A charter club, a name from the league’s outfitter and a Pasadena bowl.

The LA Galaxy are as old as Major League Soccer. English Wikipedia says the club was founded in 1994 and began play in 1996 as one of the league’s ten charter members, based in the Greater Los Angeles area and competing in what is now the Western Conference. It is owned by Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which also owns the Los Angeles Kings and holds an interest in the Los Angeles Lakers.

The name was a pun on the city’s main industry. Wikipedia says “Galaxy” was chosen because Los Angeles is home to the “stars” of Hollywood, and that the name itself was created by Nike when the league was being set up; Nike was also the club’s original uniform supplier. Brand New, the identity review site run by Armin Vit, made the same point in July 2007, noting that the name refers to the Los Angeles parlance of celebrity “stars.”

The early kit belonged to its decade. Wikipedia says the original jersey, used in the inaugural 1996 season, reflected the colours of the city of Los Angeles, with black-and-teal halves, black sleeves with gold and red accents, black shorts and black socks. In the years that followed the club played in various combinations, usually of gold, teal green and white with black accents, often with a sash running from the left shoulder across the chest.

The club’s original home was in Pasadena. From 1996 to 2002, Wikipedia says, the Galaxy played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Between 1999 and 2011 the club also used Titan Stadium at California State University, Fullerton, for U.S. Open Cup games. The Galaxy returned to the Rose Bowl for one match in each of 2023 and 2024 to host games against Los Angeles FC.

The supporters arrived with the club. Wikipedia says the Galaxians were formed in 1996, during the Galaxy’s opening season; the LA Riot Squad followed after the 2001 season, the Angel City Brigade in 2007 and the Galaxy Outlawz in 2019. In 2020 the club replaced the bleachers in the north end of its stadium with a safe-standing section, the Victoria Block, which became the home of the Galaxians, the Angel City Brigade and the Outlawz.

From a golden cyclone to a quasar on a shield, timed for a single signing.

The Galaxy have had two logos, Wikipedia says. The original mark was gold, teal and black: the Galaxy wordmark set over a golden swirl, with a stylised black outline. Brand New called the swirl a “Cyclone,” describing it as more or less an overhead picture of a galaxy.

The change came with a transfer. In 2007 the club signed David Beckham from Real Madrid, and Wikipedia says the logo and colours were changed to coincide with his arrival, as part of an overall rebranding led by the then general manager, Alexi Lalas. Earlier that year, in March 2007, Herbalife had signed on as the club’s primary shirt sponsor.

Brand New reviewed the result in July 2007, reporting that the Galaxy had relaunched their brand the week before, in time for the new arrival. The site described a logo of bespoke heraldry with a bright quasar, noted that the new Quasar shield replaced the Cyclone, and quoted the copy line on the team site at the time: “The Stars Align.” It welcomed the absence of gradients, saying that depth had been achieved through careful use of lines and sober colour choices, and observed that the mark would be straightforward to embroider.

The new crest is simple to describe. Wikipedia says it shows a blue shield with a gold border, the LA Galaxy team name, and a quasar at the top. The quasar has a local source: Wikipedia says it originally appeared on the 1957 Seal of Los Angeles County, and on the modified version of the county seal, so the shield borrows a piece of civic heraldry rather than a picture of outer space.

The colours changed with the crest. Wikipedia says the team colours since 2007 have been navy blue, gold and white, with teal and black dropped. At the 2007 launch, Brand New described navy kits for home matches and white for away, with blue accents; Wikipedia lists the current primary uniform as white and the secondary as blue.

The mascot keeps the space theme. Wikipedia says Cozmo has dark blue skin with yellow eyebrows and white eyes, matching the colours of the home uniform. He replaced the original mascot, Twizzle, a more humanoid figure who also looked as if he had come from outer space and wore a space helmet and cape; Twizzle still makes occasional appearances at select games alongside Cozmo.

Clubs, crests and colours.

North American soccer clubs build their identities from a small set of recurring parts: a crest, a pair or trio of colours, a wordmark, and the supporter scarf that carries all three into the stands. Crests in the league tend to favour simple outlines, such as shields, circles and roundels, that can be stitched onto a shirt, printed on a ticket and shown at small size on a phone screen without losing their shape. Colour choices often borrow from a city’s landscape, history or older sports teams, and clubs often give their main shade its own name in brand materials.

Scarves sit at the centre of supporter culture. Fan groups commission their own designs, hold them aloft during anthems, and use banners, flags and choreographed displays to turn a stand into a large-scale graphic surface. Many clubs share stadiums with football, baseball or other tenants, so signage, seat colours and temporary dressing must switch between teams from one week to the next. Expansion launches add another layer: a new club usually reveals its name, crest and colours months before its first match, often after supporter consultation, and the reveal itself becomes a design event.

AEG ownership, a stadium in Carson, and two Los Angeles rivals.

The stadium is the next layer of the identity. In 2003, Wikipedia says, the Galaxy moved to a soccer-specific stadium on the campus of California State University, Dominguez Hills, in Carson, about ten miles south of downtown Los Angeles. It opened as the Home Depot Center, later became the StubHub Center and is now Dignity Health Sports Park. The stadium has also hosted rugby and American football.

For a decade the Galaxy shared that stadium with a Los Angeles rival. From 2005 to 2014 Chivas USA also played there, and the two teams met in a series known as the SuperClasico, until Chivas USA was dissolved in 2014. A new club, Los Angeles FC, was formed that year and began play in 2018. Wikipedia says the Galaxy’s matches against LAFC are known as El Tráfico, a nickname coined by fans that plays on El Clásico and on the city’s traffic congestion.

The older rivalry runs north. Wikipedia says the California Clásico against the San Jose Earthquakes dates back to the founding of MLS and reflects a long tradition of Northern versus Southern California sporting rivalries.

The club’s match-day presence goes beyond the crest. Wikipedia describes the Galaxy Star Squad, the club’s official cheerleaders, who appear at club events and autograph sessions and hand out scarves around the stadium.

The club plays in the Western Conference of MLS, and its owners’ wider Los Angeles portfolio links it to other city brands such as the Los Angeles Lakers, in which AEG holds an interest.

For a design guide, LA Galaxy shows how a club can keep a name and change everything around it, trading a 1990s teal swirl for a navy shield and a quasar taken from county heraldry in a single season. Compare Real Madrid, the club Beckham left to join the Galaxy, and Los Angeles FC, the cross-town club formed in 2014. For this guide we use galaxy navy, quasar gold and home white with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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