Milwaukee Admirals

34

So far the (self-appointed) logo experts are divided on this one. Paul at UniWatch says the best comment he heard was from someone who said it gave him the sudden urge to go to Long John Silver’s. On the other hand, Brandon the Sports Logo Pundit lists this as one of his personal top ten.

To my knowledge, there are three self-appointed logo experts on the internet, with me being the third. In other words, I get to break the tie. The envelope, please...

You guys are going to think I’ve completely lost my mind, but I love this logo. Seriously. I know, you think it’s a bad logo. You think it’s a terrible logo. And I’m not going to argue. The thing is, this logo is so incredibly awful that it’s awesome. If I may re-use words I used about the Macon Whoopee's name several years ago, this logo revels in being bad. It holds its head high as an example of just how bad bad can be. It challenges other logos to try to be this bad, then kicks them in the groin and laughs when they inevitably fail.

Here's my theory on how this logo was created. Have you ever been involved in a committee meeting where people are trying to figure out the wording they’re going to use to say something, or come up with a logo design, or something similar? It inevitably happens that someone gets silly. Someone decides to jokingly suggest the absolute worst thing they could do. (For example: I once was in a meeting where we were trying to come up with instructions on how to perform a task on a computer. One of the steps involved doing a copy-and-paste, and someone — not me — raised the concern that we might need to explain how to do a copy-and-paste. Someone else — also not me — immediately responded, "How about adding, 'If you do not know how to perform a copy and paste, please drop by H.R. and hand in your badge, as you are clearly too fucking stupid to work here.'")

And then one of two things happens: Either someone cries out, “Yes! Perfect! Let’s go with that!” or someone adds his own ideas to make it even worse. ("No, don’t tell them to turn in their badge! Tell them to slit their wrists because they’re too fucking stupid to live!"). And so forth. Everyone vents a lot of stress, and eventually people get back to business.

But every once in a while someone goes a little farther. He actually writes the instructions with that little gem tucked in, or actually draws the horrible idea, just to share them as a joke with the others who were there. And if it isn’t as offensive as the example above, then there’s a terrible risk: they might decide to actually use it.

That, I am convinced, is what happened here. It started with "Hey, pirates are cool! Let’s do a pirate instead of an admiral!" And then someone else suggested "Better yet, a dead pirate." You see how it snowballed from there. By the end of it, the group had jointly envisioned a logo featuring a skeleton with eyes dressed up in a bizarre mixture of naval and hockey uniforms (note the admiral's hat, formal naval jacket, hockey pants, and hockey gloves), with a skate on one foot and a peg leg for his other foot, and with a hockey stick made of a twig lashed with a rope to a shinbone and the bones of a foot with hockey tape wrapped around said toes.

And then someone went back to his desk and actually drew this logo. And the others laughed so hard that they all said, "You know what? We'll do a couple of normal proposals for the owners, but we'll throw this in at the end just to see what happens." And what happened is the owners of the team laughed so hard they pissed themselves, and said, "That's it!" And here we are.

In other words, this logo is, quite literally, a joke. And if you are one of the many people who hate it, then you simply don’t get the joke. In fact, I’m going to go farther than that: if you hate this logo, then the joke is on you.

I, for one, get the joke. This is like the name "Macon Whoopee" multiplied by a factor of ten. It is the most over-the-top, take-no-prisoners, in-your-face repudiation of every concept good logo designing is based on. In short, it is the most ironic logo I have ever seen. And I love it. And no, I’m not being ironic when I say that.

And if you still want to say it's bad, I say this: I challenge you to do worse. When you're done trying, walk up to a picture of the Admirals logo, hold up your attempt, and say "I tried to make one even worse then you." Then watch as the logo magically gains the ability to move. And watch as it uses that ability to kick your logo in the groin and laugh at it.

Final Score: 34 points.
Penalties: Cartoon, 17 pts; Equip-logo (quadruply-egregious), 25 pts.
Bonuses: Local, -3 pts; Cool-Logo, -5 pts.