NFL Team With A Plant Logo and Origin Story

NFL Team with a Plant logo covers the New Orleans Saints whose logo features fleur-de-lis. It is a French word for lily that consists of three petals.

It is the only franchise in the league to have such unique insignia as their recognition. The representation is actually a heraldic symbol that is associated with the lily flowers whose petals are usually sharp at the end. 

The emblem of any franchise has a deep-rooted association either with the squad’s own history or the stories of the cities the team is based on. They usually depict the franchise’s character, motive, and determination for every game they play. 

Saints being the only franchise to have such kind of label as their official mark, they never fail to represent the team’s loyalty and are always associated with the monarchy and royalty. 

The team is based in New Orleans which is an American city founded by the French settlers and was officially incepted on 1 November 1966. They went on to join the NFL expansion team in 1967.  John W. Mecom Jr. and David Dixon were the team owners. 

Their insignia has also evolved along with the time. Apart from the few touchups and changes, the emblem and the uniform have remained almost similar to their debut year.

New Orleans Saints Logo Meaning

The Saints logo primarily depicts the French monarchy and royalty along with elegance, modesty, versatility, and history associated with Europe.

The fleur-de-lis is a lily flower that also symbolizes perfection giving a sense of luxury, tenderness, and masculinity power. It is also the representation of traditional culture, nobility, lightness, and royal taste. 

The emblem is a true depiction of the nobility of the saints of the city and the trademark has been seen on the flags and team mascots of various countries across Europe. 

It also marks high social status, honesty, justice, life, wealth, prosperity, elegance, seriousness, faith, clarity, virginity, coolness, courage, passion and grandeur. 

Every color used in the insignia symbolizes something. The gold color is the representation of richness and splendor, the white one stands for faith whereas the black one marks the presence of seriousness and passion. 

Design

The emblem features a stylized lily flower which consists of three elongated beautiful petals and sharp ends. The unique insignia is simple and has some minor graphic elements. 

The charismatic look of the label is due to the iconic and chic flower itself due to which the fans adore it so much. The team has always kept the core values of the trademark even making slight changes in the outlines. 

The symbol of enduring strength and confidence bears the true identity of what people call purity through the white color at the edges of the petals. The monarch emblem has been designed in such a way that it will look visually enticing. 

Since it doesn’t contain the team’s name, there are no specific fonts it uses but it does have a distinctive custom all-caps serif typeface wordmark. 

The color scheme used in the design is old gold, Hex color #D3BC8D, RGB 211, 188, and 141, CMYK 18, 23, 49, 0, Pantone PMS 8383 C. In Black color, the emblem uses Pantone: PMS BLACK 6 C, Hex Color: #101820; RGB: 16, 24, 31 and CMYK: 100, 40, 0, 100. 

The sign has shades of beige resembling sand gold color and consists of a double white and black outline. Due to such a design, it can be placed on various backgrounds. 

The Saints logo history dates back to 1967 when elegant fleur-de-Lys stood symbolizing French monarchy, luxury, tenderness, and perfection. 

Apart from a few changes that occurred in the insignia, their emblem has remained constant for all these years and is always known for its consistency. 

The changes have been attributed to the design for three major times. Let’s go through a brief history of the team’s label in the past years. 

1967-1999 (Original Form)

The first 32 years of the emblem included a monochrome design featuring the stylized lily in a bold black color properly outlined by white and black color again. 

The depiction was simple and executed nobility and royalty fulfilling every motive it was designed for. The sophisticated look of the style was consistent with the franchise for more than thirty years and was fulfilling in every way possible. 

The insignia resonated with the French royal family and the House of Bourbon and was finally redesigned in 2000. 

2000-2011 (The First Redesign)

The triple monochrome outline and the introduction of a new tender color completely overthrew the previous monochrome design and the year was the only time when a massive change in the outlook was made. 

In the part of the outline, unlike the previous one, the inner black contour was made thinner as compared to the outer one. In the previous version, the outline was given using only two monochrome layers.  

The secondary style of the symbol had the solid black heraldic symbol outlined in beige and black color and the same thickness of all three layers. 

2012-Present (Current Version)

The insignia was again revamped in 2012 where the golden beige from the previous design was changed to more lighter shades. The color was given a light and chic tone. 

The structure is framed in black and white color to allow it to represent the strength and confidence of the franchise whenever the team appears on the field. 

Actually, the symbol was given a subtle touch in 2017 as well which is hardly visible. They changed the color tone of the previous one from a golden hue to a different shade, probably making the lighter tone a little heavy. 

Stanford Cardinals and Notre Dame Fighting Irish are the only two college football teams in the NCAA that features plants in their logo.

There were two other teams in the past that had some kind of plants in their logo. The teams were Ohio State Buckeyes and Arizona Wildcats. Both the universities used the emblem as a secondary option. 

The Buckeyes had a green leaf positioned upside down overlapping on the big bold “O” letter outlined with white and gray colors in both the outer and inner layers of the letter. 

This was used as the primary logo from 1968 to 1987. From 1987 to 1991, the letter “O” was slanted, and white lines were drawn all over it from one end to another. The leaf was thus erected and consisted of five well-drawn petals. 

Another alternate emblem with a similar letter in a similar color but white and black outline was introduced in 1973 and remained until 2004. This time the leaf was slanted on the lower right corner of the letter and work was done on a more detailed graphical presentation of the petals. 

Similarly in the 1980s era of college football, the Arizona Wildcats introduced a secondary design of their insignia which consisted of “ARIZONA” written overlapping the mountains and sunrise in the background. 

The design featured cactus plants with three elongations erecting upright dominating the letter “I” of the “ARIZONA”. The emblem was in practice as an option until 2013 while some subtle changes were made to it before 2007. 

Stanford Cardinals insignia consists of a Standford tree painted in a lush green color with a green outline surrounding it and block “S”.

The “S” letter has been given a massive cardinal touch i.e. a noble tone of red color. The football division and other athletic branches of the team use a slightly different emblem as compared to the primary logo of the university. 

The design is almost similar except for the white outlines given in the primary one and “Stanford University” written below the main block “S” letter in the main version. 

The Standford tree and the letter ‘S’ in the main university emblem have been outlined with white and the color of the tree is a different green. The tree goes by the name sequoia which is basically tall and strong and signifies Palo Alto a place in California where the university is situated. 

The evolution of the university’s emblem began in 2005. From that year to 2012, the uni decided to go with their institution’s name written in capital letters. 

Their present-day logo was designed and instituted in 2012. This basically has two versions; one with only “Standford” written in red against the white background and the other with the whole university name.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish emblem comprises a Leprechaun mascot used by the athletic division. The primary logo is an interlocking of “N” and “D”.

This is neither a primary logo nor the official mascot of the team. The Leprechaun is a character in an Irish folk tale who is supposed to guard the treasure, usually a pot of gold. The character often wears a cocked hat, wears long shoes, and a leather coat. 

Here in this mascot as well, the Leprechaun is wearing a hat with a green color on the sides and orange in the middle. His hat also features a lucky charm leaf in green shades that represents the hope, faith, charity, and luck of the Notre Dame football team. 

The long coat the character has put on in the trademark also has a green color and wears a white shirt and an orange waistcoat. The person is in a ready-to-fight position and also has a long beard. 

In addition to that, there is also a living student version of that mascot. The Leprechaun mascot has been brought into practice since the 1960s. There is a reason why the team has not made it their official mascot because of the provision in the NCAA that any team cannot make use of hostile ethnic mascots or imagery. 

In the case of the Leprechaun, it represents the imagery of an entire nationality in an aggressive stereotypical manner. 

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