San Francisco 49ers

The San Francisco 49ers have brought football to the Bay Area since 1946. Over their first 20 years, they experimented with different combinations of pants and helmets centered around scarlet and white jerseys. Some early versions of the Niners’ uniforms featured silver helmets and pants, others flanked with gold. The team also used a scarlet helmet with silver or white pants in the 1950s. The team’s classic look of gold helmets and pants with a three-striped jersey would first appear in 1964, while the team’s SF-Oval logo would first appear in 1962 on silver lids. The SF-Oval would become the team’s primary mark in 1968, six seasons after its debut. The logo that preceded the SF-Oval was a rootin’ tootin’ prospector with a pair of pistols dressed in red. The team used an alternate shield logo containing a large 49 and alternating red and white sections from 1965 through 1972 that would influence some future anniversary patches. After the team’s period of graphic stability from 1968 through 1995, the Niners decided to tweak their logo and darken their color palette in 1996. The black border around the SF-Oval was thickened and gold accents were added. The biggest change, however, was the scarlet becoming a deeper cardinal red. The uniforms of this era reflected the change, with the new red used and drop shadows added to the numbers and sleeve stripes. During the first two years of this redesign, the team wore white pants as a tribute their early years, but returned to gold pants for the 1998 season. In 2009, the Niners would revive their classic scarlet red and return to the iconic uniforms, but with a twist. Due to the sleeves of football uniforms shrinking over the years, there was considerably less real estate for the team’s three stripe pattern. The 49ers decided to move the TV numbers up to the shoulder and place the stripes in a place where they would be truncated on most players, living in the armpit of the jersey. In 2017, when the League switched to a new Nike jersey template, the issue would be addressed again, but with two bolder stripes on the sleeve instead of three and none of the stripes being placed in the armpit of the jersey. My 49ers redesign focuses on the history of the 49ers name. I developed a primary logo of a bearded prospector charging forward with the team name below in a custom chunky slab serif font. I added touches of silver to the design instead of black accents as a nod to the team’s early years. The alternate logo consists of a pickaxe against a scarlet football containing the city’s SF initials and a beveled border. To complement the primary and alternate marks, I created an SF mark in the new typeface, and kept the SF-Oval logo for throwback purposes. The typeface, as mentioned, is a chunky slab serif with squared letterforms, rounded corners and western flourishes from the Gold Rush era. The numbers have a very subtle drop shadow added. When looking at designing uniforms for the 49ers, I wanted to address the trend of shrinking sleeves that has forced design compromises in the past. My solution was to move the three stripes from the sleeves to the body. I also took the liberty of making them gold because a team named after the Gold Rush should feature the hue on their jerseys. The alternate logo appears on the player’s left chest, while the charging prospector is worn on gold helmets with silver facemasks. The home jerseys are scarlet with gold stripes and white type, and are paired with either gold pants or scarlet for a monochrome red scheme. The away uniforms keep the striping gold with red type and can be worn with gold or white pants. When approaching the alternate uniforms, I wanted to prominently feature gold without developing a gold jersey. I opted for a charcoal grey set with red stripes and gold numbers. The throwback inspired uniforms recall the days of Montana with a scarlet and white jersey and the traditional SF-Oval mark on the helmets.