Carolina Panthers

On October 26, 1993, professional football came to the Carolinas as the NFL granted Charlotte a franchise over St. Louis, Baltimore, and Memphis. The initial team brass chose the geographic identifier Carolina to connect with fans across both North and South Carolina, while Panthers was chosen to characterize the ideal football team: powerful, sleek, and strong. And while there was some initial push back from the league, the Panthers were clad in black, blue, and silver from the start. They would play their first game in 1995, a preseason clash at the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio against the NFL’s other expansion team, the Jaguars. They would wear the black jerseys with silver pants and helmets. Electric blue accents were featured on the shoulders and down each leg. The away whites, which they wore early in the season at home as well, paired their silver helmets with white jerseys and pants, black numbers, and electric blue accents. The panther logo appeared on the helmet, sleeves, and hips on these uniforms and would stay there until the 2019 season when the logo was removed from the hip area on the pants. In the final week of the 1998 season, the Panthers would opt for a look they would only wear once: white jerseys and silver pants. The next new uniform option would be the addition of electric blue alternate jerseys in 2002. Ten years later, the Cardiac Cats would add a tweaked logo and black pants to the mix but only wore said pants with their black jerseys until the 2018 season. The Panthers also participated in the Color Rush program from 2015 to 2017, wearing all blue uniforms on occasion over those three seasons. My Carolina Panthers redesign starts by removing the superfluous silver and focusing on black, electric blue, and white. From there I developed a silhouette of a panther standing on the state of North Carolina with a CP front-and-center. That icon is combines with a tall, sleek sans serif typeface to create the team signature. A panther head in profile is used as the secondary mark. Throw in a CP football mark and the classic panther logo, and the logo set is complete. I decided to trade in the silver helmets for a black gloss shell with the new primary icon on each side. The new black and electric blue helmets pair with a black home jersey with blue type and slash marks along the collarbones and sleeves. The away white jerseys keep the slashes blue but opt for black type, while the alternate jerseys are electric blue with black claw marks and typography. The home, away, and alternate jerseys pair with either white or black pants featuring a clawed blue stripe and the football logo on each hip. The throwback jerseys bring back the inaugural home jerseys alongside silver helmets and pants.