University of the Pacific

[barnesdesign]

Hey all it has been a while since I have posted any work, but I wanted to know what the general opinion is on my latest work-in-progress. It is for Pacific, and I always thought their little tiger head needed a change. I tried to mainly do an update of the wordmark, keeping some subtle slashes in it, and slight court/uniform updates (as far as their style goes) because I thought they were already pretty unique.

As far as the logo goes, I wanted a fierce, head-on view, with a full-body prowl as well. I am noticing, however, that it bears resemblance to the Tiger-Cats. You guys be the judge if it is too close. If it is, I have other ideas for the pose of the prowling tiger. I just need some other people to take a look, I think I have been staring at it for too long.

Thanks

[officeglenn]

Looks awesome, Ben ... quality work for sure. I was gonna say something about the resemblance to the Tiger-Cats, but you beat me to it. Ah well, they're both tigers; what are ya gonna do?

[1991]

that is awesome, i wish the logos i posted were half as good as yours. great job!

[slapshot]

Wow. Just, wow.

I am thoroughly amazed.

It reminds me a lot of the new Hamilton Ti-Cats logo (similar pose, although yours is not pouncing) and the way the head can be separated on its own, but I think there's enough differences between the two to not look like a direct copy.

The lettering is a little weak on this, however. I see how you tried to keep similar spikes that the current mark has, but I think the spikes throw off the letterspacing. I makes the spacing between the P-A-C more than the C-I and F-I. It might work better if the spikes were just on the outermost letters, and I don't think it would hurt the whole presentation the spikes only there either.

Would you have the Tigers name printed underneath the logo on the left? I've seen many an identity with the combination school name/nickname displayed that way.

[Chief.]

Great work! Awesome

[Puckguy14]

That looks awesome. UOP's look was alright. I loved their wordmark, however their current tiger looks a little too cartoony. DEFINITE upgrade. May I dare suggest tiger stripes on the jersey?

Show the Bengals how to do it right!

[Pixelboy]

Nicely done, but those expressing concern over the marked similarity to your design with the new Tiger-Cats logo package are correct, right down to the general pose of the tiger in their Corporate version. Also, the "ragged" edge of the tiger's head and body is a direct duplication of Hamilton's logos, not to mention the identical use of a light grey edge treatment.

As a fun personal exercise, it's well done. If you were to try to sell your concept to the university, you'd be leaving yourself and the university open to a clear copyright violation injunction however?not to mention damaging your professional reputation as a "copycat", whether it is deserved or not.

[barnesdesign]

Nicely done, but those expressing concern over the marked similarity to your design with the new Tiger-Cats logo package are correct, right down to the general pose of the tiger in their Corporate version. Also, the "ragged" edge of the tiger's head and body is a direct duplication of Hamilton's logos, not to mention the identical use of a light grey edge treatment.

As a fun personal exercise, it's well done. If you were to try to sell your concept to the university, you'd be leaving yourself and the university open to a clear copyright violation injunction however?not to mention damaging your professional reputation as a "copycat", whether it is deserved or not.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I guess that it has been decided that it too closely resembles the TiCats logo. That was definitely the point of the post, as I mentioned. To be sure, Hamilton has a great logo, and I wouldn't want to seem as though I am copying a logo.

I had no intentions of selling this to the University (and I know that that is simply not the way to go about getting your work used anyway), and definitely would not do so, as I had reservations about the similarities to the TiCats. The various reference photos I worked from had tigers prowling in the same general pose, many of my logos I make have a similar style to that used by the TiCats (many logos out there have that style as well).

It probably just does not work in my favor that the TiCats logo has so many good "logo traits" going for it (use of consistent thick outlines, smooth, flowing curves, all-enclosing outline), and therefore trying to do a logo that is a similar concept invariably would yield comparisions, especially that both are tigers.

Thanks for your responses. It's good to hear feedback to be able to make changes for the better. I appreciate it.

[KCScout76]

BB - I am once again totally amazed at your work. Fantastic!!!

I need you to do another logo for me - PM me this weekend.

KCScout76

[cyandlux]

I dont know I was thinking BYU....but the Hamilton is closer....BUT it looks FRIGGIN awesome!!!!! Simple and prestine.

[mac]

that is amazing

[KCScout76]

Hey Barnes - try a remake of the BYU Cougar. The cat on the mountain logo -

[otherwilds]

Fantabulous!

[Braden]

Barnes, your work is awesome like always.

I'm being REALLY picky here.

Something's not hitting it right with me with the main logo. The tiger head doesn't match the body. The body is very curvy while the head is really sharp with straight lines. Ithink you need to change either the body to match the head or vice versa for this to work 100%

The woodmark is on the weak side... it doesn't have enough standout appeal to it that it needs to have. Maybe it requires fixing around the colours and the outlines... or maybe try a new style of font.

That's just my 2 cents.

[GMS1122]

Ben, great work as always.Here's a couple nit-picky things i see going on in you logo..

First the Ti-Cats comparisons are justified even though yours is significantly different and a great piece of work on its own, its going to draw comparisons to that or say the cincinnati bengals logos becuase they are the 2 top logos when it comes to full-body / head tigers. So thats prettyhard to avoid.

Anyways, your logo. I do agree with some of the points Braden already brought up and the jaggedness of the face and how it conflicts with the smoothness of the rest of the body, i think fixing that up not only would help the overall appearance of the logo but help lose some of the Ti-Cats resemblences you are getting.

I think the wordmark looks great, i wouldnt change much with that.

Other than these few minor things i think you've got an excellent logo, and your work continues to impress me. Keepup the good work!

[Pixelboy]

I actually prefer your pose in the full-body logo over Hamilton's a bit - I like the head lower in yours. The ridiculous "pop art" lettering in the Ticats' wordmark mars an otherwise excellent package they have now.

I would have been consistent in the tight kerning of the letters in the wordmark to match what you did in the primary logo - although perhaps you did, reversing the border colours and there is a wide outside white border we can't see since it's against a white background?

[McCall]

Gotta say, I like your logo a lot better than Hamilton's, especially the darker orange. And that uniform design is friggin awesome. Excellent work here, dude.

[-kj]

Pixelboy's post made me look at the wordmarks again, and it seems like there's odd kerning issues in "Pacific." In the "Tigers" wordmark, the letters are nice and evenly spaced. In "Pacific," however, the spacing is erratic, the Is being too close to their neighbours to the left, etc. Making the spacing unifornm would be better, it seems to me.

Otherwise, it's a good package.

[OMMF]

I really like the work here but the "UOP" wordmark is kind of throwing me off. Most universities don't use the "O" in their names (University of Southern California = USC, University of Washington = UW, etc.) so perhaps just try "UP"? Or even make the O lowercase to indicate it stands for "of" instead of leading people to think it might be the University of Outer Pacific.

If it's a NorCal thing, and they have always been called UOP then ignore everything I said. I'll never understand NorCal.

[VitaminD]

IT SUCKS!

(scroll on before flaming me, please...)

No, I'm kidding, your concept is actually really impressive. Here's my C&C, take it for what you will:

The tigers look very similar, but there are noticeable differences. The Hamilton cat looks leaner and, for lack of a better word, more "composed", where your cat looks rougher (the ragged lines along the back) and much more predatory, like its hackles are up. Also, going with a more severe angular font draws out the angular aspects of your design, where the Ti-Cats' rounded wordmark makes their cat look sleeker (and a fan of "Rolling Stone" magazine, perhaps ). Looking at the cat heads by themselves, you see a lot more of your cat's upper face, and you see less mouth than the Hamilton cat, which has its head tilted back a little (is it laughing?). Your cat head looks like a modernized Detroit Tigers head to me.

A couple issues with the wordmark:

1. the serifs go in both directions on the letters, which takes away from the impression of cohesive motion in one direction. For instance, the "T" and "I" in "TIGERS" is headed one way, the rest of the word is heading the other way.

2. the letters have a slight italicization to them, the numbers don't. Either both letters and numbers should be italicized, or neither. This looks unsettled.

As for the UOP/UP issue, UOP works fine. There are no major schools that go by UP (Penn is UPenn, Pittsburgh is Pitt), so I guess they could go with that as well. If you wanted to de-emphasize the "O", you could move the "U" and "P" next to each other, and make a small "o" in contrasting colors, so it's there but is not of equal emphasis with the other letters. I've seen Arizona do this (UoA), and most schools do leave the "of" out of their acronym. But Pacific doesn't seem to, so yours would be acceptable.

Like your work; this could look supersweet with a tweak or two.