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jackkmart · 05-26-2022, 12:12 PM

What the hell is this?

This is a very real and serious proposal for a rebrand or expansion of any SMJHL team/ franchise. I hereby present the Kmart Cool Guys, the coolest hockey brand in the world, as far as I'm concerned. Now, you may immediately notice that the franchise doesn't have a specified home city or region, it just says 'Kmart'... So what gives? Well, in all my humility I decided wherever the team goes isn't as important as the cool guy who inspired the franchise to begin with so I decided wherever the team ends up playing, the name will always be in reference to me, jackkmart.

Unfortunately, I chose my username for all my accounts many years ago and it's just sort of stuck. I am fully aware that Kmart isn't super cool.

Branding

First a basic branding overview:

The primary logo is a very cool guy looking off to the left sporting a confident, but subtle smile, killer shades, and a mustache for the ages. I dubbed him 'Mr. Cool', he will also serve as our team mascot. The character is modeled loosely off of some of the quintessential cool guys from the 80s, Goose from Top Gun being a personal favorite of mine, but he can really represent whomever you want. The aviators are perhaps the most striking part of the logo being colored by what I called the "Guy Fieiri Gradient" (Coincidentally named after another cool guy )inspired by his frosted tips and frequently flame decal-ed apparel.

This gradient will appear throughout the Cool Guys branding and I think it really separates us from other teams as gradients, especially none as cool as this, are pretty uncommon in sports today. For shame.

The secondary logo is pretty self-explanatory, it's a frontal view of a pair of aviators again with the same Guy Fieiri gradient and the letters C and G rising from the bottom of the lenses, obviously representing 'Cool Guys'.

Finally, the word mark. This one is pretty simple. A lot of the same design points follow from the previous paragraphs. It's a wordmark... How much can I say?

The color palette can be seen in the top right. Throughout the brand, I utilize the following colors: Eastwood Blue, Bueller Red, Stieb Silver, and obviously the Guy Fieiri Gradient.

Jerseys

I usually go all out for uniform designs, as they are my favorite thing to do, but I already spent far too long on this concept so I kinda burned out and just threw some together although the alternate is certainly unique...

Home

I always liked the idea of a team that sports blue, red, and yellow (or gold) and I think it fits very well with the cool guy aesthetic. The yellow here is more of an accent but I think it works well to separate the team from other blue and red teams (yawn... boring).

The shoulders also sport our secondary logo, the cool guy aviators, as is also the case on the away jersey.

Away

Nothing much changes here except for the fact the colors get inverted and I decided to drop the striping on the shoulders for a more clean look.

Alternate

NOW WAIT! Before you turn away in disgust, whilst simultaneously proclaiming how ugly it is I implore you to consider how cool it is... Have I won you over yet? Of course, I have.

This is the Cool Guys' final form, a truly bodacious jersey only to be worn on special occasions. Guy Fieiri's dirty paws are all over this bad boy and in future iterations, I may just make it all flames instead, tell me what you think.

Eastwood Blue has been dropped here in favor of a shade of black to more readily accentuate the 80s style gradient and wordmark logo.

Also on the shoulders, you can see an alternative version of the primary which you can get a closer look at later on in this article.

As a bonus, I also created two extra alternate jerseys you can see below. One is a faux back idea using purple instead of navy and the gradient is mostly dropped in favor of yellow. Meanwhile the other is an 'away alternate' or something to that effect which is just another take on the away jersey with some alterations and the second version of the primary logo on the front.

Conclusion

First of all, if you've managed to make it all the way through this post you are a hero and a certified Cool Guy! How rad!

Obviously, I fully expect the HO to swiftly replace and or expand the J so that the Cool Guys may take the ice to take what is rightfully theirs: righteous dubs.

In all seriousness, this was pretty fun to do and quite clearly isn't meant to be taken seriously, I mostly did it as a way to practice my logo making/ branding ability as I really suck at making humanoid logos and I really need to work on it and I think this one came out pretty well.

Although this article is mostly satirical I would still like to see what you guys think and I would really appreciate some constructive criticism!

Also, a quick shoutout to @nour who probably has no idea who I am but I saw his Toronto rebrand and was feeling slightly inspired.

Okay, that's about it, if you want to join the Cool Guys please feel free to reach out to me on discord (jackkmart#3917) and I can make your character a custom Cool Guys jersey or something.

Also, if you for some reason are interested in seeing the full-res images and stuff here is an Imgur album link with all the stuff!

Hopefully, this was somewhat enjoyable if not a little insufferable. Thanks for reading, go Cool Guys!

Final Edit: I even got so bored I made them a goal horn