Is the sleek new White Sox logo sexier than intended?

By Rosie Hilder
published

American baseball team's new mark could be misread.

white sox logo
(Image credit: Contino)

American baseball team Chicago White Sox have had a huge range of logos in the past – the team's featured 10 primary logos, 20 headwear marks and a whopping 77 lettering variations adorning its jerseys. Despite this logo overload, the name of the team, 'White Sox' hadn't been used on the team's jerseys since 1990. 

Now, design agency Contino, has rectified this by creating a sleek new 'White Sox' logo for the team's home jersey. The new wordmark draws on elements from the previous 'White Sox' logos as well as elements of the 'Chicago' script also in use in the team's visual identity (see our free script fonts (opens in new tab) for more cursive fonts). That script font is a custom typeface called South Side Script, and has one feature that may be slightly contentious (more on that later). 

White Sox logo: logo design

The White Sox logos of 1947 (left), 1987-1990 (middle) and 2019 (right) (Image credit: Contino)

Contino (opens in new tab) says the new logo "features minor bumps and hiccups along the contours of the letters as a nod to the imperfections of baseball’s rich aesthetic history while still creating a unique mark with its own distinguished personality."

We like the reframing of "a mess of different identities" to "rich aesthetic history". We also see what Contino means about the bumpiness of some of the forms, such as the 'W' and the 'e', but overall think the wordmark pulls off looking incredibly smooth. It also looks extra cool in-situ on the jerseys (below). So far, so good. 

For more on creating great logos, see our guide to logo design (opens in new tab).

white sox logo on jersey

The new logo in-situ (Image credit: Contino)

There's only only thing that jumps out at us, though. At first glance, we saw 'White Sex'. We fully admit that this may be a product of our dirty minds, and of course, when we looked again, it seems obvious that it doesn't. There's also another 'e' to make it absolutely clear that the 'o' is in fact, an 'o'. But we still can't unsee it. Is this what Contino meant by a hiccup, we wonder?

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Rosie Hilder
Rosie Hilder

Rosie Hilder is Creative Bloq's Deputy Editor. After beginning her career in journalism in Argentina – where her blogging prowess led her to become Deputy Editor of Time Out Buenos Aires – she moved back to the UK and joined Future Plc in 2016. Since then, she's worked as Operations Editor on art and design magazines, including Computer Arts, 3D World and Paint & Draw, and got the 'Apple bug' when working on US title, Mac|Life. In 2018, she left the world of print behind and moved to Creative Bloq, where she helps take care of the daily management of the site, including growing the site's reach through trying to please the Google Gods, getting involved in events, such as judging the Brand Impact Awards, and helping make sure its content serves its readers as best it can. Her interests lie in branding and illustration, tech and sexism, and plenty more in-between.

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