Blues Logo: Old and New Compared

What the old-versus-new Blues logo comparison is about

The usual subject of a Blues new-logo versus old-logo search is the St. Louis Blues hockey club mark: a blue musical note with wings. That winged note has been the club’s core symbol since the franchise began in 1967. The comparison is between two treatments of the same idea, not a swap to a different mascot or letterform. If the files or pages you are reviewing belong to another Blues brand, the notes below do not apply until you confirm the rights holder.

In public use, “old logo” most often means the more illustrated winged note used through the 1980s and 1990s. “New logo” most often means the flatter, more geometric primary mark adopted in 1998 and still used, with minor cleanup, as the current identity. Both read as a blue note in flight. The redesign simplified drawing, contrast and reproduction rather than changing what the symbol stands for.

Observable differences between the two marks

The older mark is a modelled drawing. The note has thicker, more sculpted stems and flags, and the wings are broken into many feather shapes with interior shading. Highlights and shadows sit on the note and on the wings, so the lockup feels dimensional, closer to an emblem painted for print and jersey use at large size. Wordmarks from that era often sat in a ring or ran under the note in a serif or script companion, which made the full lockup heavier than the symbol alone.

The current primary mark keeps the same silhouette—note body, flag, and a pair of upswept wings—but reduces interior drawing. Feathers are fewer and more even. Shading is largely gone. Edges are cleaner, the note reads as a flat graphic, and the wings sit as a single paired shape rather than a cluster of quills. Navy, royal blue, gold and white remain the colour story; the newer drawing uses those colours in broader, less modelled fields. That is an editorial reading of the visible change: the club did not publish a geometry spec in this brief, so angles, exact colour formulas and path counts are not stated here.

Aspect | Older winged note | Current primary mark

Concept | Winged musical note | Same winged musical note

Drawing | Illustrated, with interior shade and many feathers | Flatter, fewer interior cuts

Depth | Dimensional highlights on note and wings | Graphic, mostly even colour fields

Small-size behaviour | Fine feathering and shade tend to clog | Simpler silhouette holds up smaller

Companion type | Often a ring or heavier wordmark | Symbol used alone or with a cleaner wordmark

Role | Historic / era-specific identity | Active primary mark

A practical implication follows from those visible traits. The older drawing is richer at poster and heritage scale and is harder to keep crisp in embroidery, small digital avatars and one-colour work. The current mark is built to hold a silhouette when those interior lines disappear. For vector work, that usually means fewer nodes, simpler compound paths and less reliance on gradients—again as a reading of the drawing, not as a claim about any particular file you may have been sent.

Scope, gaps and a next step for vector assets

• Confirm which Blues identity you mean. St. Louis Blues is the default reading of this query; football clubs, music imprints and local businesses that use “Blues” in the name have separate marks.
• Treat the 1998 flattened winged note as the current primary, and the pre-1998 illustrated winged note as the old primary, unless a dated brand guide says otherwise.
• Do not take a filename, a .svg or .ai extension, or the fact that a file is easy to download as proof that the artwork is official or that you may reuse it.
• Official palette values, exclusion zones, secondary marks (including letter badges) and outline-versus-fill construction were not supplied here; pull those from current brand materials for the version you need.
• Heritage reproductions should match the era you are depicting. Mixing the old feathered wings with the current flat note, or the reverse, produces a hybrid that matches neither generation.

If you are choosing an asset, match the generation to the job: current primary for present-day applications, older illustrated note only when the brief is explicitly historic. Then obtain the corresponding official vector from the rights holder or a licensed supplier. Tracing a raster of either generation, or assuming a downloaded file is a true vector original, is a poor substitute for the live artwork.