After protests rang out last summer following the killing of George Floyd, many professional sports teams felt the heat to dump names and mascots widely considered to be racist. On Friday, the Cleveland Indians responded by completing a rebranding that began late last year when it pledged to get rid of the name that Native American communities had long protested.

The new name, Guardians, was rolled out along with a new “G” logo—all inspired by the "Guardians of Traffic" statues fixed in between the Hope Memorial Bridge crossing the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland outside the team's ballpark. 

The new look is drawing mostly positive reviews from branding and design experts. And the rollout—which included a social media video narrated by Tom Hanks—could provide guidance to other teams going through the same process, including The Washington Football Team, which has yet to pick a permanent replacement for its Redskins moniker.

In many respects, Cleveland’s new logo holds typography of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, says Brian Collins, chief creative officer of design agency Collins. Collins says Cleveland has done a hat trick that he describes as maintaining fans of the old brand while bringing in fans that weren’t indebted to the previous identity.  

“They’ve managed to keep the verbal cadence of the brand—it sounds like the Indians,” Collins says. “But it doesn’t carry any of the toxic baggage of that identifier.”

He sees the word Guardians as protectors of the city or the team.  “It just about gives them a clean slate,” Collins says. “What they’ve done is really good. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it looks like classic American baseball.” 

Mario Natarelli, managing partner at MBLM, a global branding agency headquartered in New York, says he enjoyed the warmness of the unveiling of the new name in the promo video, which told the story of the city of Cleveland.

But he cautioned that it would take time for the Guardians to work their way away from a 105-plus year identity.  "To me, it's all upside potential,” Natarelli says. “How hard they work it or follow through with it remains to be seen. The design of it is ok; I'm not crazy about the identity work. The name is good. A lot of this is going to come through in the execution ... It's the delivery versus the promise."  

Michael Bierut, a partner at design agency Pentagram and a native Ohioan, on Twitter said he preferred the name “Municipals” and critiqued the wordmark, saying he would have  gone “full art deco.” But he  called the rollout film “great.”

"I probably would have gone with something that evoked the sculptural character of which the name is derived, but that said, it's a good strong wordmark,” Beirut said in an interview. He added that Ohio is a part of the rust belt and residents are very defensive about that history.  “This idea of Guardians as a name sounds like you're there to protect [and] has the slight undercurrent, but fits it very well.”  

Of course, there were plenty of critics, too, including a predictable reaction from former President Donald Trump, who called the move away from Indians “a disgrace.” That opinion ran counter to the reaction from indigenous groups, including the Cleveland Indigenous Coalition, which stated that “the Cleveland baseball team is helping to create a place where Native American children and their families feel valued and fully seen,” according to local media reports.

Cleveland had faced less pressure from sponsors over the Indians name than what Washington’s National Football League franchise dealt with before finally dumping the Redskins moniker last year. Washington’s hand was eventually forced by their stadium sponsor FedEx, which threatened to remove their sponsorship and logos from the stadium if the organization didn't change its name. 

After Washington vowed to "undergo a thorough review of the team's name," the focus turned to the Indians. While they were catching heat in the press and from activists, the team still managed to strike a deal with regional sponsor Perry's Ice Cream, which locked up a multi-year deal with them last fall. 

Contributing: E.J. Schultz