We're now over 36 hours after the long anticipated unveiling of the new Miami Marlins logos and uniform set. That amount of time elapsed now allows one to take an objective look at the set and give some opinions. Let's get right to it.
So I don't have to link everything, please check out this post on the Colorwerx blog that has the graphical version of all the logos, wordmarks, and jersey name/number styling. I'll try to add some links throughout the post with photos of the real jerseys.
These leaked a while back and despite Samson and Co. saying they weren't entirely accurate, they pretty much were. As with much of the set, it was a good idea, just not executed very well. The 'M' with the minimalistic marlin is pretty nice. When in a no color format, as you can see in this t-shirt in the team shop, it looks very nice..
There are two ways in which things went awry . First are the color choices for the Marlin. The top half of the fish with the fin is orange, while the bottom half is blue. It should be the other way around. That's actually how a real Marlin looks, and it would have been cool for it to be pretty accurate despite having a minimalistic look. The other miscalculation is the splotch of yellow. There either needs to be more of it, or none at all. It's like they just added it in because they forgot it was one of their colors. If they had put a splash in the Marlin it would probably look better
Overall the home set isn't bad. The font used for "Miami" is pretty nice. My main complaint is that the lettering is black. As you'll see, they used far too much black in the set. For each jersey, they should have picked one of the three colors (blue, orange, yellow) and made that the focus; use the other two colors as accents. Instead, you have a lot of black and white, then three colors spread out seemingly at random.
Perhaps it's the plain white background that allows it to still have some pop. The orange trim also helps. Maybe it's just because it's pretty hard to mess up a home white jersey
So pretty much what held together the white jersey is gone and this jersey suffers. It's dull. The white lettering on the gray background just doesn't have any spunk. This is the jersey that was most in need of using orange or blue as the lettering. The back of the jersey, with the orange drop shadow for the numbers helps, but overall this is a very bland look.
This seems to be the one a lot of people like. I can't say I dislike it, but I've never been a fan of the black alternate. It made sense for the Florida Marlins with their simple black and teal scheme, but now that the team has three vibrant colors, it seems pointless. Perhaps the idea is a "Night on South Beach," with the dark sky lit up by the neon lights of Ocean Drive. If that's the intent, then so be it. Again, the lettering should have been blue or orange. The team has all these colors but actually isn't using them that much. I do dig the orange numbers though.
This is the most polarizing of the jerseys and I am on the side that loves it. Finally one of the teams colors shines through. I think what most people have against the orange is that we will look too much like the Mets or the Giants. This jersey though is very unique and doesn't look like either of those teams. My one complaint for this one is the use of silver, instead of blue for the letter outlining.
In the style guide and the team shop there is an orange hat, presumably for use with this jersey. During the unveiling it was absent though. Honestly, as much as I like the orange jersey and dislike the overuse of black, I hope the orange hat doesn't make too many appearances. It's tough to pull off an all orange hat without looking like a parking lot worker. I wish they had made a blue cap, maybe with an orange bill.
Final Thoughts
You know for all the talk about rainbow-rific uniforms and wildly bright logos, the set is pretty bland. Take a look at this photo. The first thing you notice is a lot of black and white. I like the forward thinking by the team but they didn't 100 percent commit to any of the colors and because of that, the set suffers. In particular, the use, or lack of yellow bothers me. It looks very out of place. C'est la vie. Maybe they will make some tweaks in the coming years.