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Marist Red Foxes


axl007

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That is definately an upgrade from their prior logo, and I think it looks pretty good. The only thing I don't like is that the wordmark is italicized. And when you go to the Marist athletics site, this is the opening page, so it is official.

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Perhaps using this head for the logo would have been better...

Redd_foxx.jpeg

Gah, beat me to it. 'Dis is the big one!

As for the logo at hand, it's not terrible. The font's a little bland, and I'm not too big on bevels, but the fox is well-rendered.

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Did anyone else out there notice this?:

Take a look at the nose. Do you see the initials "FJ" in there, clear as day?

The press release said the work was done by Phoenix (as if you couldn't already tell from the work, including one of the three same-ol' same-ol' Phoenix font solutions), and though Jamie Skiles "is" Phoenix, maybe he got someone else (Fred Jablonowitz, Farrah Jacoby?) to do the animal artwork (Jamie obviously did the type, as he must have had 5 minutes free time).

Whattaya think?

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That foxes head really bothers me in multiple ways. The red forehead part is way too big and plain compared to the rest of the busily shaded head. The eyes seem too detailed, and look like half human-half stuffed animal eyes. Also, three legs? Show the other a little bit. The leg partially hidden by the "M" looks very odd when the "M" is missing. Almost looks broken. I won't say anything about the wordmark. You have covered it. What does FJ stand for?

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This is NOT good. Not that I could do much better, but still. Were this for a little league baseball team somewhere, this would be great, but certainly substandard work for what Phoenix probably charged Marist for this mess.

On January 16, 2013 at 3:49 PM, NJTank said:

Btw this is old hat for Notre Dame. Knits Rockne made up George Tip's death bed speech.

 

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  • 7 months later...

Well, I had to register and add my 2 cents (or rather, $15.00, which I'll explain shorty) because....

First, my apologies for the long post. I have no expectations that anyone will read it, or even come across it since it's an old logo and probably only interesting to me, so please feel free to skip right over this, I know it's annoyingly long.

I'm the artist who designed the first Marist logo. A LOOONNNGGG time ago. I think I was still in high school if memory serves. Anyway, it's always been a frustrating story and I share it in hopes that someone can take away a "lesson learned" warning from it. I'd hate to have something similar happen to someone else (but few people are quite as gullible as I was back then. Still if it makes one person think to ask for more info, it would make me happy.

My brother was taking classes in photography at the time, and had a part time job assisting a freelance photographer, and I ended up doing it as well, I think I worked for him twice, for a few hours - basically holding objects that he was shooting, so I was basically nothing more than a living tripod.

At one point he came to me and asked me to do a college-type logo. All I knew was the mascot was a fox and I needed to incorporate the letter M. He may have told me the team was called "Red Foxes" but that would have been the most info I would have gotten. I was quite familiar with Marist, having grown up not far from and having family in Poughkeepsie, but as the assignment was given to me, it sounded sort of insignificant (or he downplayed it deliberately).

So, I got right to work (my first freelance project - a dream come true!!!) and you see the result at the top of this page. When it was finished, I gave this photographer my work (I think I assumed it was a concept to be approved for a final design. I'm not sure, it was a long time ago and a painful experience. Regardless of the exact details, he made it seem like an insignificant job that would probably not even be used, but he generously paid me for my work anyway.

He handed me a check for $15.00. I couldn't believe it! I actually got PAID for my artwork!! It never occurred to me to ask him how it might be used or by whom, or (gasp!) negotiate a more appropriate fee for what he knew it was going to be used for and by whom. I'm guessing he bid on a contract and got it, and I'm pretty sure Marist paid him more than $15.00. He must have gotten at least twice that.

It was thrilling at first to see it start to pop up all over the place... and when I saw it painted 30 or so feet across the basketball court (by accident when I was flipping channels on television, one of which was a televised Marist game, and I recognized it immediately). But it ended up bothering me a lot because it would always pop up and it hurt because I really felt cheated, and I was furious at myself for my own stupidity. It just would have been nice if I'd gotten formal attribution that I could add to my portfolio.

It seems to have been a pretty successful logo if it's wide-ranging use on all sorts of objects, and it was pretty well recognized by local residents (and college basketball fans, I imagine, too).

I agree with others who have posted that the version I did needed updating a few years before they got around to it. It's really nice to read other posts that say they like the old (my) logo better. That's really nice. I was surprised, too - because it is really old and it was old a few years before they retired it. They used it unimproved for too long.

They would have done well if they'd asked me to do it. I've learned a lot since I did the first one, and I could have given them a really sharp update that would be fresh, current, clean and (had I done it) far more professional than my first one.

Even I know how important continuity is... creating a new version that is so different it's almost foreign that a connection has to be rebuilt all over again is just a very bad move. It's a mistake for any identity design, in my view, but a HUGE mistake when team loyalty is so important, which IS the logo - and that "label", if you will is what people use to express their loyalty - by buying t-shirts and bumper stickers and back window decals, etc. (all of which I've seen my little fox emblazoned on, among other things).

It's just unacceptable design practice when you're dealing with product recognition/identity AND sports - even I was able to figure that out. It's sort of a no brainer. Creating an entirely new image will feel like an "impostor" and that is hard to shake. I wish they'd asked me to do it. Heck, I would probably have done it for free. Get the thorn out of my paw, so to speak.

Sorry for the long post, I really haven't thought about my logo much lately and just happened to think of it in the middle of a intellectual property law debate and found this site.

Thanks for letting me share this story, whether it gets read or not. If someone replies saying this is inappropriate and out of place for this forum, I'll delete my post and offer my apologies again.

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Wow, I've not seen this. I think it is an upgrade from the old version, if this is indeed real.

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It's real. I created it. : ) But it definitely needed an update a couple of years before they finally did it. I just posted the background on it a few minutes ago. Since no one has visited this thread since last June, I'm guessing it won't get read. Still, it was cathartic so I'm glad slogged through it.

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I prefer the original. The new one looks like something one of us on the boards would throw together over a day or two.

The original's got a style and attitude much superior to the new one. Thanks for the story too, foxy :)

The below to be updated once the newest banner is raised!
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Wow, great (well, great as in the way you told it) story, Fox! What a shady thing that Photographer did, I wonder how much he atually got outta the deal. Have you ever drawn up some "modernized" versions of your old logo? Those would be neat to see.

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CFA- Fargo Bobcats

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