The blog Hockey by Design is ranking the NHL logos from worst to best. They have Anaheim at #30 (worst), then Colorado, then the Kings:
Hockey by Design — Third Worst Logo: Los Angeles Kings
The distinction of having the third worst team logo in the NHL goes to the LA Kings. The Kings would be much higher up the list if they hadn’t changed their official logo from last season to the current one. They switched it up over the summer by pulling the reverse Starbucks: instead of taking a detail-oriented logo and continuously zooming in, they decided to take a detail-oriented logo, zoom out, and add clutter. Yeehaw!
[…I]t’s a […] call-back to their logo during the Gretzky era, with the homeplate shape (um…they know we’re not playing baseball, right?) and the return to black-and-white. But in this case, the logic is somewhat flawed.
Creating a pleasantly detailed logo like they previously had (did you notice the nice little detail of the jewels that double as suns?) and then just shrinking it down and placing it within a container is generally not a well-conceived design option. Why? One, you’re condensing all the information in an already small area, creating elements that are not really visible. If you look at the image at the top of this post, you can barely tell it’s a crown, and you will never see all the details, creating just a general mess. […] Two, you’re just creating a temptation to add more information that may or may not be necessary, and anything you add has to be weighed very carefully. If you make it too busy, it becomes a messy blob. […]
The other thing is the font choice for “LA”. It’s truly awful in it’s context. It actually reminds me of either a Chinese pagoda or bamboo, and we all know how much in common bamboo and hockey have. […][The lettering is] too big, too strange looking and just doesn’t work without [the word] “Kings”, which gives the “LA” text much more context.
And what’s with the stripe through the middle? Is it really necessary?
I’m not a huge fan of the purple from their previous font, but at least purple is considered a regal colour, which makes sense with their name. Black-and-white? Well, it’s a bold choice, but when the background for your jerseys are a clean sheet of white ice, black and white aren’t really going to stand out much.
So, apparently LA wanted a new look this year, and they went with a tiny crown with too much detail, in a baseball shaped homeplate with bamboo font. Yeah. They used the same logo as last year in a way that doesn’t work, combined with a legacy logo that never made much sense and using the same font that doesn’t work in this context. That’s just horribly lazy designing.
But, hey, at least they’re not as bad as these monstrosities.