UCF Unveils New Knighthead Secondary Logo

UCF surprised everyone Wednesday by unveiling a new logo: An updated Knighthead:

The new Knighthead, which looks straight forward, was designed in-house by a team led by UCF’s Director of Brand Design, Emma Schneider. It replaces the old one that looked slightly ‘off-camera,’ if you will. It also incorporates a star in the crest to reference the university’s motto of “Reach for the stars,” according to a quote from Schneider in UCF’s announcement.

The Knighthead has been the UCF Knights’ secondary logo for most sports since 2007:

By the way, notice the time stamp on the reveal tweet:

UCF has had the old Knighthead since its major rebrand in 2007. That rebrand came with some seven athletics marks, most of which were sparingly used. Aside from the stacked UCF wordmark and the Knighthead, most of these organically fell out of use over time.

With the unveiling of the new Knighthead, UCF also officially refined its athletic branding down to two logos and two wordmarks:

Courtesy: UCF Athletics

The noteworthy thing here is the official recognition of the script Knights as one of the program’s two wordmarks. The stacked UCF remains the primary logo.

There’s a lot going on in the branding and apparel space right now at UCF. The Knighthead was certainly unexpected. With UCF’s apparel contract up for grabs, we should expect to see quite a bit more movement on the program’s marketing and branding front fairly soon.