Revealing article about the politics behind the last logo design! Good Read!

Here is the link to the article from Houston Intown magazine. Last logo designer was Chris Hill. He was going to keeo it Red and Gold. See the logo examples! Best part is about halfway through the article.

Sorry if this has already beed posted.

<http://www.houston-intown.com/2003/August2003/html/Rockets2003.html>

_NBA superstar Charles Barkley called it a “clown suit.” Fans called into talk shows demanding refunds for tickets. It was 1995, the Houston Rockets had won two championships, and their beloved logo had been changed. Intown branding specialist Chris Hill could empathize. He had to endure the criticism, knowing the new design was his.

__Except that it wasn’t. Not exactly.
__It’s a bit of an understatement to say this has been a summer of change for the Houston Rockets. The team bid farewell to fan and league favorite coach Rudy Tomjanovich and ushered in Jeff Van Gundy. The new $200 million arena has been christened Toyota Center. And now, they have unveiled their fourth logo in franchise history.

__The Rockets have received positive feedback on the new logo, according to Susan Newquest, Rockets manager of marketing communications, who recalls fans initially “loving” the previous logo when it was debuted in 1995. The team plans to unveil a new uniform in September, adds Newquest. The design is rumored to feature a still-unannounced color scheme possibly featuring dashes of silver, white and black.

__Polls, message groups and radio call-in shows, however, suggest the logo looks “cultish,” and “morbid.”

__“This new logo looks like a mediocre corporate identity for a space-related business,” Hill observes. “You would expect that to be the logo for ‘Rochester Rocket Company,’ not the logo of an NBA team.”

__The logo and uniform were created by Japanese design icon Eiko Ishioka, who has garnered critical acclaim for her work in stage, screen, advertising, and print media. Ishioka won an Academy Award in 1992 for costume design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Starlet Jennifer Lopez later donned Ishioka’s costume design in the arty, music-video-styled film The Cell.

__That Ishioka is often solicited for costume and artistic design, and to clothe the likes of actresses Lopez and Helena Bonham Carter, is hardly surprising. Nor is it surprising, in the age of merchandise-first marketing, that the Rockets looked to the glamour of Hollywood for inspiration. That Ishioka has essentially branded the Rockets for the foreseeable future, however, has raised many an eyebrow, especially Hill’s. “I don’t think it was in the scope of her work to do a logo. As I understand it, the scope of her work was to design a uniform and costume.”
Who’s in charge here?

_Hill insists it’s not sour grapes or bitterness that fuels his criticism. He’s simply a hometown fan who wanted the best logo possible for the team. The fact that the Rockets have a new logo that isn’t wowing fans comes to no surprise to him, considering his own experience.

__The Rockets were in the midst of their 1994 championship run when they decided to re-brand. Hill says he was surprised at the level of the NBA’s involvement at his initial meeting with Rockets. “I told them that I was excited and I told them I couldn’t wait to design a logo that would look great on Hakeem Olajuwon’s chest,” Hill recalls. “The NBA representative stopped me and said, ‘No, you’re wrong. It’s all about selling merchandise. He said the NBA was a merchandising business and that’s what it’s all about.”

__To create the Rockets logo, Hill looked classic sports logos he admired and drew upon his own sports experience. “Being an ex-jock, I just connected. I loved the Los Angeles Lakers logo, with this big, yellow ball. It was such an iconic image.” Hill wanted a to show a basketball with a small rocket circling it, as an atom would a molecule. The rocket would make the lines of the basketball, and the type would read “Houston” for away games, and “Rockets” at home. The color scheme was black, yellow and red.

__The NBA, however, had other ideas, says Hill. “They came back and said it was to only read ‘Rockets,’ because they were only branding the team not the city.” Hill says that in the era of team movement, he understood the directive. “It was just a way to protect the brand.” But it still didn’t sit well. “I was offended,” he says flatly. “This was about the Houston Rockets, not just the Rockets logo.”
The NBA, Hill says, wanted to move to the style of the Toronto Raptors, whose logo they had just created. The Raptors’ cartoonish, “Velociraptor” dinosaur from the movie Jurassic Park told Hill all he needed to know. “They were marketing directly to a youth-oriented audience,” says Hill of the approach, which he called the “McDonald’s concept” of marketing to kids. But Hill says it was contradictory to the sports marketing to which he was accustomed.
“Nike pays a lot of money to Tiger Woods and other athletes to wear their ‘Swoosh’ logo. They pay a lot of money for brand association. They don’t change the brand.”

__The League took Hill’s tiny rocket design, made it larger and called for a “retro” look with a face. “I thought it was silly for Hakeem to be wearing this,” Hill recalls.

__Hill then learned that new uniforms would be blue with silver pinstripes. “I had a fit,” he says. “I called and wrote the NBA and Rockets and told them they were making a big mistake. Our color was red. Our identity was red. By that time we had won our first championship. Usually when a team wins a championship, they never change their identity, because their championship identity is what people remember.”

Red, right and blue
Hill found the idea of a sea of Rocket fans wearing blue ridiculous.
“I was thinking about enthusiastic fans dressing to go the game and wanting to wear the team color. Red is a very bright color that means action, you look in the audience and see a sea of red. Now the color is blue — what do you do, wear a blue shirt? You’ve completely disconnected the fans.”

__The League’s justification? Blue and silver were the “hot” colors. “My response was ‘red is an action color, red is the color of the Rockets, red looks great on television,’” Hill recalls. “There weren’t many teams using red. Red was more of an identity of the Rockets were than the logo. Back then, if you were watching a game on TV from distance, and you saw red, it was either going to be the Bulls or the Rockets. That’s a strong identity.”

__Now Hill sees the Rockets’ branding attempts as a “lack of focus,” based on the NBA’s ideals. “It seems like they want to change for the sake of changing.” Team spokesperson Tim McDougal was unavailable for comment, and representatives from the NBA did not return calls from Intown. “It was a different regime, anyway,” says Hill. “The people in the front office I dealt with are gone.”

__What’s more important, he says, is the Rockets have never had the proper classic logo, including the one he designed. “I’m not making excuses,” says Hill of the logo. “I did the very best I could given the circumstances. I’m only as good as my client. The NBA heavily dictated the identity for the Rockets. At many points in the creative process, I considered resigning the account, but I was determined to make it the best it could be, regardless of what the NBA dictated.”

_“The identity of a company, corporation or a franchise,” he adds “should be directed from top down and project what the organization wants to project, rather than ‘it’s all about merchandise.’”

__For now, fans and Hill will have to live with the new look. But Hill feels a new logo may not be far away.

__“I feel, when it’s all said and done,” he adds, “like this logo will have a short life.”

 

I never liked the font or the 3D effect that he used for the word "Rockets". Seems amateurish to me. Saw a lot of that same look on lame websites and designs of that time. Maybe that's why Les liked it. Looked "cool or "familiar" to him. Who knows. I do think that Les has bad design taste. That much is obvious.