During halftime of Saturday night’s friendly between the United States Women’s National Team and China, the name of the new women’s professional league, along with its logo, was unveiled on NBC Sports Network. The name, “National Women’s Soccer League,” is not the one (“Women’s Professional Soccer Association”) mentioned earlier in the week by New Jersey Star-Ledger reporter, Frank Giase. Which is not to say that Giase’s information was wrong at the time, as the domain registrations for the new league’s primary web address, NWSLsoccer.com, was registered (Whois) a day after the article was published.
The Details…
Name: National Women’s Soccer League
Logo: (included after the jump)
Website: NWSLsoccer.com (which currently redirects to the league’s Facebook page)
Twitter: @NWSLsoccer
Facebook: facebook.com/NWSLsoccer
Fig. 1: The new league’s logo and name.
The logo, which is shaped as an upside-down pentagon, features the silhouette of a female soccer player, with red on one side of the player and blue on the other. Whether the logo was based on a specific person or not has yet to be officially confirmed.
The logo’s silhouette and patriotic color scheme has its roots in Major League Baseball’s current logo (Wikipedia), which was designed in 1968, and inspired the National Basketball Association’s logo, designed a year later), as well as other sport leagues’ logos. The new league’s emblem is not much of a departure from the logo of the now-defunct Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), which also had a split-color background — gold and red — with a player silhouette in front.
Fig. 2: Logos of earlier professional women’s soccer leagues,
the WUSA (2001-2003) and the WPS (2009-2011).
The fonts used on the new logo and for the new league’s name appears to be in the Square Slab 711 family (MyFonts.com), although the apostrophe used in the full league name does not match and is likely borrowed from another font or an original creation of the logo’s graphic designer(s). Additionally, there does not seem to be an actual Italic variant of Square Slab 711, however text slanting can be easily done in any capable graphics program.
Regarding the league’s domain names, NWSL.org was also registered by a representative of the new league. The .com version of that domain name, NWSL.com, currently belongs to a model railroad parts supplier (actual website). It is possible that the new league may try to buy the NWSL.com domain name from its current owners in order to use that domain as its primary address for the league’s eventual website.
With the announcements of the D.C. franchise’s name, the Washington Spirit, as well as the Portland franchise’s name, Portland Thorns FC, earlier in the week, the only name-related news left regarding the new league is the moniker of the Seattle franchise.
See also: U.S. Soccer news item on the league’s name and logo.
Women's Soccer Express 