The ice hockey team Detroit Red Wings has been incredibly conservative in its brand identity. The iconic logo introduced in 1933 was tweaked for the last time in 1948 and hasn’t experienced any updates ever since.
Before becoming Red Wings, the hockey club from Detroit was known under the names Detroit Cougars and Falcons, with the logo redesigns held almost once a year before finally finding its iconic emblem in the 1930s.
What are Detroit Red Wings?
Detroit Red Wings is the name of a professional hockey club from Detroit, Michigan, which was established in 1926. The club has the Little Caesars Arena as its home stadium, which is owned by Ilitch Holdings and managed by Steve Yzerman. The Red Wings have all their uniforms and visual identity in red and white.
The very first emblem, created for Detroit Cougars in 1927, featured a smooth gothic-style letter “D” in scarlet red. It was a simple yet bright and elegant logo, which represented the passion, power, and confidence of the team from Michigan.
In 1928 the gothic “D” was refined and made sharper, now it was drawn in white and placed on a red traditional crest with a double white and red outline. Though the color palette remained the same, the emblem started looking more delightful and bright.
After the change of the team’s name into Detroit Falcons in 1931, the logo was also redrawn. The new visual identity was composed of a two-leveled wordmark in yellow and red, where the “Detroit” part was arched above the straight line of “Falcons”. The strong and bold serif typeface looked energetic and dynamic on yellow letters with a thin red outline.
In October 1932 the team was renamed Red Wings and the new logo was introduced at the beginning of 1933. The iconic emblem we all know today is fully based on the version of 1933, a red and white wheel with two wings to its right. The original logo was executed in a light shade of red and had many white accents on the image.
The winged wheel was refined in 1935. First of all, the color palette was switched to a darker one, with red closer to burgundy and evoking a sense of professionalism and expertise. The wings got slightly shortened and now had more red than white elements.
The redesign of 1949 brought Detroit Red Wings the badge which is still in use today. It is a cleaned and modified version of the logo from the 1930s, with the wings elongated and directed more up. The elegant lines soften the bright and even aggressive red color palette, showing the hockey club as the determined and confident one.
Having purchased the franchise in 1932, millionaire James Norris decided to change its brand identity completely. When he was young, he used to belong to the MAAA Winged Wheelers. The athletes of the club wore kits with a logo depicting a winged wheel. So, Norris decided that such an emblem would be a perfectly natural one for the Motor City.
The club got a new logo, which was the iconic winged wheel emblem in red, and a new name. Interestingly enough, the brand identity marked a turnaround in the team’s fortunes. With this logo Red Wings managed to win their first Stanley Cup in 1936.
The red script featured on the Detroit Red Wings logo, with the extended ends of the “R’s” and the “unnecessary” elements on the “D” and “W,” has a retro feel. It looks nothing like the sleek and minimalistic contemporary typefaces. It’s hardly a surprise since the wordmark was introduced back in 1948 and hasn’t been modified ever since.
Minimalistic and contrast, the color scheme includes only an eye-catching shade of red (Pantone 186 C, HEX: #C8102E) and white for the background.
RED
PANTONE: 186 C
HEX COLOR: #CE1126;
RGB: (206,17,38)
CMYK: (2,100,85,6)
WHITE
HEX COLOR: #FFFFFF;
RGB: (255,255,255)
HSB: (225,0,100)
CMYK: (0,0,0,0)