Lehigh Valley Phantoms

6

This article is the thrid version of an article originally written 2004 February 24 and subsequently rewritten 2009 November 1

There are certain names that, while being perfectly good names, don't really lend themselves to good logos. The image may be a powerful one, but it isn't a visual image for some reason or another. For these teams to come up with a logo as good as most other teams is even more impressive because of the handicap they're dealing with.

This is exactly what the Lehigh Valley Phantoms have done.

The handicap here is obvious: phantoms, by definition, are invisible. It is, by definition, impossible to draw something that is invisible. But in spite of this, the Phantoms logo does indeed include a drawing of a phantom. The outline of the logo is essentially a gateway to darkness, and inside that darkness are two glowing eyes looking straight at you. It is a stroke of brilliance.

I have mixed feelings about the "wings" on the sides. On the one hand, it doesn't quite look right. Blur your eyes just right, and the bottom part gives the appearance of a ZZ Top beard that has been combed sideways. But it needed something more than just the shape of the face, and it wouldn't have worked to have a regular shape like a square or circle. (A circle would have been particularly bad. It would have made the logo look like the "Have a nice day!" face's evil twin.) Borrowing a detail from the parent team's logo was as good as anything.

The one area where the logo does truly drop the ball is in the wordmark. Quite simply it isn't necessary. Worse, the wordcount keeps growing with every move. When they were the Philadelphia Phantoms they had the word single word "Phantoms" written in a weird scrawl above the phantom; when they moved to Glens Falls NY and became the Adirondack Phantoms they moved the scrawled "Phantoms" to below the phantom and added "Adirondack" above it; now that they're in Allentown they've got three words in the logo: "Lehigh Valley Phantoms". Really, they should just do away with the words altogether. The logo stands on its own.

Still, it's a very good logo for a name where one would have thought a good logo to be impossible. Rather than get hung up on the fact that some minor details are less than perfect, we should simply give them credit for the good logo and be done with it.

Final Score: 6 points.
Penalties: Region, 3 pts; Name-Logo, 2 pts; Fade, 6 pts.
Bonuses: Cool-Logo, -5 pts.