My wife is a huge football fan—Kansas City Chiefs, if you must know—and I’m one too (go Niners!), but too a lesser degree. I just really hope the Seattle Seahawks don’t break out the super-ugly green highlighter-colored Action Green uniforms when they face off against the Patriots in Super Bowl LX.

Anyway, sports teams are some of the best examples of legacy brands, steeped in history, and with legions of literal fans. It interesting how legacy brands evolve—especially ones where the audience feels genuine ownership. And sports teams are the extreme case. Mess with a logo that fans have tattooed on their bodies, and you’ll hear about it.

Natalie Fear talked to several designers about what makes NFL logo updates succeed or fail. Paul Woods, president of AIGA Los Angeles:

The updates that work tend to be quieter. The Chargers’ continued refinement of their iconic bolt or the Vikings’ measured refinements show that evolution can be about better execution, not louder ideas. Improved proportions, stronger typography, and systems that scale across digital, broadcast, and physical environments matter more than novelty.

Better execution, not louder ideas. That’s the whole thing, really. The temptation with any redesign is to justify the effort by making the change visible. But visible change and meaningful improvement aren’t the same thing.

Woods again:

Appeasing fans does not mean standing still. It means understanding what they actually care about.

This applies well beyond sports branding. Any time you’re working on a product or brand that people have history with, the job isn’t to make your mark—it’s to make the thing better without breaking what already works.

Michael Vamosy, founder of DEFIANT LA, puts a finer point on the challenge:

Fans are much more forgiving of poor design choices from the past than they are of design improvements built for the future.

That asymmetry is worth sitting with. Nostalgia protects old mistakes. New work gets no such grace period.