The Cleveland Browns may not have a helmet logo, but they have used other logos for merchandise and advertising over the years. In April, the team announced that it was holding a contest to decide on the new logo it will use for the bleacher section known as the “Dawg Pound.” On Monday, the team revealed the winning selection on Twitter.
The Browns started with roughly 400 fan submissions that went through around two months of voting before selecting this logo. The design is full of references to Ohio, Cleveland, and the history of the Browns as detailed in a follow-up Tweet.
Some of the references in the logo will be familiar to Steelers fans who have either watched or attended plenty of Steelers games in Cleveland. Above the logo’s right eye (to the viewer) is a white silhouette of the helmets often worn by Browns fans. Above the dog’s nose (shaped like a football) is the stripe reminiscent of the helmet stripe on Cleveland’s helmets.
The designer of the logo, Houston Mark, spoke with clevelandbrowns.com about his design choices and the references he worked into the logo to ensure he captured how he feels about the team and its fans.
“The thing I really wanted to focus on was the fans and the relationship they have with the team,” Mark said. “How can I make the Cleveland Browns fanbase the forefront of the design while also maintaining this aggressive, no-nonsense attitude? There was a lot of stuff in there I wanted to incorporate because there’s so much history to Browns fandom in particular. It was really important to me to honor and respect the history of the fanbase, the championships, and the pride that comes with being a fan.”
While the current iteration of the Cleveland Browns has struggled since the franchise re-joined the league in 1999, the logo the fans voted on is something to be proud of. Whether that has any bearing on the success of the team or not remains to be seen.
