*Updated with New Logo* College Intramural Franchise

[jshmiami96]

Hey all-

I think I've posted a similar thread to this for the last three years as we've toyed with our identity. i describe us as a "franchise" because we are a group of kids who play all of the same sports together under the same umbrella of names. Our name has been different iterations of "The Pharaohs" for our four years here, and we've used black, different shades of orange, and different shades of a yellow-orange as our three main colors. We've never had very strong designs, most likely because the designer (me) has never been anything but mediocre. Better than a guy off the street, but not by much. I was always a good hand-drawer of logos, but I've never quite mastered the art of vectorizing.

 

I have a heat press and I often will print our team jerseys for different sports. Here is our evolution:

 

Freshman Year: "Campion Pharaohs" Our primary mark for our freshman season living in Campion Hall had an amateurish "Tequila Sunrise" look and the alternate mark had what was an early attempt at both simplification and depth via shading. Neither goal was accomplished, but it was better than the primary I suppose. Either way, relatively weak sauce freshman year. We went with a white jersey with the logo centered, no names/numbers.

Sophomore Year: "Loyola Pharaohs", so-named after our dormitory "Loyola Hall", featured the pharaoh head as the focal point of the logo, an elevation of yellow to the secondary color, and a demotion of black to the tertiary. The logo is ambiguous, and it's hard to tell what it is, but it looks (slightly) more like a real logo than its freshman year predecessors. Our jerseys were fairly good looking, with a neon-orange top, a flag on the breast, and our logo front and center. Names/numbers were in yellow. Our softball uniforms were astros-styled with the tequila sunrise look.

Junior Year: "106 Pharaohs"- Named the 106 Pharaohs because our friend group was split between Townhouse 106 and, ironically, Apartment Building 106. The closest thing to a quasi-respectable logo we've had, the pharaoh head is at least fairly identifiable as a pharaoh. The eyes are still quite amateurish, but the wordmark makes this set stand out. The 106 in yellow embedded into the Pharaohs wordmark made it a distinct and solid look for us. We got embroidered New Era style black hats and the black-chest orange camo-sleeved jerseys seen at right. Names/numbers in team font in white on back. Yellow is demoted back to tertiary status, and black regains its status as a secondary color.

Senior Year: "Sunrise Pharaohs": The name is in honor of our street name. I was anticipating trying to get us a respectable look for our senior year team, which would have been a fairly significant departure from the last three years. I wanted a clean, bold look that was reminiscent of some of the new-school face logos that use shadows and silhouettes to fill out the profile of the face. Unfortunately, I struggled mightily in this charge. The three concepts below are just that-concepts. I've toyed around with going full circle with the gradated shades of orange, but I'm underwhelmed with all three options I've produced. The logo on the far right is one that we like as an alternate or wordmark and are fairly certain we're going to use in some form, but everything else is up in the air. Do you guys have any critiques/criticisms for a direction to go, given the team history and current concepts I've detailed?

[jshmiami96]

...bump? lol

[loneranger158]

I just have to say that I always wondered what IM teams would look like with actual identities and not just the same colors or campus rec-issued pennies. Especially considering I was thinking about doing something like this if I started an IM team. Nice work. My favorite is the highlighting of the 106 in the name. I'd say maybe use yellow in the sun on the new logo since you have a history of using yellow, and maybe add it to the gradient in the wordmark, if not just a littie.

[walkerws]

I like your freshman year look over the others, but your JR year look just needed some facial definitions and it'd be the best of these. Some work on that headpiece would be great as well. The shading on these look good. Color selection is nice and unique. A good identity overall. 

[jshmiami96]

4 hours ago, walkerws said:

I like your freshman year look over the others, but your JR year look just needed some facial definitions and it'd be the best of these. Some work on that headpiece would be great as well. The shading on these look good. Color selection is nice and unique. A good identity overall. 

Thanks- I am surprised that Freshman year is your favorite, but I agree with you that Junior year's is a few tweaks away from being a decent logo. I really wanted to make a logo that looks like one of these, but I don't know enough of the process on Illustrator to do so:

The silhouette-styled face is such a new school look but I'm having a hard time actualizing it.

[mcrosby]

With the style you're looking for I find it easiest to draw your logo, all the details and then just start removing them. Combine shadowed areas (the undersides of the mountie and fisherman's hats blend with the shadows of their faces). Let the viewer fill in the gaps. We all know what eyes look like, you can use simple shapes to convey expressions in a logo much easier than details can. 

 

Sometimes I create the logo without any shading and choose my light source once that's done. I start thickening lines that will be in shadow, eventually these thick lines become the shadow. I used this process in my Bulls concept. I basically started with their current single weight logo and made lines thicker and thicker until I was happy. I also used small bits of light within the shaded areas to highlight points of expression (eyebrow and cheek). 

[jshmiami96]

On 9/5/2017 at 7:20 PM, mcrosby said:

With the style you're looking for I find it easiest to draw your logo, all the details and then just start removing them. Combine shadowed areas (the undersides of the mountie and fisherman's hats blend with the shadows of their faces). Let the viewer fill in the gaps. We all know what eyes look like, you can use simple shapes to convey expressions in a logo much easier than details can. 

 

Sometimes I create the logo without any shading and choose my light source once that's done. I start thickening lines that will be in shadow, eventually these thick lines become the shadow. I used this process in my Bulls concept. I basically started with their current single weight logo and made lines thicker and thicker until I was happy. I also used small bits of light within the shaded areas to highlight points of expression (eyebrow and cheek). 

Thank you for this. I'm back to the drawing board at the moment and I'll keep you posted on my progress.

[jshmiami96]

After a ton of work, here's the design I came up with:

 

[jshmiami96]

And for those interested, here's a more detailed look at our history, with "the 29ers" and "33,000 Kareemails" being basketball team names:

 

[mcrosby]

5 hours ago, jshmiami96 said:

After a ton of work, here's the design I came up with:

 

Looking good. Instead of/in addition to using the middle orange to shade half of the face you might try increasing weights of the dark orange in the shadowed area. Right now we see that one half is in shadow, but that's only on the face. Use your dark orange to shade that area as well.