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Orlando City unveils new official MLS logo

Orlando City logo

By MIKE GRAMAJO 

Orlando City SC finally have a new logo to go with their 2015 inaugural Major League Soccer season.

The Orlando Sentinel first reported on Tuesday morning OCSC’s newest crest, which features a one-headed golden Lion with 21 flares around it that represents the Sunshine State while also representing Orlando City as the 21st expansion franchise in MLS. The color purple surrounds the lion while ‘Orlando City’ is inscribed in white lettering beneath.

The logo was initially revealed to club employees on Monday afternoon in a private party in downtown Orlando, and it was designed by Orlando City season ticket holder David Brotherton, who beat out other local design firms in an open competition.

Along with the logo unveiling comes a re-branding campaign that the club will carry on for about month, featuring painted murals on the side of seven privately owned buildings around downtown Orlando.

OCSC are expected to kick off their inaugural season in MLS in less than a year from now, playing the entire 2015 season in a refurbished Florida Citrus Bowl after experiencing delays building a soccer-specific stadium.

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What do you make of the new logo? Like the new logo or did you like the old one better?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. I’m all for hiring the handicapped, but the slacker who stole this from a Disney ad should have his training wheels taken away before he kills again. My dog could pass this logo. Just another ploy to milk the fans. Embarrassing.

    Reply
    • 1. I’d love to see your better design?

      2. This is a ploy to milk fans? Can you explain that?

      I’m assuming no to both questions though. Hope mom has your dinner ready soon.

      Reply
    • Please have your dog contact Orlando City SC’s front office and set up a time when your dog can send in all of his designs. Just please make sure your dog’s designs are standard digital files, not sketches using bits of kibble and urine. Adidas has moderately strict files spec requirements and it’d be quite difficult to produce the 2015 MLS jerseys from files composed of deceased squirrel fur and turds.

      Thanks.

      Reply
  2. Only one “tweet” I would make is to make the outer Purple Trim GOLD

    Really clean design nonetheless!

    Reply
    • I think darker colors are better for outside borders, but I’d have to see it.

      I think I would like to see a white background, with gold inner trim and purple outter trim, purple lettering, and purple in the negative spaces of the gold lions head. Tried it real fast in MS Paint unsuccessfully, could look bad, and they probably wanted more purple.

      Reply
  3. First of all the color Purple, a color need by MLS teams and I’m tired of blue, red, white being used in the league and finally MLS gets purple.
    Second of all, simple image inside the badge but the badge couldn’t of been a little better. For instance, Montreal, rsl, San Jose, Dallas, crew all have the same badge design but luckily Orlando has the best inside the badge design.
    As for the name, simple and classy, Orlando city, and not Columbus crew and they will be know as the lions of MLS.
    Hopefully new expansion teams, will not use blue, red, white, think outside the badge and not use a badge crest or circle crest and their name will not be put together with their identity, like San Antonio scorpions, Columbus crew and LA2 will learn from MLS 3.0
    How about San Antonio river city, Los Angeles united since their is only one united in MLS now, Boston strong fc.
    As for colors open for business in MLS, you got silver, pink, black, bronze, gold, some other kind of green and orange, yellow, brown.

    Reply
  4. “it was designed by Orlando City season ticket holder David Brotherton”

    Are you hearing that NYCFC?

    Great job Orlando—you’re doing every stage of this thing right.

    Reply
  5. Hideous and boring. I’m thinking Coach Heath got a check from Disney for this. Looking forward to Princess Jasmine Stadium.

    Reply
  6. Wow, this would have been really cool in 1976… I’m just glad this isn’t my team. Purple and Yellow ? Gross. A lions head inside of a giant sunflower surrounded by purple. Who is going to be the first DP Alex Morgan ?

    Reply
  7. Of course, what’s missing is any reference to rising ocean levels that will leave much of Florida, Orlando included, under water in a century.

    Reply
      • This is why we briefly had Manatees… on April 1st.

        Someone suggested a weeping polar bear floating on an ice cube wearing a t-shirt reading, “The science is settled so you’re not allowed to talk about it anymore.” and paddling his ice cube with a pair AGW hockey sticks, but it was a bit too busy to fit it all into the logo.

  8. Nice job. I only have one observation. Current logo has red in it (for the mane). Would’ve been nice to see that incorporated for the outside stripe of the crest (currently white) and added a built in away kit color or alternate. I have a feeling that somewhere down the line they’ll add it, but for now, excellent job.

    Reply
  9. Are you kidding me? What a horrible logo, I mean purple, really? And what is with the lion, has nothing to do with Orlando! Should be a picture of Disney or outlet malls!

    …just kidding. Orlando nailed this one. Excellent job, classy logo. Well done.

    Reply
  10. Looks like a NFL logo forced onto a crest. Or one of those generic logos you find in FIFA video games for “create-a-team.” Nothing about it stands out as soccer related or anything that anyone associates with Orlando… except maybe the Lion King/Disney. Purple and Gold will be a refreshing change for the league though.

    Reply
    • Why do we want it to look soccer related? I’m glad it represents the club, not some vague concept of “soccer.”

      Reply
      • What club do they have independent of soccer? It’s not like this is some Barca type club with multiple sports and an actual club to join as a member (after three years proving your bona fides). It’s a one sport pro franchise that doesn’t exist except on paper yet.

      • It only exists on paper yet… but it’s proved its bona fides for three years?

        Bona fides proven only on paper, then?

        Results and championships in the lower division would beg to differ, and splitting hairs between the lower division and MLS and the MLS-era logo do not count.

      • I’ve been saying for years the Steelers need to get some footballs in their logo, or no one would recognize who they are.

    • Rory: a team crest is supposed to represent the team, not the city or sport. This crest is immediately recognizable.

      Reply
      • KingGoogleyEye: plenty of teams make their crest represent their city as the city is kind of a key part of the team’s culture and all. Think the Roses on Portland’s crest, Seattle’s Space Needle, the mountains on the Rapids, etc. Sure, there are some that don’t represent the city and most of them are the worst ones in the league (San Jose’s old one and San Jose’s new one, for example).

        I’m just saying a Lion could have represented any team in any city in the country, nothing about it says Orlando or Florida or anything except “hey, a lion!” That’s why it is generic. It could represent any team you wanted to call the lions, be that an NFL team or a youth soccer team. Or better yet, it kind of looks like a bank logo or a tanning bed salon’s logo.

        The only thing that stands out at all is the fact that the A and the N have been crammed together a bit and frankly that’s more annoying then anything else.

      • Wow, and to think that my comment last week got stuck in moderation because I used the word “j-e-r-k.”

      • This is fascinating.

        What, in your view, would succeed at, “…make[ing] their crest represent their city as the city is kind of a key part of the team’s culture…” for the city of Orlando?

        I’ll help you out a bit: anything even remotely touching theme parks and that stuff would be completely DOA.

  11. Dig it! Very classy. (I dream of a day when NO club logos in any league contain flying soccer balls or mascots with enraged facial expressions.)

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  12. Great job by David Brotherton. It looks even better on the jersey. If you’re going to go with purple (which I’m ok with, since it’s a new scheme in the league) you’ve got to keep it simple and classic. And he’s done exactly that.

    Reply
  13. Classic and clean – personally, I’m not a big fan of purple – but OCSC would be the first team to rock that color, so it works.
    One question, does the lion have any special significance or correlation to that area of Florida or Orlando?

    Reply
    • Lions used to be plentiful in the area until Ponce De Leon and all of his cronies landed and hunted them to extinction

      Reply
    • There is a modest soccer history in the city going back to the early 80’s, with a few different iterations of clubs named “Lions”. They played in the dark ages between NASL and MLS, following the implosion of the original NASL in leagues such as the NPSL, ASL, and USSL among others. Supposedly, when MLS was opening in 1996, Orlando was going to be one of the original expansion sites and would have been affiliated with Tottenham Hotspur with the local club being named Lions. But the Orlando Magic didn’t want it, so it never happened.

      Probably all for the best, but no, the name has nothing to do with Disney.

      Reply
      • “”BUT WHERE IS THE SOCCER BALL!?””

        But, where are the dollar signs? That’s what this is all about,
        MLS Ponzi, Inc. If it’s not a classic ponzi, then MLS is still a pyramid scheme. We won’t know which until it goes belly-up.

        Also, what’s up with all the Brits and this “Orlando City” lol?
        Adrian Heath brit coach, Phil Rawlins brit “President” lol.

        I gather that MLS isn’t for american kids as the league is over 60% foreign players (documented by me in earlier thread at start of MLS season), but now it’s about foreign ownership too.

    • The mane is actually a reference to the sun since Florida is the “Sunshine State”. Also, there are 21 “flames” to represent the 21st MLS team…

      Reply

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