New Orleans Pelicans Logo Evolution: Evaluating the Changes
How the New Orleans Pelicans logo changed after the 2013 rebrand, how to read each mark as vector artwork, and what those changes mean in practice.
Contents
The short answer
The New Orleans Pelicans identity begins with the franchise’s 2013 rebrand from the Hornets. What people call “the Pelicans logo” is a small family of marks—a primary pelican with a basketball, supporting emblems, and wordmarks—not a single unchanging file. Public logo catalogs typically split the primary into an inaugural 2013–14 emblem and a refined primary used from 2014 onward. Evaluating the evolution means naming which era and which lockup you have, then judging the file as artwork: true outline paths, a raster preview, or a vector wrapper that only contains a bitmap.
That distinction is the practical one. A current, detailed pelican reproduces poorly if you only have a web PNG; an older upright bird is the wrong asset for a present-day lockup; and a downloadable preview is not the same thing as licensed, editable source.
How the identity developed
On 24 January 2013 the club announced the Pelicans name, marks, and colors for the 2013–14 season. The name refers to Louisiana’s state bird, the brown pelican. The published palette is built around navy, gold, and red, with white. A fleur-de-lis appears in the broader identity as a civic emblem associated with New Orleans. Those points are franchise and civic record. Designer credit, internal briefing notes, and any official statement of “what the pose means” are not established in the material available for this article and should be treated as a gap.
Reading the two primaries as pictures is interpretation. The inaugural mark is commonly described as a more upright, badge-like pelican with the ball held against the body. The later primary is commonly described as a broader-winged, more aggressive bird with the basketball integrated into the torso. Those are visual readings of the artwork, not documented design-intent quotes. Secondary pieces—the fleur-de-lis, isolated bird forms, and lettering lockups—sit beside the primary rather than replacing it, so a file labeled only “Pelicans logo” still has to be matched to one of those roles.
| Era | What you are usually looking at | Practical check |
| 2013–14 primary | Upright pelican-and-ball emblem from the launch season | Use only when the brief is that season’s identity |
| 2014 onward, primary | Refined, broader-winged pelican with the ball in the body | Confirm it is the current primary, not a fan redraw |
| Supporting marks | Fleur-de-lis, wordmarks, and simplified bird forms | Treat each as a separate asset with its own clear space |
What the construction implies for vector use
Official team marks of this kind are produced as vector artwork: filled paths that stay sharp at any size and can be colored as specified swatches. A screenshot, a flattened PNG, or an auto-trace of a low-resolution preview is a picture of the logo, not the logo’s construction. A filename or extension such as SVG or EPS does not, by itself, prove that the file contains editable outline paths. Third-party files often place a raster image inside a vector wrapper, or they follow the silhouette with a trace that breaks curves, merges colors, and drops knockout shapes.
The later primary is the harder reproduction problem. Interior feather edges, overlapping navy-gold-red fields, and the basketball’s relationship to the body all add path complexity. At small sizes those interiors fill in; in one-color or poor-contrast settings the bird and the ball can collapse into a single mass. The inaugural mark is simpler as a silhouette, which is why it still turns up in historical layouts, but it is the wrong current primary. Without the official outline files in hand, path count, compound-path structure, and whether color is specified as spot or process cannot be asserted from a web preview.
- Identify the era and the lockup before judging quality or redrawing anything.
- Open the file and look for real paths and fills; an embedded bitmap is a preview, not source.
- Match color to specified swatches rather than sampled RGB from a screen.
- Give the current bird enough size and clear space for interior detail to hold.
- Keep the pelican, the wordmark, and the fleur-de-lis as separate assets unless the brief is a published combination lockup.
Download, modification, and trademarks
The Pelicans name, the bird, the fleur-de-lis treatments used as team marks, and the lettering are protected as trademarks and copyrighted artwork. Permission to view or download a preview is not permission to modify the drawing, substitute type, recolor the mark, or use it on goods or in advertising. Custom lettering in a wordmark is not a substitute font you can swap; even when a lookalike typeface exists, the lockup itself remains the club’s art. Licensed partners typically receive outlined brand files under a usage grant. Fan packs, wiki media, and clip-art copies do not carry that grant.
What remains unverified
This assessment does not assign a designer or studio, quote a brand book, or describe the official file tree (layer names, spot-color builds, minimum sizes, or clear-space units). Those details belong to attributable records and to the actual outline artwork. It also does not treat any public SVG or EPS as proof of editable vector construction. If the task is to reproduce or license a mark, the next step is the current official artwork and the license that names the allowed uses—not a reconstructed tracing of whichever version appears first in a search.