What if the Philadelphia Union rebranded?

When I first started on my quest to rebrand the Union, my plan was to completely change the Union’s brand. I wanted to completely change the Union’s name and colors.

To help gather ideas for what I would change the name to, I put up a question on the Brotherly Game Instagram story. I asked if you could change the name of the Union, what would you change it to? I was curious to see if any people had some good names.

Of course there were generic ones like FC Philadelphia, Philadelphia United, Philadelphia City, and Inter Philadelphia. Of course I wasn’t going to pick those. They were too generic. I also got the obvious Philly names such as the Philadelphia Liberty, Philadelpiha Quakers, Philadelphia Freedom, Philadelphia Independence and the Philadelphia Ringers. They all are good names, but they kinda sound like minor league teams in my opinion. Another negative for the Liberty, Freedom, and Independence would be that the team would have to be red, white, and blue. I honestly didn’t think any of the names were better than the Philadelphia Union. So, I stuck with the Union name.

Then I decided to look at our colors. The team’s current colors are Navy Blue, Gold and Light Blue. My original plan was to change the colors to red, white and blue like the Sixers and Phillies. But then I realized that I would be basically making a better version of the New England Revolution so I decided against it. Also it would be problematic to change our team colors to red, since 3 out of the Union’s 4 main rivals are red.

The more I looked at other colors, I realized that basically every color scheme imaginable is basically already taken. I decided to stick with the navy blue and gold. But there is one change to our colors that I did make. The Union and the Chicago Fire are the only 2 teams in the MLS without either white or black as one of their three primary colors. I believe that this is really problematic for design. Think about how rare that is for sports team branding.

The Union changed their colors slightly in 2018 to help address this problem. They made the gold a lot brighter and the navy blue darker. I still think more needs to be done. I believe that swapping light blue for white as our third color would be really beneficial. First, light blue is the color of NYCFC. The more we can distance ourselves from them the better. Secondly, light blue does not go at all with navy blue and gold. Because of that it is rarely used.

The team hasn’t released a jersey with light blue since 2012 (Last year’s away jersey doesn’t count as light blue in my opinion). It is time to get rid of it. So I swapped white for light blue as the Union’s third color. I also got rid of the gold gradient. I personally hate the gradient in the logo. The Union are the only team to have a gradient in their logo. Having one solid color on a logo looks a lot better in my opinion.

So let’s get to the logo. The current logo is pretty good honestly. My only real complaint is that it barely represents Philadelphia at all. If you removed Philadelphia from the top of the logo, would you be able to tell that it was for Philly. The only noticeable things that represent Philadelphia are the 13 stars at the bottom and the snake. That is crazy in my opinion. Philadelphia has so many great symbols to put on a soccer crest. And all we put on there were stars and a snake. So for my logo I definitely went with tons of Philadelphia imagery.

Here is the logo that I came up with:

So for the outside of the logo, I decided to keep the same for the most part. I left the Philadelphia font on the top, because it’s good, and I couldn’t find one that looked better. I also left the stars, because the circle of stars is one of the best Philadelphia images in my opinion.

The inside of the logo is where I really went in on the Philadelphia Imagery. I started with the Liberty Bell, because that is the best Philadelphia image of them all. I put “Union” at the top of the bell, because we obviously need it on the badge somewhere, and that was the best place to put it. I also replaced the ringer part of the bell with a soccer ball. The Brotherly Game logo has the same thing and I love it.

Then I remembered I needed to get a snake in the badge somehow. I know that I copied the 76ers “Phila Unite” logo snake, but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up. I think it looks really cool. It obviously honors the “Join or Die” snake that was used during the American revolution. Then I had some extra space on the sides of the liberty bell. I decided to go with lighting strikes to symbolize Ben Franklin discovering electricity. I am really mad that I wasn’t able to find a spot for a key in the logo. I thought about putting a lighting strike on one side, and then a key on the other, but I didn’t like that it wasn’t symmetrical. Overall, I am pretty happy how the logo turned out.

What do you think about my logo design? Let me know by DMing me on Instagram at @BrotherlyGame! If you have an idea for a new Union logo, enter our contest! You can create any design that you want. You can even change the team name and colors if you would like! The deadline for submitting your design is Sunday, May 17 at midnight. You can enter your design by filling out the google form or DMing me your design on Instagram! After, we will vote on my instagram story who created the best one!