Why did the Rams logo and uniform re-designs get received so poorly by fans?

So what happened?

The Los Angeles Rams had it all in the works for years. It took a long time for Stan Kroenke to take the team from St. Louis with those colors, those uniforms, and that stadium to become the LA team we will be watching next season. From 2017-2019, Kroenke kept the team as is, preparing for a complete makeover to happen over the 2020 offseason.

The Rams would first reveal their new logo and colors, as they did last month.

They would then reveal their uniforms, as they did this week.

And finally, they’d debut in their multi-billion dollar entertainment complex known as SoFi Stadium located in Hollywood Park, the NFL’s version of Disneyland. Unforeseen, of course, with regards to that was the coronavirus pandemic and the park has had problems already. Not only have multiple stadium workers tested positive for COVID-19, but Kroenke is reportedly asking for an additional $500 million in funding to get it finished.

But to the countless Rams fans around the world who weren’t planning to see the team in person any time soon anyway, the main focus of consternation has centered around what they’ll mostly come across as they follow the team.

The widely-derided logo that continues to bother fans for any number of reasons and the newly-revealed uniforms that haven’t taken as big of a hit in the media but are disliked by the majority nonetheless. We had 47 percent of voters on our poll say that the uniforms are a “downgrade” from the previous ones, and another nine percent were only willing to say they liked them as long as they could also call them “ugly.”

Only 1 in 5 voters were willing to say that they uniforms were an “upgrade.”

And this is not just a general negative reaction that people often have towards change. As Mike Florio points out, reaction to the LA Chargers new uniforms was overwhelmingly positive. The Chargers were also ranked first by Yahoo! Sports for how nicely their re-design went as compared to the Rams, who finished fifth behind some more simple changes made by a few other franchises; only the Atlanta Falcons and Todd Gurley! were ranked behind them.

So, I repeat my question and it’s not one that I have an answer to yet. What the heck happened?

It doesn’t really matter if you like or dislike the uniforms or logo, because we already know that the reaction was negative. I’m only talking about why the Rams’ re-designs were so negatively received when they had such a long time and so many resources to come out with anything they dreamt of at this point. It may be as simple as chance — so often it is the case in life that we don’t know if something is good or bad until we put it out there.

LA made choices and they believed that they’d be applauded for those choices, but there was no way for them to know until they released them for a public response. That’s often how movies become sleeper hits and box office bombs: nobody could know.

But responses to the Rams logo and uniforms was immediate and negative. There seemed to be little gray area when it came to the logo, people hated it from the jump. When it was leaked weeks ahead of time, it was so bad that many people expected it to be a hoax or a joke. It was not.

The uniforms make people take more time to consider why they hate them, but for now it would appear that most people are left without an understanding of how they came to be. How could this pass through so many hands without one person going, “Hey, this logo, don’t do this”? And maybe they did and there was one person or multiple people at the top who were deadset on a certain design.

This is something that graphic designers and ad people have discussed in the past. People get locked into an idea and no matter what you bring them, if it doesn’t jive with the previously held belief, it won’t matter.

The Rams had at least a few years to prepare for the reveal parties of 2020 and whether they have any regrets about their choices at this point or not, obviously there’s some damage control to be done in the fallout that they probably didn’t expect.