High School Athletics Rebrand

[nobizshowbiz]

Hello. I am a Freshman at Fremont High School in Fremont, NE. Our school mascot is the Tigers and our colors are black and gold. Our school logo is an exact copy of the Missouri Tigers logo. Recently, our school got a nice little letter in the mail from the University of Missouri telling the school that we need to change our logo. Our school has used this logo since the early 2000's, and we somehow were never caught. Until now. So our school needs a re-brand. 

 

I went through things that symbolize Fremont, and the first thing that comes to mind is our former dinner train. the train was opened in 1988. I got the chance to go on it multiple times, but I don't have very much memory of the times because I was pretty young. I used to be a huge fan of trains, so it was pretty awesome that we had a train station/museum in our town. Due to funds for tracks going down, the train was moved to Baldwin City, KS. in 2012. I chose the team name to be the Fremont Express, symbolizing Fremont's rich history with railroading. The colors I chose were a light blue and orange. I was thinking about naming the team "Fever" because the Dinner train was part of the F.E.V.R. (Fremont/Elkhorn Valley Railroad) but I decided against it.

 

I will be doing football first, and basketball after that. 

 

I couldn't decide which helmet to use, please feel free to tell me which one you like best.

 

The "F" logo used in the first one is the decal that we used on our helmets in 2011. Now that I see it in blue and orange, I realize it looks almost identical to Florida's "F" logo.

 

I used the last helmet in all of the uniform combinations, because it's the one that I like the most.

 

Please comment on how to improve these concepts. Thank you.

[stumpygremlin]

If you're going to actually volunteer to do this for your school, good on you. The first thing you should find out is how committed they are to the Tigers name. It'll be much cheaper for them to change out a logo and keep the name (think end zone wordmarks and basketball court sidelines and such) than it will be to change the name. So talk to your administration and/or school board about changing the nickname.

 

Now on to your concept. If you're going to use the dinner train as a base for your name, you should make the train actually look like the dinner train in question:

A stylized version of that would be more appropriate than your current AmTrak-style locomotive.

 

If I had to choose a helmet, I'd take the one you chose for your jersey presentations, and color it blue or blue/orange. Then, build a custom wordmark and numeral font around that.

 

Keep up the good fight, man. I hope you legitimately get somewhere with this.

[Whitefoot]

I agree that It would be more cost effective for the school to rebrand, but keep the Tigers mascot.

The idea to switch to the Express is good. The mascot is more unique than a tiger, but don't fall into the same trap as your school by recycling the logo from the Roanoke Express. Find a photo of a train you love and use your skills to create an original logo from the photo. Then use this board to get suggestions to make your original logo even better. (... and the F on your helmet really looks like University of Florida's alternate F logo).

[nobizshowbiz]

On 6/1/2017 at 0:55 PM, stumpygremlin said:

If you're going to actually volunteer to do this for your school, good on you. The first thing you should find out is how committed they are to the Tigers name. It'll be much cheaper for them to change out a logo and keep the name (think end zone wordmarks and basketball court sidelines and such) than it will be to change the name. So talk to your administration and/or school board about changing the nickname.

 

Now on to your concept. If you're going to use the dinner train as a base for your name, you should make the train actually look like the dinner train in question:

A stylized version of that would be more appropriate than your current AmTrak-style locomotive.

 

If I had to choose a helmet, I'd take the one you chose for your jersey presentations, and color it blue or blue/orange. Then, build a custom wordmark and numeral font around that.

 

Keep up the good fight, man. I hope you legitimately get somewhere with this.

The school uses our local university's field for football, which has the university's athletic marks already on the field. So we wouldn't have to change anything there.

Our basketball court is pretty plain, other than the sponsor logos, but we would need new paint on the walls and to change the court to fit the new identity.

 

I am in the process of creating a logo using the engine that ran the dinner train right now. Also a wordmark for the rebrand.

 

Thank you for your CC. I'll post the new logo(s) as soon as it's done.

 

[nobizshowbiz]

Here is the new logo set:

 

The train logo needs more to it, I just can't figure out what it is. I'm really glad with how the wordmarks turned out though. Please leave CC below. Thank you.

[nobizshowbiz]

bump for CC

[Captain Tsubasa]

I'm not really convinced that a train that has left town is really the best moniker, but if you wanna go down that track I would definitely use it's beautiful maroon and gold color scheme. 

 

 

That being said, I would probably elaborate more what you could do with the Tigers identity. 

[Whitefoot]

The shape of your train is good, but it feels like a coloring book image that has been paint bucket filled. SIMPLIFY. SIMPLIFY. SIMPLIFY. You have too much detail. We can tell it is a train without the detail. Thicken all your shape defining black lines and get rid of the rest (the color change creates its own line). You are using 6-7 colors and high schools usually can't afford ($$) to reproduce graphics (paper & apparel) with more than 3 colors. Now that you have a good overall shape, work on giving it a motion/movement perspective (find some good logos of trains/cars/boats/etc. that imply motion and use that to inspire you).