A few months ago my agency won the job to re-design the branding for the Lowell Spinners, Single-A affiliate for the Boston Red Sox.  The idea was to take the existing branding and update it.  

After spending 2 1/2 years working at Twins Enterprise (now Twins ’47) as a sports headwear designer, I had the great advantage of spending a lot of time working with sports logos, especially those of Major League Baseball teams. 

The Lowell Spinners is a little different than the MLB teams, in that their primary target are families and young children. Our task was to replace the current cap logo (seen here) with something that would appeal to everyone and tie in a little closer to their wordmark seen here). 

Myself and another designer were let loose to see what we could come up with.  I initially went in a direction that I thought would increase merchandise sales.  Years ago I realized that the best selling baseball caps feature logos that not only represent a team, but they also represent the city in which the team plays.  The Boston “B”, the Yankees “NY”, the Cubs “C”, the Cardinals “StL”, the Dodgers “LA”, etc, etc. You don’t necessarily have to be a Dodgers fan to wear the familiar royal blue cap with the white interlocking “LA”, you might just like Los Angeles the city.  So, I started working with a logo that featured the letter “L” for Lowell.  

The team stated that they were commonly known as “The Spinners.”  Hardly anyone actually referred to them as the Lowell Spinners.  So, I was to focus on using an “S” if I was looking to incorporate a letter into the logo.

The other goal I had for my designs were that I wanted something cool enough for a Red Sox fan to trade in his “B” cap and pick up a Spinners cap.  I’m sure most of you are aware that in New England, everyone is a die-hard Red Sox fan.  And since Lowell is not that far from Boston, a lot of the people go to Spinners games simply due to the fact that they’re seeing future Red Sox players (that, plus Spinners tickets are A LOT cheaper than Red Sox tickets.)  

My attempts at a “cool” logo weren’t well received, so I went about simplifying the current spindle and trying to incorporate the letter “S”.  The spindle, as well as the team name originates from the fact that Lowell was best known as a textile mill town.

At the top of the page, you can see the logo that they chose for the cap. I opted to use a really strong shadow along the right side of the spindle and bat to give the illusion of depth. Shadows under the areas where the “S” crosses the spindle, as well as the little twist lines also help to re-enforce the depth.

Their secondary goal of the Spinners was to have a new patch that would go on the sleeve of the players’ uniforms. This logo to the left is based on a logo that my coworker came up with.  I just cleaned up and reworked the design. 

One design that was rejected for the cap logo was the smiley-face logo (or, as I called it, the “Spinney the Spinning Spinner” logo.) This wouldn’t have worked on the caps of professional baseball players.  But, it is something that kids could potentially gravitate towards.  It was decided that not only could this be used in other merchandise, but it would eventually be made into a new mascot.  Hopefully they come up with a better name.

The last part of the process was to update the jersey script.  Since most baseball teams follow the pattern of home jersey has the team name, and the road jersey has the city name, I ended up creating two different scripts.  For the home jersey, I kept the existing letters and updated the “I” using the spindle. Also, since the team is commonly known as the Spinners, we were able to remove the “Lowell” from the script. 

The road jersey used the previously established elements from the new home jersey. On both of these scripts, I put little triangles along the tail to give it a little more depth. Also, you’ll notice that as the thread comes out towards the viewer, the line on the bottom gets thicker. Another element used to create the illusion of depth.

Overall, this was a really fun project.  It allowed me to play in my old backyard of baseball logos.  I don’t think I’ll trade in my Red Sox cap, but it will be cool to see the future members of the Boston Red Sox wearing a design that I crafted.

Edit: Here’s the link to the story on MiLB.com