Washington Redskins is one of the most prominent football teams in America. Overall, they’ve been in the top ten NFL teams for a while now, which also makes them amongst the best teams on the East Coast. The team is based in Washington, D.C., and not Washington State.

Meaning and History

The team was created in 1932 as Boston Braves. A year later, the iconic ‘Redskins’ moniker was also adopted, although it wasn’t until their transition to Washington that the well-known name was finalized to ‘Washington Redskins’. That being said, they had to discard it in 2020 because of its controversial nature.

1932 – 1933

Even before the team was known as Redskins, they used a classic depiction of a Native American as their mascot. It was a bicolor (red and white), simplistic illustration of one’s head, adorned with an ordinary (at least, for the popular culture) feathery headwear.

1933 – 1936

By this time, they were renamed Redskins. The idea of an Indian’s head as a mascot persisted, although there were some changes. Firstly, the entire thing was repainted black-and-white and encircled by a golden ring.

The general style also changed from an illustrative to a more realistic approach. That’s partly why they opted for a two-feather decoration rather than a full-blown, bulky headwear this time.

 1937 – 1951

Reversing the previous trend, they used pretty much the same emblem, but made it colored instead of the black-and-white. The coloring wasn’t too realistic, either – these were bright, strongly saturated shades of brown this time.

1952 – 1959

The 50s logo was more of a metal badge rather than an illustration. The colors matched too – they styled it to look bronze or gold with some black additions in the middle.

1960 – 1964

The 1960 version was again the same head illustration from 1933, but colored red and white (after the uniform colors back then).

1965 – 1969

The 1965 logo was a sudden change in design. Instead of the American’s head, they used a golden spear for 4 years. It was mostly golden, with some white additions here and there. Compositionally, it was a spearhead with just a small stick attached to it, as well as a feather protruding from the spearhead’s base.

1970 – 1971

The 1970 logo was another attempt of creating a long without using a head as a Native American profile as mascot. This time, they used a big letter ‘R’ colored in dark red, with the circle around it colored the same. On its left side hung two big feathers with golden tips (both this and the burgundy in the letter design were team colors).

1972 – 1981

In 1972, the Indian portrait returned in a slightly different shape, surrounded by a golden ring. The feathers stayed, but the golden tips they had were made paler this time.

1982 – 1983

In 1982, they basically just took the previous logo and mirrored it. The feathers were also curved to fit the curvature of the ring, and the face of the mascot was bleached just a bit.

1983 – 2020

In 1983, they returned the 1972 logo, but kept the slightly bleached hues from the 1982 attempt.

2020 – today

Following the racial controversy in 2020, the team decided to change the name to just ‘Washington Football Team’ – it’s an interim name that will be replaced by a permanent candidate later.

The new logo consisted of the word ‘Washington’ in burgundy letters, as well as a smaller inscription that said ‘Football Team est. 1932’ right below the main writing part. Often, they’d put the entire thing inside a golden rectangle, which, again, are the colors of the team.

Emblem and Symbol

When the team changed its long-standing name to ‘Washington’, they also introduced an emblem to be used during this interim period. It was a yellow capital ‘W’ put inside a burgundy (or dark red) square.

These are supposed to represent the iconic team colors so that fans would understand the connection.