By sticking with a helmet as their new primary logo, the Browns gave fans a glimpse of the future when they unveiled the updated mark Tuesday.
The evolved logo features a brighter orange helmet than its predecessor with a brown face mask instead of a gray one. It’s a reflection of the new helmets Browns players will wear next season.
The Browns will roll out their new helmets and new uniforms during a showcase beginning at 7:30 p.m. April 14 at the Cleveland Convention Center.
A Browns spokesman said the team used helmets with brown face masks in some seasons between 1952-62. However, the spokesman said the team’s logo had never featured a helmet with a brown face mask until now.
“We think the orange brings more energy and vibrancy to the logo,” Browns President Alec Scheiner said Tuesday during an interview with reporters at team headquarters. “It’s also a hint of what’s to come with the uniforms. And then the brown face mask, we think, brings toughness.
“What we wanted to accomplish here and what our fans essentially gave us permission to do — and you’ll hear this later on with the uniforms — is push forward but don’t lose track of our tradition.”
The Browns also released a new secondary logo to honor the Dawg Pound. It features a snarling dog’s face on a bright orange background. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Dawg Pound, the nickname bestowed upon a section of bleachers behind the east end zone.
The team also will keep Brownie the Elf as a secondary logo, Scheiner said. The color of the elf’s wardrobe will be the new bright orange.
Updating the primary logo and the Dawg Pound logo was a two-year process, Scheiner said. The team relied on focus groups and surveys to gauge fans’ opinions and then asked the NFL and Nike to develop designs.
So why not stray from a helmet as the primary logo after so much research and work?
“We spent a lot of time discussing it,” Scheiner said. “The most important thing is that we’re the only NFL team whose primary mark matches the helmet, and we thought that departing from that would be too radical a departure, but kind of evolving that logo would be a good step for us.
“We get feedback from our fans. There are some fans who would prefer we don’t change anything, and there are a whole lot that would like us to evolve even faster.”
Scheiner said the new uniforms will represent a more radical change than the primary logo does, but he added, “We’re still keeping things that our fans care about.”
Merchandise with the new logos has yet to be released.
“Almost all of the merchandise will be rolled out with the uniforms,” Scheiner said.
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