ISL Team Logo Shootout

We just finished a very successful first season for the Indian Super League. I skimmed most of the league matches, preferring to catch the highlights rather than commit 2 hrs, but I did manage to catch the fantastic semi-finals where Kerala edged out Chennaiyin, plus the less eventful but still keen finals where Atlético de Kolkata wrote themselves into the history books .

The ISL folks did a nice job with design elements - catchy jingle, a spare, power-packed logo and the lovely trophy1. I also thought some of the teams did an elegant job with their branding, some better than the others.

So I thought it would be fun ranking the  ISL teams based on their logos, counting down from the gaudy to the sublime. Sounds like a blast ? Off we go, hold tight!

Bring up the bottom, ranked number 8, the luckiest possible number for the Chinese to whom it denotes prosperity (** drumroll **), is FC Pune City.

The logo, with its two horses playing Sepak takraw in front of a toy fort, separated by a menacing upturned dagger threatening to puncture the football, is a head scratcher.

It is gaudy with clashing loud colours, cluttered with generic elements of heraldry that seem to have no logical or aesthetic reason to be there, like the fleur-de-lis otherwise associated with French monarchy. 

The whole  effect is reminiscent of the shield of some lower division english club dreaming one day of making the championship. It is no wonder Pune were doomed from the start.

Just avoiding the wooden spoon, glorious in a seventh place finish, Delhi avoids the bottom slot on the strength of being the only team with a cheeky modernist logo.

We went through a period where there was a wholesale move away from the traditional heraldry to modish ugliness.

Thankfully that tide has receded and only one of the 8 have shown this utter disregard for emblemology, with a zooming jet plane that is also a footballer's foot.

A logo for the ages, this one is not. If the team lasts, I hope the logo will not.

Moving up to the echelons of the respectable, we have FC Goa at sixth place.  

Visually, the logo is clean and uncluttered, with nice contrasting colours.On the plus side, it avoids the usual clichés about Goa - beach, feni, the cottage with the balcoa. On the flipside, what the hell is it?

It looks like the skeletal head of a bull, maybe  a reminder of the well done steak the team owner enjoys or a hunting trophy from the time when real men did such stuff.

I can think of some other states which might have a more rightful claim to such a logo, but a Goa connection eludes me.

For the 4th and 5th slots, there is a keen contest between North East United and Kolkata, an Eastern India derby if you will. 

NorthEast United has a pleasant but bland logo, something that an MLS team representing the New England region might sport, rather than one for a team from the 8 sisters.

There is a nod to the Naga tribal shawl in the colour scheme, which saves it from being completely generic. It is well balanced and pleasant, but seems a little lacking in the passion that the club's fan base has demonstrated on every match day.

The Atlético de Kolkata (ATK) logo could well have graced the opening reel in movies of days gone by, with its mythical feline spouting an arc of stars rampant on the screen as the run up to the studio banner being splashed across.

A nice touch would have been for Saurav Dada to do a 'He Man' like transformation, emitting a lightning bolt from his sword to bring forth this creature as they set out to rule the universe - that seems to be the inspiration as far as I can make out.

The logo has the benefit of being different, but the entire composition seems off-balance, like the shield is going to tip sideways as the lion/tiger jumps off.

I am calling this one a tie, giving them both joint fourth.

Now to the excitement of the top three. Making it on to the medals podium, just about, are our Chennai neighbors, with their ferocious logo. 

A clever take on traditional  symbology used to keep away the evil eye, Chennayin's logo is decidedly rooted in place, yet interestingly contemporary in its colour balance and composition.

If it strikes a little fear in to the hear of opponents, so much the better. Maybe performing the Haka before matches, like the All Blacks rugby team, would be just the thing to go with this logo.

At number two, proud silver medalist, as they were in real life, is the little Master's team.

Maybe it is just because I am a sucker for elephants. I love the sea of blue embellished with gold. Chennayin has the same colour combination, but the preponderance of yellow works against them while Kerala gets the balance right.  

The imagery of an Elephant playing ball brings to mind cheery spectacles and the magic scenery of God's own country. But there is just a little bit of menace in the elephant to let the opponents know that if they get corners, they are going to score goals, not set up tea shops. Sorry, this is the only joke in this post, I promise ;)

And now for the proud winners, the gold medalists in the logo race. Without doubt, and by a comfortable margin, the winners are Mumbai City FC.

This is a beautiful, elegant, timeless logo. It looks lovely in its Navy Blue, and Gold, especially in the three dimension view when you can appreciate the gold band on the edge that sets off the composition

Rejecting the standard Mumbai cliché of the Gateway of India, it instead doffs its head to the train network that plays such a central role in the lives of Mumbaikars and whose routes have defined the contours of the metropolis for over a century.  

A little bit of glitter is added by the seven stars for the original seven islands, all of it contained by the battlements of a fort. 

The Bombay Fort, whose walls have long since been demolished but which still lives on in the memory of the city, as many Bomabayites commute to 'Fort' every day to work or to go to college.The clear firing range that surrounded the original Fort walls became the maidans of Bombay - Cross Maidan and Oval Maidan and, ofcourse, the grounds at Cooperage that is the home of Bombay football.

Classic composition, elegant colour balance, rooted in its place and yet timeless. Great job guys.

Don't agree with my list - tell me what you think in the comments.

Footnotes

1. A contrast to the solid, substantial ISL trophy was the embarrassing IPL trophy from 2009, that spurred cricinfo to lament The inevitable ugliness of the IPL trophy.