After a long wait, professional hockey is finally coming to Seattle. To commemorate the occasion, I’ve decided to draft potential logos based on speculative team names. For this first study, I’m going with the name that seems to be at the forefront of rumors and is one of my personal favorite options: the Seattle Sockeyes.
As much as I love the ubiquitous greens and blues of Seattle sports, the sockeye salmon lends itself to a unique color scheme of deep pinks and whites. A black primary sets a strong base for white detailing and neon accents. While a more traditional crimson or maroon would work well enough in lieu of the not-exactly-magenta, there’s an opportunity here to build a team identity around a color that is A) not present in any other NHL team logos or wordmarks, and B) not present in any other Seattle team logos or wordmarks.
For the fish itself, I focused the design around clarity of image, visual flow, and cultural evocation. The entire logo is built out of the single, long curve of the fish’s backside. White cutaways, magenta color blocking, and black extensions off the body make visual rhythm towards the focus of the logo, the head. At the head we break the curves and introduce more detailing to halt your eye. As with any good Seattle sports logo, some Salish-art stylings influence the geometry here.
More to that last point, the black-white-magenta(ish) color scheme corresponds nicely to the black-white-red colors often found in Pacific Northwest Salish art.
