The Sweet, and Not-So-Sweet Logos of NCAA March Madness

This year’s winners (so far) in the NCAA basketball tournament are also winners on the design front, as many of them feature recently re-designed logos that far surpass, in one way or another, the earlier designs they’ve clearly outgrown. Below are the Final Four participants in the 2014 Before-and-After NCAA Logo Design.

UCONN

BEFORE:

This logo wasn’t terrible, though a little too friendly to inspire the necessary animalistic ferocity among players and fans. UCONN finally let their inner dog out with the following darker, sleeker, more intimidating touchup.

AFTER:

BAYLOR

BEFORE:

The Baylor Bears, on the other hand, needed to tone their logo down a bit. Not only did it suffer from a particularly bad case of the 90’s, but the combination of the logo’s menacing snarl, rabid eyes, and Wolverine claws reportedly inspired fans and players to fall down and play dead. The Bears’ new logo looks a whole lot classier with its deeper greens, browns, and cleaner lines — and no one is fearing for their lives.

AFTER:

MICHIGAN STATE

ALTERNATE LOGO:

This has never been the main logo for the Spartans. It was originally designed as a tribute to the drunk MSU football fans that attended winter games shirtless, and has come to have some sort of association with the school mascot. We hope this logo stays on the bench as much as possible, where it belongs.

MAIN LOGO:

SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY

BEFORE:

The original SDSU logo was uninspired, loud, and fairly controversial; the move toward a minimal, type-centric redesign with a simple but bold color palette was a smart one.

AFTER: