Although the history of the professional basketball team Portland Trail Blazers has lasted around half a century, its logo has been remarkably consistent in its core emblem, which has a hidden meaning behind it.
The visual identity of Portland Trail Blazers is extremely stylish and cool, and it has always been like that, since the very first version, created for the club in 1970, it looked more like a fashion or music label logo, executed in a timeless black and red color palette and using abstract sleek shapes.
The original logo for Portland Trail Blazers was created in 1970 and featured an abstract image composed of two intertwined parts — the left one, formed by ten black smooth lines, and the right one in red. The lines of the black segments were pointing up, while the red stripes — down. The wordmark was split into two with “Portland” above the image, and “Trail Blazers” under it.
The emblem was rotated and placed on the left from the enlarged “Blazers” lettering in 1990. The new wordmark featured a black italicized Sans-serif typeface with a wide red shadow, looking masculine and powerful. The whole emblem was pretty well balanced, with its clean lines and neat contours.
The redesign of 2002 added sharpness to the iconic emblem, drawing it in black, red, and gray and slightly sharpening the ends of the lines in order to accent on the danger and strength of the basketball club. This was a version without any lettering and only stayed with the team for a year.
The new gray and red emblem was placed on a black geometric badge in 2003, with the “Portland Blazers” wordmark placed above and under it and executed in two different styles, with the upper part written in white custom font with elongated bars, and the bottom — with gray gradients and red shadow.
The “Trail” part was added to the bottom line of the wordmark in 2004. The lines of all the logo elements were refined and made thinner and more elegant, while the color palette and composition remained untouched, and reflected the professionalism and determination of the Portland basketball club.
The redesign of 2017 kept the iconic emblem, but redrawn it and placed it on a white background above the refreshed lettering in black. The new inscription has its “Portland” part capitalized and enlarged, and the “Trail Blazers” placed under it in smaller letters and executed in a simple Sans-serif typeface.
While the glyphs are generally rather generic (and perfectly legible), the letters “P” and “T” boast distinctive sharp “claws” implying that playing with the Blazers and having them as your opponents can be quite an unpleasant experience.
In spite of its simplicity, the color palette, which includes only red (PMS 186), black, and white, works great for this type of design. It creates a contrast and eye-catching image. The same combination has been used on the Portland Trail Blazer logo throughout most of its history, with the exception of the period between 2004 and 2007, when grey was added to the color scheme.
RED
PANTONE: PMS 186 C
CMYK: (0, 91, 76, 6)
RGB: (224, 58, 62)
HEX COLOR: #E03A3E;
BLACK
PANTONE: PMS BLACK 6 C
CMYK: (30, 0, 0, 100)
RGB: (6, 25, 34)
HEX COLOR: #000000;