Much has been said when it comes to color theory: certain colors emote specific feelings; never use purple; green means go.
Coming from a communications school (shouts out to Newhouse!), we didn’t focus much on color theory – we focused on communication and legibility. To this day, communication grounds me in my best practices color: it’s about contrast and nothing else. Showing depth? Lean on contrast. Pairing complementary colors? Lean on contrast. Increasing the legibility of type? Lean on contrast.
Which brings me to another love of mine: NBA uniforms (my Evernote app just auto-corrected “uniforms” to “undies” — that’s an entirely different blog post which is likely behind a paywall). My beloved Boston Celtics recently eliminated the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs with the Bucks in their second full year of a new uniform system. Simply put, they look like nothing else in the league… and that’s a good thing. It’s a unique color scheme with modern type and lots of flexibility. I see only one issue — and that’s contrast.
Let’s take a look at their green “icon” uniform set, my favorite of the bunch. That custom font is fantastic! Note the way that “Milwaukee” sits on the jersey. It’s white type with a cream outline (Milwaukee is known as the Cream City, a reason for one of the team’s tertiary colors and an entire separate alternate uniform).
In this case, I prefer my uniform without cream. The cream is too similar to the white in the word mark, creating a blurry effect on what should be bold, sharp letter forms. Even worse, it crowds the letters, creating a jumbled word mark.
Here, I believe some contrast would help. Perhaps “Milwaukee” would be better served in cream without an outline. This creates sharper letters, a smoother word, and significantly better legibility. Alternatively, “Milwaukee” could be set in white, but that’s a lost opportunity to use a unique supporting brand color.
The Bucks’ uni set is one of the strongest in the league and is unique across the sporting world. I’m thoroughly impressed with the design work from Doubleday & Cartwright… and with more contrast, these unis could be all-timers.