Becoming and staying competitive in the big leagues can't be achieved through one-off effort, it requires an ongoing commitment to thrive for perfection. This holds true in sports just as much as branding. Regular reviews of a brand are just as important as warming up before a big game, and failure to do so can result in injury to reputation and recognition.

To show you how the world's best competitors make sure their brand performs at its best, we've compiled ten internationally recognized sports teams that underwent a rebrand in 2015.

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D.C. United

A sans-serif typeface is now almost the gold standard of logo design, as it is more versatile and legible across devices than serif fonts. This is supported by changing the primary color to black, which makes the logo appear more modern and communicates dominance and strength – highly desirable attributes for a sports team.

The changes in the design elements move away from cliché icons to more subtle homage to the team's heritage and home town. Overall, the design manages to be far stronger and more modern while still incorporating enough elements of the previous design to maintain an element of brand consistency.

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L.A. Clippers

The L.A. Clippers are following a trend in sports logos to implement solid black logotypes, which create maximum legibility and strength. By dropping "Los Angeles" from the title and adopting the initials "LAC" into the design, they made the logo much tighter and created an opportunity for brilliant, subtle symbolism by evoking the shape of a basketball court through "LA" and "C" embracing the court and the team's home town. Further minimalist homage is paid through the curved lines under the logotype, meant to represent the horizon over the ocean in L.A..

Changes to alignment and color create a much stronger, cleaner and more modern logo, while retaining original elements like the shades of blue and red ensures brand consistency.

Melbourne FC

This is definitely a more drastic example of a logo overhaul, but looking at the original, that's a good thing. Dropping all the extra logo elements like the trident, the Southern Cross, the football, and the ribbon is a really good idea, as they overcrowded the logo and made it almost unusable for use across small device screens or accurate reproduction on uniforms and collateral. Opting out of the outdated 3D effect in the typeface is also a smart choice for the same reasons.

They didn't get rid of everything, so some brand consistency is retained. The MFC initials remain and take a more prominent role, as does the shield (although its shape changed). The new design is not the most exciting of logos, so to keep it more exciting the originally maroon primary color has been updated to a more vibrant red.

Norfolk Tides

Established in 1969, this logo has drastically changed to a point where supporters will be left confused and wondering if it's their team. But sometimes drastic is a good thing. Moving away from the overly clichéd "tide" theme of the original logo is great, with the new logo now paying homage to Norfolk's oceanic and military heritage instead through historic naval lettering and a fun sea horse ready to go into battle.

This creates a sense of excitement and freshness, which is perfect as the Norfolk Tides are actually a minor league baseball team, so should appeal to and represent younger audiences. Including design elements like the thick line weights and orange strokes ensure this logo will reproduce well on uniforms and other collateral. These benefits are well worth the sacrifice in brand consistency.

Milwaukee Bucks

Improving the balance between logotype and logomark actually allows the buck to have a more prominent role in the design. The masculinity of the buck is maintained in the strong geometric angles rather than in muscles, and if you pay close attention to details you'll see the small antlers above the buck's face evoke the shape of a basketball and its neck culminates in an "M" shape.

Eliminating the bright red color and introducing an almost slate tone, as well as moving to a circular shape, make the logo much easier on the eye and alludes to the team's forested home. The vintage feel of this design makes great sense for a team as old and established as this. Overall, this logo feels like it had every aspect carefully considered, making it highly successful and well worth the investment to rebrand.

Dallas Wings

Seeing as Tulsa Shock turned into the Dallas Wings, it meant they needed a new brand identity. The new logo has changed just about everything you can, moving to a new color scheme, introducing a Pegasus mascot and obviously changing the name in the logotype. Removing the (very noughties) slant of the previous logo and paying attention to design hierarchy and composition makes the new logo far easier on the eye – notice how your eye naturally moves downward from the wings toward the tip of the basketball.

Amazingly, even with everything changed, they still managed to pay homage to the previous design, through subtle consistencies in the application of line weights and the relationship between typefaces within the logo. If you look at both logos side by side, they "feel" related.

Cleveland Browns

At the other end of extremity for rebrands, the Cleveland Browns' logo is more of a refresh than a redo. All major elements like the logomark, positioning of elements and color identity remain the same, but the colors have a far more vibrant saturation, creating a more modern and aggressive look. When viewed side by side, the old logo looks almost deliberately vintage by comparison.

The move to a sans-serif typeface supports this feeling of modern values, making it strong and easily legible. The great advantage of implementing such subtle changes is of course the heavily reinforced brand identity, which appeals to sports fans who value tradition. Of course this is only feasible for brands who are already working from strong designs.

Toronto Raptors

Through condemning their raptor mascot to extinction, the Toronto Raptors have adopted a far more minimal design. It moves from a fairly generic basketball image to a logo almost reminiscent of a horror movie in its strong color identity and slightly threatening design elements.

While the original colors were maintained, their individual application and weight in the design have changed, making black the primary color over the previous red, which now only serves as an accent. Overall the Raptors adopted a more modern, minimalist look without sacrificing crucial elements of its previous incarnation, striking a perfect balance for an effective rebranding.

Atlanta Hawks

The move to a single-color, circular flat design will make for far better reproductions across devices and collateral, ensuring this logo is more functional for a modern sports team's needs. The circular design may be in reference to a basketball, but this is not overly emphasized.

In fact, very little in this design references sports generally nor basketball specifically, which is probably why they chose to add the additional wording to the design. This is an area they could have played with further, as the new design lacks a little in unique character and brand identity.

Milwaukee Admirals

Honestly, just about anything would have been an improvement to the old Admirals logo, which looked curiously like a Microsoft Clip Art. The new design still manages to pay homage to the old logo trough carrying over colors and retaining the skeleton mascot.

Giving the skeleton a head-on view and building it into more of a character is far more provoking than the previously pretty cheeky and submissive version, which makes it more appropriate for a competitive sports team. Paying homage to a marine tradition through the typeface also seems appropriate for a team named the Admirals. This is supported by the military-looking uniform of the mascot. Overall a new incarnation well worth the hassle.

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Written by Divya Abe on Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Divya Abe is an expert graphic designer ready to share her knowledge with the crowd. Besides spending quality time on the internet she enjoys anything to do with cats. Get in touch via Google+.