New Vikings Logo: Compare It With the Previous Design

What the current Vikings logo is

The mark people mean by the new Vikings logo is the Minnesota Vikings’ current primary emblem: the Norseman, a left-facing Viking head in a horned helmet, redrawn in 2013 and still the team’s lead identity. The previous design is the 1961–2012 Norseman — the same character, pose and color story in a simpler, rounder illustration. This is a refinement of one mascot, not a swap to a new symbol. Secondary pieces such as the horned “V” and the wordmark sit in the same system and are not the same asset as the head.

Exact path counts, Pantone or hex values, and how either file behaves in embroidery, one-color print or tiny UI were not measured from official artwork for this guide. Visual notes below describe the publicly circulated full-color Norseman at typical logo size. Treat fine-detail and performance claims as untested unless you check the actual vector against your output method.

How the two Norseman marks differ

Both versions read as a gold-haired warrior in profile, helmet horns up, on purple with gold and white. The redesign keeps that silhouette so the team stays recognizable, then changes how much drawing sits inside it. That inside drawing is what decides scale, one-color conversion and how painful a vector edit will be.

Criterion	1961–2012 Norseman	2013–present Norseman
Geometry	Rounder skull, softer brow, simpler horn curves, hair as large yellow masses	Sharper planes, heavier brow, more sculpted horns, hair broken into braids and strands
Expression	Flatter, friendlier graphic face	Tighter eye and mouth; more aggressive, athletic read
Line and volume	Thicker outlines, little interior modeling	Finer interior line, gold highlights and shadow that suggest metal and hair volume
Color role	Purple, gold and white used as flat fills	Same three-color story, with more tonal steps inside the gold
Typography (wordmark lockups)	Blockier, more generic athletic lettering in older lockups	Custom condensed Vikings wordmark with tighter, more distinctive letterforms
Small-size behavior	Fewer interior shapes; the silhouette still reads when detail drops out	Braid, horn highlight and facial features crowd together when the mark shrinks
Vector editability	Fewer regions; easier to flatten to one or two colors	More regions and overlaps; harder to simplify without redrawing

Geometry and silhouette

The outer read is almost unchanged: left-facing profile, horned helmet, flowing hair, mustache. That shared silhouette is why a fan can still recognize the team from a distance after the redraw. The work happened in the interior. The older head uses broad, cartoon-like masses — a simple gold hair shape, a simple horn, a simple cheek. The current head cuts those masses into planes: individual braids, a more angular cheek and brow, horns with a highlight edge that reads as metal rather than a flat gold cutout. Editorial take: the new drawing is meant to look fiercer and more “pro sports”; the old drawing is meant to look like a straightforward mascot. Neither change rewrites the character, so heritage and current-day uses can sit next to each other without looking like two different clubs.

Color and finish

Both marks live in Minnesota purple, gold/yellow and white. The older Norseman treats those as mostly flat fills. The current Norseman keeps the same palette and adds interior gold variation — highlights on the horns, deeper gold in the hair — so the helmet and braids feel dimensional. That extra modeling is a reproduction risk: on coated print or a high-resolution screen it reads as craft; on a cheap one-color stamp, a faxed spec sheet or a dark-on-dark jersey it can collapse into mud. Official swatches were not in hand here, so do not treat any remembered hex or Pantone as verified. Pull color from current brand artwork if the job must match on-field or broadcast use.

Typography in lockups

The head is the primary comparison. Lockups that pair it with “VIKINGS” also shifted. Older wordmarks read as heavier, more generic block lettering. The current wordmark is a custom condensed athletic sans with more particular letter shapes and tighter overall spacing. If you are matching a vintage throwback, pair the old Norseman with period lettering. If you are matching today’s club, pair the 2013 head with the current wordmark. Mixing the new head with the old wordmark, or the reverse, is the fastest way to make a lockup look unofficial.

Scale, one-color use and vector files

Scalability is the practical split. The older mark’s simple fills hold up when the logo is small — app chrome, a chest embroidery, a one-color invoice. The current mark’s braids, horn highlights and facial cuts need enough pixels or stitches to stay separate; below that, they fuse and the face goes muddy. That is a geometry observation, not a lab test: stitch-out, screen-print and favicon proofs were not run for this article. If the job is tiny or one-color, either use the older Norseman on purpose (heritage) or commission a simplified current-mark drawing. Do not assume a downloaded file is editable vector because the name ends in SVG or EPS, and do not assume a file you can open is cleared for reuse. Availability is not permission. Official club and league artwork is the source for current-day commercial use; vintage marks may be restricted to throwback programs.

Which version to use

• Use the 2013 Norseman when the job must match today’s team: current merch, digital product, broadcast-adjacent work, or any lockup that also uses the current wordmark.
• Use the 1961–2012 Norseman when the job is explicitly heritage: throwback uniforms, anniversary storytelling, vintage poster work, or a setting where a simpler silhouette will print or stitch cleaner.
• Prefer the older geometry, or a redrawn one-color current mark, when the output is embroidery, foil, a single spot color, or a size so small that braid and horn detail will fail.
• Keep the horned “V” and wordmark-only files in their own slots. They are related system pieces, not substitutes for the Norseman in a head-to-head comparison.
• Editability favors the older, flatter drawing. If you must recolor, knock out, or rebuild paths, start from a true vector of the simpler mark or redraw — do not “fix” the detailed 2013 file by deleting strands and hoping the face still holds.

The informed next step is to pick by use, then proof that file at the real size and process. If the work is official or for sale, get current vector from a licensed source and check color against today’s guidelines. If the work is comparison, archive or design study, put both Norseman files on the same background, at the same height, in full color and in one-color, and judge the interior detail under those matched conditions rather than from memory of a jersey or a low-resolution thumbnail.