Uni Watch Contest Reveals Unique Bengals Uniform Designs

The results are in. The Sports Illustrated “Uni Watch Bengals Redesign Challenge” has generated some awesome designs for Bengals fans to discuss and pine over.

We wanted to look at some of the more unique and creative submissions NOT mentioned in the SI.com article. Paul Lukas of uni-watch.com did an awesome job with this project.  He came away with some good insights into the various opinions surrounding the team’s appearance. The final results of the challenge can be viewed here.

So many designers spent their time and talent on creating interesting and new concepts for the consideration of Sports Illustrated and that of the fans. We simply felt we had to highlight even more of these talented individuals and reward them in some small way for their time and contributions. Let’s start by discussing the numerous redesigns to the Bengals logo.

Below, we start with a complete redesign of the Bengals tiger head logo by Bowen Hobbs, along with an original Queen City inspired crest. These two submissions leap off the screen as something fans could legitimately consider wearing on new Bengals gear, should the team ever chose to update the logo.

The concept of “wearability“ certainly wasn’t lost on this submission by Colin Eadie.

Drew Fansler and Nate Sweitzer gave the tiger head logos a little more aggression with their designs.

Glenn Riley went with a more graphical appearance.

Jake Whitacre’s tiger almost has a regal look to it, with just a hint of a smile.

Some artists downplayed the tiger motif, opting to identify the team with the City of Cincinnati itself. Here, Shane Regal draws inspiration from the city flag for not just the team logo, but the uniforms also.

Sergio DaSilveira does an amazing job of including subtle Bengal stripes into this “Queen City Alternate Logo”.

We also wanted to highlight  Mike Quinn’s concept. Quinn writes, “The Ohio flag and overlays on the jersey vans are a subtle reminder that football in this state runs through Southwest Ohio.” Including design elements with the express purpose of taking a shot at your in-state rivals might not be the most practical design decision. However, it is absolutely the type of thing a maniacal Bengals super fan would enjoy.

Finally, the “award” for my favorite concept goes to M. Conway. He has finally given the Bengals orange on orange, all stripes uniforms that many feel this team has always needed. Anyone who dares to change the helmet is inviting criticism from the “don’t touch the helmet” crowd. Lukas pointed out the love for the helmet in his results summary. Thus, the helmets in Conway’s design might not fly. However, these uniforms take the cake in a world where I am calling the shots. In that world, the only color options that exist are Black/Black, White/White (current color rush), and orange/orange.

These designs were still only a small fraction of the many designs that were submitted to the SI.com contest. However,  It is extremely difficult to be original and innovative.  It is even more difficult when you know that you are submitting your original work for criticism.  So, highlighting the work of a few more designers via this article to show appreciation was a worthy cause.