Teaneck, Long Island, New Jersey and, finally, Brooklyn.

The club now called the Brooklyn Nets began in 1967 as the New Jersey Americans of the American Basketball Association. Writing in The New York Times on 5 July 2012, Harvey Araton recalled that the team had hoped to play at the 69th Regiment Armory in Manhattan, but the Knicks, wary of the new league, blocked the site. The Americans played one season in Teaneck, New Jersey, and then moved to Commack on Long Island. English Wikipedia names the trucking businessman Arthur J. Brown as the founding owner and says he sold the club the following year to the entrepreneur Roy Boe.

On Long Island the team became the New York Nets. The original uniforms already carried the colours that would follow the club for decades. Wikipedia describes the Americans’ set as white and red, with red, blue and white stripes and the team name and numerals in red with blue trim. The New York Nets kept that template, putting a script “Nets” with a tail accent beneath it on the white uniform and block “New York” lettering on the red one.

After the move to Nassau Coliseum in 1972, the club introduced the look later remembered as “Stars and Stripes.” Wikipedia says the white uniform carried a thick blue stripe filled with white stars, a red stripe with a white outline and the team name in red block letters, while the blue uniform mirrored it with “New York” in white. The Nets entered the NBA in 1976 as part of the ABA–NBA merger, and in 1977 moved back across the state line to become the New Jersey Nets.

The stars and stripes went with them. According to Wikipedia, the white uniform stayed the same in New Jersey, the blue uniform read “Nets” across the front and later added “New Jersey” in white block letters inside the red stripe. When the team moved to the Meadowlands in 1981, it briefly brought back the old “Nets” script in blue with red trim and set “New Jersey” in a stacked script on the road uniform, before returning to the stars-and-stripes set in 1983.

Ownership changed several times in New Jersey. Wikipedia says Boe sold the team in 1978 to a group of seven local businessmen led by Alan N. Cohen and Joseph Taub, who became known as the “Secaucus Seven”; that a group of real estate developers led by Raymond Chambers and Lewis Katz bought it in 1998; and that the developer Bruce Ratner bought it in 2004 with the aim of moving it to a new arena in Brooklyn as part of the Atlantic Yards development.

A new borough, a new arena and two colours.

The 1990s and 2000s gave the New Jersey Nets two more looks. Wikipedia says a rebrand before the 1990–91 season introduced a more futuristic “Nets” script in red with white and blue trim, initially paired with a white-to-light-blue gradient road uniform and then a solid blue one. Before the 1997–98 season the club moved to a deeper red and navy with silver accents, with thick navy and silver argyle stripes on every uniform and a shield-shaped primary logo.

The move to Brooklyn took several years. In his 2012 article, Araton wrote in The New York Times that Mikhail Prokhorov had bought the team from Bruce Ratner in 2010 and partnered with him in building Barclays Center. Wikipedia records that the NBA Board of Governors approved the relocation on 13 April 2012, and the club began playing in Brooklyn in the 2012–13 season.

The new identity arrived ahead of the move. The Christian Science Monitor reported on 1 May 2012 that the Brooklyn Nets had unveiled new logos the previous day at a sporting goods store on Flatbush Avenue near the arena, dropping the red, white and blue of the New Jersey years. The paper said the logo was designed by Jay-Z, the rapper and then a minority owner, and described it as monochromatic and retro: a black, badge-shaped backdrop holding the word “NETS” in thin capitals above a basketball engraved with a “B” for Brooklyn, with a variant that circled the “B” ball with the words “Brooklyn New York.” Citing a statement on the team’s website, the Monitor added that the design was inspired in part by the signage of the New York subway.

Jay-Z’s role did not last long as an owner. Rolling Stone reported in April 2013 that he was giving up his stake because NBA rules would not let him own part of a team while his new agency, Roc Nation Sports, represented players. The magazine described him as a visible figure in the investment group that brought the Nets to Brooklyn and said he had been active in the marketing and launch of the team.

The uniforms followed the logos into black and white. Wikipedia says the 2012 set put “Brooklyn” across the chest of both the white and the black uniform. Alternates looked back: a grey-sleeved design with “Brooklyn” in Dodger blue, worn from 2013 as a nod to the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club, and versions that recalled the stars and stripes and the 1980s New Jersey uniforms.

Design and documentation.

A basketball identity is built for a small, bright stage. The jersey carries much of the load: a wordmark across the chest, a number front and back, and trim at the neck and armholes, all of which have to read on a moving body under arena lights and on a television screen at the same time. Designers tend to favour bold, condensed letterforms, a short list of flat colours and outlines clean enough to survive tackle twill, sublimation and screen printing. Numerals are often drawn as a dedicated set so that similar digits stay distinct at a distance.

The court is the other canvas. A centre-circle logo, baseline wordmarks and painted keys turn the floor into a wide graphic seen from directly above, and the colours chosen there have to work with wood grain, glare and broadcast cameras. Alternate uniforms add a further layer: city-themed editions, throwback sets and statement colours let a club test new lettering or reference local history without changing its primary marks. Arena naming then adds a sponsor’s name to the building, so signage systems have to balance the club’s palette with a partner’s logo on scoreboards, concourses and entrances.

Graffiti, Basquiat, Kaws and a streamlined “B.”

When Nike became the NBA’s uniform supplier in 2017, Wikipedia says the Nets kept their identity largely intact, with the white uniform becoming the “Association” set and the black one the “Icon” set. The club then used its extra uniforms to bring Brooklyn artists into the system. Wikipedia credits the graffiti artist Eric Haze with a “BKLYN” wordmark on the 2019 “Statement” uniform and with “BED-STUY” lettering on a white City uniform for 2019–20, a nod to the neighbourhood where the Notorious B.I.G. grew up. Earlier City sets drew on the Brooklyn Bridge and on a camouflage pattern made in tribute to the rapper.

Later City uniforms continued the approach. Wikipedia says the 2020–21 set wrote “BKLYN NETS” in the style of the Brooklyn-born painter Jean-Michel Basquiat; the 2021–22 set combined pieces of the club’s own past, including the argyle stripes, the 1990s “Nets” lettering and a stars-and-stripes band; and the 2023–24 set was made with the Brooklyn-based artist Kaws, using splashes of light grey, blue, turquoise and pink. An “Earned” uniform borrowed the herringbone parquet of the Barclays Center floor and set its lettering in Helvetica, after the signs of the New York City Subway.

In 2024, according to Wikipedia, the club streamlined its marks. It retired the shield, made the “B” basketball the primary logo, redrew the circular “Brooklyn Nets” seal and added an arched “BROOKLYN” wordmark and a script “Nets.” The mascots have changed as often as the uniforms: Wikipedia lists Duncan the Dragon, then Sly the Silver Fox from 1997, then the superhero BrooklyKnight, introduced in November 2012 and co-created with Marvel, who was retired after two seasons. Wikipedia says Joseph Tsai bought a stake in 2017 and has owned the team since 2019, when he exercised his option to take control.

For a design guide, the Brooklyn Nets show how a team that has moved between New Jersey, Long Island and Brooklyn can use a stripped-back palette to claim a new home, and then let local artists bend that palette in alternate uniforms. Compare it with the New York Knicks, the Manhattan club that once blocked the Americans’ arena plans, and the NBA, the league the Nets joined in 1976. For this guide we use Brooklyn black, court white and concrete grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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