Review: Dallas Roughnecks (AUDL)

Part of the annual series critiquing professional ultimate team logos and nicknames.

Team: Dallas Roughnecks

Web: http://www.dallasroughnecks.com/ // twitter: @DRoughnecks

Representation: City // League: AUDL

Disc within logo?: Yes. // Ultimate element in team name?: No.

Background: The name Roughnecks was chosen in a fan contest and relates to the oil and gas industry, a defining part of Texas history and economic growth. Per an AUDL preseason article: "As the name implies, The Roughnecks will be all about tough defense."

In an online logo design contest, Roughnecks is described as: "a slang term for a person whose occupation is hard-manual labor working on oil rigs. The term applies across a number of industries, but is most commonly associated with oil rigs."

The Roughnecks spent a measly $100 in an online design contest for their original logo:

First impression(s) from SLUDGE: The oil derrick within the original design (above) looks like some abnormal human anatomy related to the groin region. In the current logo, the blue collar worker demonstrates unorthodox throwing mechanics with an overhand grip on the disc with a backhand wind up; backwards backhand, huh? Generally, there's something Clockwork Orange-y about the hat-wearing, sneering figure in the Dallas logo.

Eli's Eval: This is very inconsistent. The first thing that jumps out at me about this logo is it looks like someone used autotrace (an Adobe Illustrator tool that converts raster images to vector images automatically) to convert a rough sketch, then cleaned it up a bit. The logo is very inconsistently rendered and the line weight and positive negative space shift with no thought to form, weight or structure: the face is filled in with white while the arms are outlined, the hardhat is filled solid with the outline color and no detail whatsoever.

The main logo has two hands on the disc but the one of their jerseys has one. I think the logo was redrawn after they printed their jerseys because the stand-alone logo has a small highlight on the helmet and more finesse on the face and body. The jersey has a squishy oil derrick on the chest of the the Roughneck but the standalone has it below the logotype.

Although the overall shape of icon and logotype is a triangle/pyramid the work is very awkward and busy. There doesn't seem to have been any thought given to the different situations the logo would be needed in so if gets cropped awkwardly on the Big D's discs plus there is a completely different font used for city and team name in several other situations.

I do like the ghosted oil derricks on the shirts and shorts of their official gear – very reminiscent of some of the better Black Tide unis from the 90's and early 00's.

:Eli's Grades:
Grade: C
On Logo: C+
On Typography: C-