Chicago Cubs exploring changing logo, uniforms in rebranding effort

Gamedayr | March 1, 2013 at 2:02 pm | 5 Comments

Chicago Cubs left fielder Alfonso Soriano (12) hits a home run in the fifth inning against the Miami Marlins at Wrigley Field. (David Banks-USA TODAY Sports)

The Chicago Cubs have been the darlings of sports traditionalists for a century. Their stadium has remained largely unchanged in all of that time, as has their uniforms and their logos.

However, the Ricketts family, the Cubs’ new ownership group, is reportedly set to make a number of changes to the iconic Chicago brand.

This from Bleacher Nation, a Cubs blog, via CBS Sports:

According to a BN’er who was at a small focus group held earlier this week by marketing executives, the Cubs are exploring a number of branding changes in the coming years, including new uniforms and a new logo.

Although the familiar home pinstripe unis aren’t under consideration for revamping, the focus group was shown a variety of potential road uniform changes, including a navy blue look (as opposed to the “Cubbie blue”), which was apparently designed to have a “vintage” feel. The Cubs are also considering regular throwback jerseys that they would wear on Sundays, or at least some kind of alternate jersey which would commemorate the 100 year anniversary of Wrigley Field in 2014. Similarly, the revamped road jerseys are under consideration for 2014.

The group was also shown a variety of different Cubs logos, according to the source, though the classic “C” cap logo is not currently being reconsidered (whew). The reconsidered logos ranged from subtle changes to the “C,” to the old school bear look, to completely new logos.

From the sounds of it, any and all changes are still in the preliminary stages of planning. It’ll be interesting to see if the organization does actually make any design adjustments to the branding, as well as the reaction from the fan base to those changes.

Cue the outcry from the traditionalists.