Delhi Capitals, formerly known as Delhi Daredevils, is one of the ten teams, competing in the Indian Premier League. Founded in 2008, the club can’t boast many wins and titles, and is one of the league’s outsiders, having only appeared in its final once – in 2020.
Cricket is one of the most popular and widely played sports in the world, with a rich history and diverse formats of play. From the first games played on the streets of Great Britain to international tournaments and world championships, cricket has remained a favorite sport for generations. Today, cricket continues to grow strongly, attracting new fans and players from all over the world. But the country with the largest number of fans of the sport today is India.
Cricket originated in England in the 16th and 17th centuries and quickly gained the status of a national sport. And then the British spread the game throughout their colonies. 1721 British sailors first played cricket in India. In 1792 Calcutta, the center of the British colony, formed the first cricket club, which still exists today.
Now India has not only been successful in international competitions but has also turned cricket into a multi-billion dollar industry. Established in 2008, the Indian Premier League (IPL), which is run under T20 rules, is growing rapidly, with matches being watched in many South Asian countries. The league consists of ten teams, and one of them is the Delhi Capitals, which was also established in 2008, but as the Delhi Daredevils.
The team has never won any league titles and is considered to be one of the weakest, however, the owners of the club are doing their best to improve its results, and one of the steps included a complete rebranding. In December 2018, the club revealed its new name and visual identity. The Delhi Daredevils became the Delhi Capitals, with the tigers appearing on the official logo. The owners of the Capitals mentioned, that the new concept was inspired by the design of the parliament house.
What is Delhi Capitals?
Delhi Capitals is the name of a professional cricket team from India, which was founded in 2008 under the name Delhi Daredevils (the name was changed in 2018). Today the club is a member of the Indian Premier League, the strongest cricket competition in India.
In terms of visual identity, the club’s history can be split into two periods — the Daredevils (from 2008 to 2018) and the Capitals, which started in 2018, and still lasts today.
The original logo of the Delhi Daredevils Cricket Club introduced in 2008, was executed in a red and white color palette with small orange accents. The main element of the logo was a cricket ball in fire, placed at the right part of the banner, with the white lettering, contoured in thick red, set on the left. It was all about passion and determination.
The redesign of 2012 has cleaned up and refined the contours of the Daredevils’ logo adding volume to the text-part, by creating a shadow with a distinctive black underline. The graphical part of the logo was also strengthened, with more red on the ball, and brighter flames around it.
In 2014 the logo was redesigned again, and the team introduced its modern and laconic version. The ball in fire was replaced by a stylized minimalistic flame image in red and dark yellow, and the name of the team was written in plain blue uppercase characters, against a white background with no frames of additional elements
The last Delhi Daredevils logo was introduced in 2018 and only stayed in use for several months. The known was kept untouched, just enlarged a little, while the “Delhi Daredevils” lettering was replaced by the “DD” monogram, in the same blue color and the same sans-serif typeface. The letters were overlapping, with the upper one contoured in white.
The complete rebranding of the club’s identity was held at the end of 2018, and the new logo was revealed at the beginning of December. The new concept is based on a solid blue crest with the Capitol roof replacing the traditional crown on top. The body of the crest depicts three lion’s heads in red, blue, and white, and a white two-leveled lettering above the image, set in an edgy designer font. The bottom of the logo has a thin yellow contour.
The bold uppercase lettering from the primary logo of the Delhi Capitals cricket club is set in a sharp stylized font, with triangular elements on top of the characters, set on the sides. As for the basis of the inscription, it looks somewhat close to such typefaces as ITC Machinetrade and Structia.
The color palette of the Delhi Capitals’ visual identity is a combination of deep blue, white, red, and yellow, where blue stands for stability, white for reliability, red for passion, and yellow — for energy.