Lakeland Flying Tigers

www.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t570

The Flying Tigers logo is both a clever visual metaphor and classic automobile-aircraft style emblem executed in a style harkening back to the glory days of the team's namesake. It pays appropriate tribute to the team's historic military ties, acts as an apt mascot for a competitive athletic team and hints at its affiliation with the MLB's Detroit Tigers. Well balanced aesthetically, apt colors and appropriate baseball-style typography.

Credit: Plan B. Branding

Toldeo Mud Hens

web.minorleaguebaseball.com/index.jsp?sid=t512

The Mud Hens logo employs classic baseball typography and colors to evoke the romantic feel of the sport's American heritage characterized by the memories of yesteryear's happy summers and simpler times. The polished, family friendly illustration is set inside a visually pleasing symmetry and cleverly framed by an egg shape.

Credit: Studio Simon

Bradenton Marauders

www.bradentonmarauders.com

Structurally symmetrical and thematically expressive, the logo of Minor League Baseball's Bradenton Marauders is beautifully illustrated, integrating its pirate mascot into a broader elegant style associated with the romanticized 17th and 18th century Golden Age of "marauding" pirates. Every element, from its typography to its decorative swirls, combine to produce a cohesive expression of the team's novel identity.

Credit: Studio Simon

Arizona Diamondbacks, Alternate

arizona.diamondbacks.mlb.com

The trade-off between using a monogram and a graphic is often a choice between being descriptive (usually geographically, see the New York Yankees monogram) and expressing personality (see Baltimore Oreoles). What the Arizona Diamondbacks logo achieves is both with its D-shaped snake (diamondback), whose creativity and expression breathes personality and life into the team's identity, something for which the league's logos are not typically known.

Schaumburg Boomers

www.boomersbaseball.com

The logo of the Schaumburg Boomers is a great example of the type of creative freedom afforded to minor league baseball teams. From the quirky, localized mascot (a 'boomer' being a male prairie chicken) to its strikingly executed illustration incorporating iconic baseball elements and typography, this is the kind of unique mark which excites fans and supporters.

Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs

www.ironpigsbaseball.com

As a testament to the area's rich steel history, Minor League Baseball's Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs are named after raw steel, known colloquially as "pig iron". Quite apart from its practical strengths - simple lines, basic color palette and balanced proportions - the logo is a wonderful visual interpretation of the team's identity which has been resoundingly endorsed as evidenced by the team's strong merchandise sales.

Credit: Plan B. Branding

Joliet Slammers

www.jolietslammers.com

Minor League Baseball carries a tradition of novel team identities and the Joliet Slammers are no exception owing to their logo's visual interpretation of a clever word play on the term "slammers", both a slang reference to a prison and a noun for someone who hits bases loaded home runs.

Depicting a baseball diamond in a prison yard surrounded by barbed wire topped walls overlooked by a guard tower, the logo is vividly illustrated in a symmetrical fashion, interweaving the team's name neatly like a jigsaw puzzle. Compounding the rhetorical double entendre, the team's mascot is a black crow nicknamed, J. Bird from the colloquial term referring to prisoners as jailbirds.

Although the area is well known for its proximity to a couple of large penitentiaries, the risk of its convict association being considered a little unsavory seems to be fairly well neutralized by the logo's cartoonish rendering.

[Also see, alternate versions.]

Credit: Studio Simon

New Hampshire Primaries

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire_Fisher_Cats

Playing off the state's hosting of the famous presidential primary election every four years which signals the start of the next election cycle, the New Hampshire Primaries cleverly adopted both an elephant and donkey as mascots representing the Republican and Democratic parties respectively.

Credit: Studio Simon

Lancaster Jethawks

www.jethawks.com

The mark of minor league baseball's Lancaster Jethawks is an effective visual metaphor constructed by combining elements of the club's unique identity, from its proud hawk and crossed baseball bats to the emblematic wings representing the area's association with the aerospace industry. Versatile enough that icon variations can be extracted from it depending on the necessary application, the crest-like logo is a strong merchandising asset for the organization.

Pensacola Blue Wahoos

www.bluewahoos.com

Named for a fish common to the area which is fun to catch and whose name is fun to say, the mark of minor league baseball's Pensacola Blue Wahoos adheres to Brandiose's design philosophy that if "it [can] fit in another city ... it?s time to go back to the drawing board". Employing typography which mimics that of the iconic Pensacola Beach sign and colors which uniquely represent the feel of the city, the logo is a vibrant and fun visual metaphor for the area and the club's minor league baseball experience.

Credit: Brandiose

Southern Illinois Miners

www.southernillinoisminers.com

Creatively fusing the team's mining roots with the baseball theme, Minor League Baseball's Southern Illinois Miners logo is a type of visual portmanteau - a baseball bat-pick axe wielding miner, artistically and expressively illustrated in a fashion which lends it to versatile merchandising applications.

Lake County Captains

www.lakecountycaptains.com

The maritime themed, badge-like logo of Minor League Baseball's Lake County Captains is comprised of its team name underlined by ocean waves and set in a ship's wheel in metaphorical tribute to its captains mascot. Employing a traditional baseball typography used by Major League clubs like the Anaheim Angels, the logo blends both baseball and maritime tradition in a classy mark.

Credit: Studio Simon