The Degradation of the Rockets Logo, a Retrospective

Do brands decay like the aging joints of professional basketball players? Let’s take a look…

The Original Rockets Logo

This is the original Rockets logo. Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? No, the answer is no, you have not. A dude with a jetpack, spinning a seamless ball on one of his four fingers… genius.

The O.G Logo

This was the next iteration, it is a nice logo. The colors are timeless and look good on a jumpsuit with a matching Starter cap. The varied letter capitalization and italic font sizes in the same word make this more a work of art than a professional sports team logo. This logo is like your grandfather beating you in a game of one-on-one with a never ending downpour of hook shots. You may not like it, but you WILL respect it.

The Shiny Logo

This logo is like your embarrassing junior high yearbook photo. This logo was created during a time period in the graphic design world that we like to refer to as “The Chrome Ages”. We no longer speak about this time period, for obvious reasons. The face on the rocket is a healthy blend of sadness and stress balanced only by the fact that the Rockets won a championship sporting this logo.

The Yao Logo

This is the Rockets current Logo. I’m not sure where to begin. There has been much speculation that this logo was designed after the Rockets drafted Yao Ming, and because of that, has an asian flare. There is also speculation that the designer of this logo was obsessed with cheesy horror flicks and crappy logo designs. This logo proclaims, “We will murder you, wait, never mind, we can’t because our best players are usually injury-prone pansies and we are content being the 8th or 9th best team in the West, every year.”

Bonus Logo

Before the Rockets were Houston’s team, they played in San Diego from 1967 to 1971. Pat Riley, Calvin Murphy, and Elvin Hayes all played for the San Diego Rockets. For the record, this logo and color scheme only looked good with really short shorts.