NZIHL & NZWIHL
Colour Style Guide
The authoritative palette for the New Zealand Ice Hockey League and the New Zealand Women's Ice Hockey League. Use these hex values for broadcast graphics, social, web, and print across all ten franchises — regardless of which logo variant is in circulation at the rink.
NZIHL New Zealand Ice Hockey League
League Marks
Black wordmark on white is the default lockup; reverse the white wordmark onto black when graphics demand it. The Birgel Cup mark is the playoff trophy lockup and only appears in championship contexts.
Pure NZ Admirals
Official team name is "Pure NZ Admirals" for the 2026 season. "West Auckland" was dropped from the name mid-season.
Botany Swarm
SkyCity Stampede
Dunedin Thunder
Logo updated May 2026. File is now Dunedin_Thunder.png in /Team Logos. The old Phoenix Thunder placeholder has been retired.
Auckland Mako
Mako Steel is the team-sourced value (matches the theme-color meta tag on aucklandmako.co.nz). Sits between the Admirals' navy and the Steel's silver to keep all three Auckland sides distinguishable in shared graphics.
Canterbury Red Devils
NZWIHL New Zealand Women's Ice Hockey League
The NZWIHL is built on four regional franchises. Dunedin Thunder Women and Wakatipu Wild share their colour system with the NZIHL side in the same city; Auckland Steel and Canterbury Inferno carry independent palettes that complement, but stand apart from, the men's teams in their region.
League Marks
A circular lockup variant is also available for use in stamps, social avatars and compact placements where the wordmark cannot read at size.
Auckland Steel
Only the reverse (white-on-dark) lockup is in the current logo library. A full-colour positive variant should be commissioned for use on white and light surfaces.
Type tint — legibility only, not a brand colour: fine type and labels set over Steel Navy use Steel Tint #C8D3E0 (a lightened Brushed Silver). Broadcast type over navy otherwise uses Ice White — see Usage › Legibility Tints.
Canterbury Inferno
Ember Red sits deliberately deeper than Devil Red (#DC0000), with Flame Orange as the heat accent. When both Canterbury teams appear in the same composition, the two reds are different enough to belong to two franchises while still reading as a single regional identity.
Type tints — legibility only, not brand colours: type set over Ember Red uses Flame Tint #FFB347 (a lightened Flame Orange), which lifts contrast from ~2.5:1 with raw #FF6A13 to ~4.1:1. Type set over Flame Orange uses warm-black #1A0000. Neither is a brand colour — see Usage › Legibility Tints.
Dunedin Thunder Women
Only the reverse (white-on-dark) lockup is in the current logo library. Both DIHA sides share a single colour system; the wordmark and "Women" suffix — not the palette — carry the brand differentiation from the men's team.
Wakatipu Wild
Both Queenstown-based franchises share a single colour system. The Wild wordmark — not the palette — carries the brand differentiation from the Stampede.
Usage Cross-League Rules
Primary on Primary
Every team has a primary / secondary pair that is colour-safe at typical broadcast weights. When in doubt, lead with primary and use secondary for accents (jersey numbers, stat callouts, sponsor lockups).
Neutral Backgrounds
For matchup graphics where two team colours collide, drop both teams onto League Black (#000) or League White (#FFF) rather than blending palettes. Avoid Mako Steel and Steel Navy as backgrounds when a team's primary is also dark.
Type Contrast
Use the colour pairings shown in each team's preview chips as the canonical contrast model. Don't set team type on a non-team colour unless using League Black, League White, or a documented legibility tint (see Legibility Tints below).
Legibility Tints
Two teams carry a deep primary where the natural accent fails broadcast contrast, so a single lightened type tint — a legibility colour, not a brand colour — is used for type and fine labels set over that primary, and nowhere else. Canterbury Inferno: Flame Tint #FFB347 (a lightened Flame Orange) for type over Ember Red; warm-black #1A0000 for type over Flame Orange. Auckland Steel: Steel Tint #C8D3E0 (a lightened Brushed Silver) for type over Steel Navy. These are the only sanctioned non-team type colours beyond League Black / League White, and they must never appear as fills, jersey, or brand elements.
Scorebug & Half-Dark Backgrounds
Every team has a half-dark background tone for scorebugs, lower-third fills and dark panels, derived from the team's darkest identity colour and darkened until white type clears at least 15:1 — ample headroom for score / clock numerals. Canterbury teams use reds, never black — Red Devils and Inferno both #550000. Stampede and Wakatipu Wild derive from their navy #1D3056, not their yellow (a darkened yellow turns muddy). Two teams stay unchanged because their primary already clears 15:1 — Admirals #081D48 and Mako #202222 (flagged on the swatch). On each swatch the foreground shows the team's bright identity colour — the vivid primary for Canterbury (red) and Stampede / Wild (yellow), or the bright accent (gold, honey, amber, silver, flame) for the darker-primary teams — i.e. the colour used for the team name / abbreviation on the panel. Exception — both Canterbury teams (Red Devils, Inferno) use white as the on-panel foreground, since red type on the deep-red panel lacks contrast. Use white for numerals; never use the half-dark itself as a logo fill, jersey or brand colour.
Reds in the Same Frame
If Red Devils and Inferno appear together, keep Devil Red (#DC0000) and Ember Red (#B00020) at full saturation and separate them with a black 2–4 px rule. Don't tint either toward the other, and never substitute a brighter red for Devil Red.
Yellows in the Same Frame
Stampede Yellow (#FAC805, shared with Wakatipu Wild), Admiral Gold (#F7BE11), Swarm Honey (#F7AF28) and Thunder Amber (#FDAD19, shared with Dunedin Thunder Women) live close together. When more than two appear, separate with each team's primary, never with white. Dunedin and Queenstown matchups across the leagues will read as one palette — that's intentional.
Sponsor & Co-Brand
Where league sponsorship requires a tertiary colour (e.g. SkyCity, Pure NZ), apply it as a thin rule or label only — never replace a team's primary.
Logo Library
Team logo files live in /Team Logos; NZWIHL league marks live in /NZWIHL Logos. Auckland Steel and Dunedin Thunder Women remain gaps in the library and should be prioritised for replacement artwork. The Dunedin Thunder (men's) logo was updated May 2026 and is now current.
Broadcast Graphics UP NEXT Overlay
The still / animated “UP NEXT” matchup overlay that layers over the stream–starting–soon countdown. 1920×1080, transparent, either league, any two teams. These are the locked construction rules for the 2026 season.
Canvas & Bands
1920×1080 transparent. Top band (y 0–152) carries a centred “UP NEXT”; the bottom band (y 840–1080) splits into two team colour fields. Evergreen — no date, time, venue or year.
Centred Seam
The diagonal colour split crosses the exact frame centre — (960, 960), the vertical midpoint of the bottom band — for both leagues, slanted to match each league mark’s italic “I” (NZIHL −0.367, NZWIHL −0.369).
League Mark = Divider
The league wordmark sits centre as the divider (never “VS”). NZIHL wordmark is 196 px wide centred at (960, 945); the NZWIHL mark is matched to the same centre and run 10% larger.
Name Lockup
Two centred lines beside each logo: line 1 (city / qualifier) white, line 2 (team name) in the team colour, both with a black (INK #08080A) 3 px outline. Inter Bold, ≈39 px cap. Identical for every team.
Gold-Band Exception
On the two gold / yellow bands (SkyCity Stampede, Wakatipu Wild) the team-name line only takes a white outline instead of black — a black edge muddies on gold. Line 1 keeps its black outline like everyone else.
Wakatipu Wild Band
Wild runs on a yellow band (#FAC805 → darker gold) with navy text — the same treatment as the Stampede. The navy-bird mark reads better on yellow than on the retired royal-blue band.
Logo Sizing
Each logo is scaled by its opaque artwork height — not its file canvas, whose padding varies team to team — then cropped to content and centred on its anchor, so every mark reads at a consistent size and sits on the same midpoint. A logo that would exceed 190 px wide at the baseline is reined in by width instead; a few crests are run taller by request.
Why the sizes land where they do: the cyan lines mark the 150 px height baseline and the magenta box the 190 px width cap. Marks tagged W-cap reach the width limit first, so they sit a little under 150 px tall.
| Team | Rendered (W×H px) | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Canterbury Red Devils | 108 × 166 | run taller (165) |
| Pure NZ Admirals | 190 × 137 | width-capped |
| Dunedin Thunder | 184 × 166 | run taller (165) |
| SkyCity Stampede | 176 × 150 | baseline |
| Botany Swarm | 190 × 141 | width-capped |
| Auckland Mako | 175 × 150 | baseline |
| Auckland Steel | 143 × 160 | run taller (160) |
| Canterbury Inferno | 190 × 114 | width-capped |
| Dunedin Thunder Women | 190 × 161 | run taller, width-capped |
| Wakatipu Wild | 146 × 150 | baseline |
Width-capped (so a touch under 150 px tall): Pure NZ Admirals, Botany Swarm, Canterbury Inferno. Run taller by request: Red Devils & Dunedin Thunder 165, Auckland Steel 160, Dunedin Thunder Women 154. These describe the logos as currently supplied — if the source files are re-exported on a consistent square canvas (recommended especially for the lower-resolution NZWIHL roundels), the per-team caps and overrides can be retired.