Mountain Purple and Midnight Black: in the redesign of the Utah Jazz jersey and logo

It’s mountain time for the Utah Jazz.

Just two seasons after unveiling a new bright yellow and black color scheme, the team is once again leaning into the beloved mountain purple, white and sky blue palette that the Jazz have become known for over the years.

“We know about purple pops,” Jazz Governor Ryan Smith told ESPN. “That’s how a lot of people know us. It’s not easy because you have a few other teams that have a few other variations of purple. Making that our own is what we’ve been working on.”

The Jazz aren’t calling it a rebranding but rather an evolution.

Regardless, this is a quick change from what the team introduced ahead of the 2022-23 season. Since the launch of the new jerseys and colors, Smith said the Jazz have constantly surveyed fans and studied their reaction.

“We looked at what worked, what sold, what the fans and our players wore and what we think is really trying to find our identity which for us is both for the past and for the “future,” Smith said. “The one thing that is absolutely a part of who we are are these mountains that are within 15 miles of where you live.”

According to the Utah Office of Tourism, 85 percent of the state’s residents live within 15 miles of the Wasatch Mountains. So reincorporating the mountains into the team’s jerseys was something Smith and the Jazz wanted to do moving forward.

“(In 2022-23) we made a pretty bold move and said, ‘Hey, let’s clean up the palette a little bit, what do we do?’” Smith said. “So we went with black, yellow and purple as our urban edition. I stood up from the beginning and said that branding is an iterative process. It will be an iteration. We are not going to stay static on that.”

The team said it would take two years to fully convert to its new colors and uniforms. Fans and opponents will still see the old colors and jerseys for the first half of the 2024-25 season, as the new ones won’t be ready in time for opening night.

“I think we’re moving in that direction where it’s like, ‘Hey, this is who we are.’ And if we’re aligned on this internally and we feel like our fans and our players are on board with it,” Smith said, “then why are we going to wait?

“And we’d rather just show where we’re going and I think that’s exciting. I think people can see that they have something to look forward to. I think we all like surprises, but very rarely do they launch exactly like you would. I’d rather just show everyone and say, “Hey, this is what we’re doing, we’re really excited about mountain basketball.”

Some of the models will tie in with the much-celebrated Utah City editions from 2017 to 2022, which featured a gradient style and resonated with fans.

Working with design firm Doubleday & Cartwright on the mountain basketball concept and Nike on the uniform designs, the Jazz organization knew it was going with purple as the primary color in the redesign, but recognized that ‘It took something beyond standard black and white to make the scheme pop. The official names of the new team colors: Mountain Purple, Midnight Black and Sky Blue.

The colors are reminiscent of the John Stockton/Karl Malone era jerseys worn from 1996 to 2004. The blue is also a subtle callback to the Deron Williams/Carlos Boozer era jerseys the team wore from 2004 to 2010.

“You walk outside right now and you see this blue on the mountains with the white,” Smith said. “It’s pretty similar to who we are and what you see.”

Utah will use two black uniforms this season: the first is the one with yellow lettering that the Jazz have worn the past two seasons; then they will move to another on January 1, 2025, which features the J-note mark and number with the mountains in the background.

This will be the first time that the Jazz will use their mountain scheme on a black jersey.

For its conference jersey this season, Utah is sticking with the white uniform used the past two seasons with the J-note number and yellow trim. This jersey will be used throughout the 2024-25 campaign.

Next season, yellow will no longer be part of the Jazz brand image.

Utah’s 2024-25 street edition jerseys will be primarily purple with the recognizable mountain in the background and white Utah lettering and number.

In 2025-26, the team will have new primary jerseys for its icon and association editions. Both will be a version of the urban editions the team wore during the 2023-24 season with the gradient mountains on the top and bottom.

“We really thought, wow, this is a really nice jersey,” Smith said of last season’s street editions. “It looked good on the field, it looked good on the fans and the fans loved it. It kind of checked all the boxes. So we were like with a white jersey, there’s- Is there a reversal of that? And when we saw that, it’s like, holy cow, that’s incredible.”

The ones the Jazz wore this season featured a purple mountain gradient with a Utah wordmark stylized like the Jazz wordmark from the late 1990s to early 2000s.

The association edition is a white version of this uniform, very popular with members of the Junior Jazz youth basketball program who tried on the uniforms for the team’s release video. The Icon Edition uniform will be similar in style and color, but the team will work in its new sky blue color to climb the mountain as well as cut the jersey, waist and shorts.

Utah’s primary logos will remain mostly the same. The team’s J rating will be purple and drop the “Utah Jazz” wordmark underneath for a simpler look. The “Utah” featured in the 2023-24 municipal editions will also be used.

The team will also use the J-note logo surrounded by “Utah Jazz Basketball” and an outline of the state, with basketball lines, a logo first used with the original gradient city editions of the season 2017-18.

To help launch the new look, the team enlisted the help of about 50 kids from the Junior Jazz program, which Smith participated in as a young Jazz fan.

The team said up to 70,000 children participate in its Junior Jazz program throughout Utah and parts of neighboring states, making it the largest youth program run by an NBA team.

“I’ve always said if you bet on a state, you bet on youth,” Smith said. “We are the youngest state in the country and we have 70,000 people in our youth program, which is insane.

“I think it’s really cool that they’re calling the shots.”