The Blue Note is dead. Long live the Blue Note.
The St. Louis Blues unveiled an updated brand identity on Tuesday, embracing a lighter hue of blue, a slightly restyled note logo, and the introduction of new marks tied to St. Louis, the Mississippi River and the franchise’s musical connections.
But the team isn’t entirely throwing out its old look, transitioning what had been its current, royal blue home jersey to third jersey status.
The old note will still be visible throughout the organization, as St. Louis spends two years updating imagery across its practice facility, youth hockey initiatives and community-focused sub-brands.
Royal blue sweaters will also continue being sold, helping the team manage inventory in the second year of the NHL’s relationship with Fanatics.
And of course, that blue will maintain a place in certain fans’ hearts. The Blues won their first Stanley Cup, in 2019, in the threads.
“We certainly don’t want it to go away,” St. Louis chief revenue and marketing officer Steve Chapman said. “It’s a part of who we are.”
St. Louis’ strategy reflects the challenges of modern sports branding—and rebranding—as teams aim to keep their identities fresh without shocking fans.
NHL chief branding officer Brian Jennings said the league maintains a five-plus-year uniform roadmap with Fanatics, encouraging teams to think about gradual updates rather than overhauls. Franchises are then asked to declare any potential changes 18 months in advance. The new Blues look takes elements from the team’s 2017 Winter Classic jersey, which inspired its third jersey beginning in 2018-19.
“It gives us a great level of satisfaction,” Jennings said of the Blues’ process. “We look at the brand DNA of a Winter Classic or a Stadium Series the same way we do that uniform development for one of our clubs’ home, away, or third jerseys. So it’s great to see this.”
Chapman said team leadership first explored a new look last decade.
“One of the things we were trying to do was to really denote that we were from St. Louis, and we tried to find an ‘STL’ that represented the Blues, and for the longest time, everything we did just reminded us of the iconic ‘STL’ from the Cardinals,” he said. “Or, to be quite honest with you, some of them were—they were just boring, or felt like we were trying too hard.”
In 2021, the Blues restarted the process with Mississippi-based Rare Design. Roughly a year ago, the team committed to the update, though that decision would prove to be more of a starting point than a culmination.
“It’s a lot longer of a process than you would think,” Blues VP, brand, retail & creative services Brenda Wilbur said. “Having those—basically—three years was good to have. … So when I see brands change very quickly, I’m like, phew, I understand the struggle.”
A team creative director was tasked with surveying every part of the building to identify logos that needed to be updated. App development partner YinzCam is responsible for turning over the mobile look. The NHL helped with further digital updates, as well as ensuring the IP is correctly displayed in Electronic Arts’ video game. Fanatics weighed in on the retail side of things, including recommending the team go with white rather than cream for its jerseys, increasing the look’s consistency.
Team sponsors were some of the first to be briefed on the changes. Heaven forbid Anheuser Busch create custom Blues bottles for 2025-26 in the wrong shade.
In total, Wilbur estimated up to 30 outside partners signed non-disclosure agreements to help plan ahead of Tuesday’s announcement.
Meanwhile, the Blues soft-launched their new STL mark on this year’s Winter Classic helmet.
“We could have kept it a secret, but why? It’s a great logo,” Chapman said. “It allowed us to kind of throw it out in the marketplace a little bit and get some feedback prior.”
Fan responses were overwhelmingly positive, with the most popular complaint on Reddit being a question of why the new mark wasn’t available for sale on any shirts or hats. Now they know.
The additional logos will show up on apparel, in the building and throughout team communications, giving Wilbur & Co. more tools to play with.
“We needed something beyond just the note as one of those creative elements,” she said. “People like to show their fandom in so many different ways now, and as opposed to just having a blue note on everything, having a blue note, maybe with the STL on a hat or the fleur-de-lis and some of these new notes, so that you can show your fandom in a different way.”
And who knows, maybe one of those tertiary marks will lay the groundwork for the next uniform shake-up.
