Brock Beauchamp

Looks like people are pretty clearly in favor of two logos, both of which go together as complementary logos. In site usage, we need two logos: the standard "full" logo, and also an icon logo. Padres Mission:

That's kinda what I figured, which is why I didn't use it. But TBH, I also didn't check.

It is, though kerning might be different.

And none of these are 100% final; these are mockups that I've done at 10-20 minutes per design. The final logo needs to be completely re-done with more precise measurements, kerning, leading, etc.

It's intentional. Honestly, the green is going to be terrible with the site, which will be primarily orange and blue. Logos also need to be really versatile, and the more contrasting, complementary, etc. colors you throw into the mix, the more problematic the logo usage becomes. A logo needs to work in one color, then two colors, then full color (if there are more than two colors). It needs to be able to be an inch wide, or ten feet wide. There's a lot that goes into the process, and a lot that needs to be considered.

We don't use *exact* team colors because it's best to stay away from anything that could turn litigious. That includes obvious branding such as the Mets script, specific colors, etc.

We good with these five? Should we put it to a poll? By the way, we need two logos, so if we go with #3 as the primary logo, #5 will likely be the icon logo, which we also need for secondary uses.

Yeah, we can absolutely do a poll, I just wanted to gauge reactions to the options before going that route.

Oh yeah, I based that one off the subway sign for grand central, the tile sign we've all seen before.

Okay, I worked up a few more versions in Illustrator. I leaned away from the green to show what it looks like in Mets colors. I think we can establish the theme without taking it too literally with the green. Also, I found a really cool port authority sign for the GCP that I added as a design.

Ahhhhhh, that makes way more sense. I hoped to loop back on this today, but was overwhelmed trying to get community awards posted for other sites. Tomorrow, I will adapt this green sign concept into a group of designs, and you all can vote on which you like the most.

Out of curiosity, why the road sign motif? It seems out of sync with the name itself.

Let's wait a little bit, I'm still thinking things over. I want to do at least one more variant, explore more options. But I'm happy to put it to a poll when we get to that point.

Here's another pass. The lower one is an attempt to replicate the departures board from Grand Central. I like the top one more, much better without the 7.

I've been playing around with logo designs all morning, keep veering back to the metro signage idea. None of the Grand Central themes were playing with the logo. I like the concept, but I'm struggling with the "7". Will people confuse that with a player?

Reading this thread is kinda winning me over to Grand Central. Also, I like GCM as an acronym. How do we finalize this? Thumb wrestling?

I have purchased Grand Central Mets Mets Line I think Mets Line is great, but you all seem to really like Grand Central Mets. Both are good, and if all of you want to choose between them (I suspect you're all leaning GCM), that's cool with me.

We inherited North Side Baseball as a name; it goes back 25 years at this point. And it's been a struggle with the name, but whaddya gonna do? The domain is ancient by internet standards. We don't run Fish On First; we only provide the tech for it. Ely Sussman and his crew run that site.

Fish On First wrote this up, which is helpful. The ultimate fan guide to the World Baseball Classic - Miami Marlins Guides & Resources - Fish On First FISHONFIRST.COM Here is everything you need to know heading into the sixth edition of baseball's biggest international tournament.

This is a really, really good name.

I'll pop in to respond to this because yeah, I get why that's unnerving. It's for our email newsletter. Having email addresses from past users allows us to contact them and try to get them back on the forums and contributing. We don't sell information to anyone, and peoples' email addresses are never used for anything beyond the newsletter.

No, I'm not talking about fonts and such. How this place winds up looking is fairly irrelevant (aside from, y'know, a healthy smattering of blue and orange). I talking about the set-ups of the forum(s) itself. Obviously our current set-up -- with all our baseball stuff in one forum for instance rather than separate minor league, draft, other team discussions being forced elsewhere -- is the way we're used to things. Does that stay as it is or does a moderator decide how things are broken out? Our non-baseball section gets nearly as much action as the BB side but, aside from our movie sub-forum, the non-BB section is just a big catch-all for other stuff. We barely even touch on football, hoops or hockey around here and if we do a thread to two per year is sufficient to the point where a separate sub-forum for each is unnecessary. All of which isn't to say things have to stay exactly as they've been for ever and ever; we've certainly made changes over the years. But if the idea is that it's better to import a current and working forum than it would be starting from scratch then we'd rather it be imported more or less 'as is' as opposed to finding itself in a new home that doesn't feel like the old one because a top-down restructuring took place so that it most closely mimics all the other properties on the block. Oh sure. Yeah, I don't care all that much about the forum layout, other than the stuff I mentioned earlier. I'll need a front page news forum but beyond that, I don't see any reason to change much other than the primary forum name for SEO reasons. It's likely things change in time anyway. On other sites, I've removed, added, and removed forums based on commmunity requests. I've added temporary forums. I really don't feel strongly about this kind of thing; people like their forums arranged how they like them arranged. In time with growth, I'd hope we'd *want* a few more forums to break into their own thing, but that's a bridge you cross when you need to do so.

There isn't an ulterior motive. It helps with building a site around the margins to have an existing userbase, but also unnecessary, as we've found out with Padres Mission and Royals Keep. Frankly, I just LIKE doing this. It's fun. Injecting new life into an existing community that is struggling is fun for me, and it helps the site grow just a tad quicker. Do I make money in the end? Sure, at least I hope so. Doesn't everybody? We all need it to live. I pick teams and sites often based on the forums I find, not the team. I chose the Cubs because of North Side Baseball. I chose the Red Sox because of Talk Sox. I chose the Blue Jays because of Blue Jays Message Board (which became Jays Centre). Other than a few teams I hate (Cardinals, White Sox, Yankees, probably Dodgers) and therefore avoid, I don't go pursuing markets, or teams. I look for communities. You can choose to believe this or not, that's fine. But not everybody in the world is a mustachio-twirling, nefarious soul-stealer.

I'd want the community's help on that. I should have the word Mets in it for SEO reasons. We were really struggling with the Jays site name. One of the users came up with Jays Centre, and everybody loved it immediately.