kiss for me; if anything, I’d like to see more of the New England pine tree element. For the other three, I’d love to see the next draft of each of them!
The Dolphins logo would make a great soccer badge, nice design. Love the Bills Buffalo logo that is outside of the oval, feels like a good blend of their standing and charging logos. Also love the Pats NE logo, great alternate/secondary logo they should adopt. The Pats wordmark with the star and stripe is also outstanding.
Uniform wise the white helmet/pants with navy jersey for the Pats totally threw me off. So used to either white/red/white or silver/navy/silver that white and navy seems like a completely different team. I would not have expected my mind to completely disassociate white/navy/white from the Patriots so much.
Tough crowd. I appreciate the work.
Regarding the Patriots, I’m not a fan of Pat as the primary, I enjoy seeing it as their alternative. The level of detail in the original Pat logo seems problematic so I like the idea of a cleaner look, but the one here is a bit peculiar. The Flying Elvis is peculiar also. Given a choice I guess I’d take updated Pat over Elvis, but am open to something else. I’m a fan of the original logo the Pats had with the white helmet, tricorn cap, and number on the helmet. I like the white helmet but the fact that all four teams have white helmets leaves me open to keeping the silver one. I like the sleeve stripes more than the shoulder stripes, shoulder stripes are very difficult anymore due to the cut of the jersey, resulting in the lousy looking thing they have currently.
Again, fun project, nice work.
Miami is absolutely horrendous and nobody is going to find a dolphin in that wavy mess. Buffalo maybe you can get by with that, not the worst. Pats, I’m fine with Patriot updated logo but hell no on the pine tree. Looks completely out of place. Jets always suck so this horrible rendition is fine.
The secondary NE wordmark for the Patriots remind me of a blend of these two logos:
link
link
You are excellent with logo work, although, I think many of these lend themselves to soccer or software applications, rather than today’s nfl, I do like most of them. The jet in the football logo is great for a team that really doesn’t know what to do with a historically simplistic visual identity. I’ve been wanting to see the bills do something like this for a while. I love the standing bison, and I love the concept of the charging laser bison, but I’d like to see the charging bison look less 80s in its execution, which is basically what you did here. Love the New England flag inclusion, but I just don’t see an nfl team, particularly the patriots, adopting a quirk like that. For sure it could go on the sleeve or to one side of the chest, and would look cool, though. Everything Miami, logo-wise is great… but again for a soccer team or an app. If they built their word mark off that M font I’d dig it. And again they could put that shield logo on the sleeve or the upper chest, which is something more teams should do. Skip the new big name under the collar trend and do an alt logo on the left chest.
Stop. Please. Just, stop.
Love what you’ve done here, Tim! While I haven’t adored every single uni, the whole series has been a fantastic experiment and the ‘story telling’ parts are a lot of fun. Putting the Jets’ jet and the Bills’ buffalo within football shapes was also stroke of genius. I’d love to see your takes on other leagues, such as the CFL and XFL. Alternatively, redesigning logos for English soccer’s Premier League would be great to see! Thanks again for submitting your work to UW
Appreciate the effort, but not a fan of the Dolphins one in particular. I’m a lifelong fan, but this redesign looks very Arena Football to me. Big fan of bringing back an updated version of Pat Patriot, though.
Love the updated Pat Patriot, but that Miami logo is giving me Minnesota Wild vibes. And since I think the Wild have the worst logo in hockey, that’s probably not a good thing.
As a general statement, I appreciate your willingness to tip over “sacred cows” here and there. I try to make my criticisms constructive. You put in the time, you wanted thoughts, you deserve some thoughts.
BUF: like everything here. Like the logo as a logo, but do not like it on the helmet. I get what you were going for, but it looks like a blue dot on a sea of white.
MIA: like the concept, except for the helmets. The logo they have is a downgrade from the original but this isn’t better. Nothing about that screams Miami, MD, or dolphins.
NE: my favorite of the bunch, but I would make the stripes on the navy jerseys UCLA-style to better match the white jerseys. Buffalo and Miami have lots of sleeve stripes and white helmets in this same division.
NYJ: my least favorite. The helmet monogram looks like an underlined “NU”, and there is a second NY monogram. I would choose one and go with it. The numbers are overslanted; how are you squeezing 88 or 98 on the front?
All in all, more hits than misses. Good work, I enjoyed it.
Why is it so damned hard to make the Y on a New York helmet logo look like a Y?
Like what has already been said. I think overall what you are doing is really cool and I enjoy this series a lot. However, I do agree with the fact that there were a lot of white helmets in this one. However I really like what you did with the Jets I think it is very sharp and clean.