OPTIMUS THREAD: APPRENTICE

[gingerbreadmann]

First, I think it would be better to have something clean for the primary and more creative on the secondary.

Second,

I love that Capitol building render!

[ShinyHubCaps]

^ That looks really nice, but somehow the lines don't look uniform. And I obviously missed the "North State." Anyone else have thoughts on these (or William's)?

Here is the corrected version I just made to elongate the wordmark and, therefore, shorten the space used up by the dome. It still looks a little messy, but nothing irreparable.

[gingerbreadmann]

Like I said, I love it but it kind of looks like a boat... that's my only problem pretty much, alone with the triangle that is there I just don't think it quite fits, even though it's in the actual building.

William's, like I said before I think the shape is off and I don't like the powder.

Bruschi, I think you executed it very well and it looks solid, and I think we should see what the primary looks like before we choose finally. Though that would look very respectable.

[lets_go_red]

bruschi - love what you did with my idea. Like william and gbm have said...it has been done before and its nothing unbelievably original, but it is solid. All of my ideas were kind of old school.

As far as the primary, what if we flip the curves on the sides vertically to give it less of a boat feel. I think we should include the North State part somewhere in there...but I'm not quite sold on gbm's idea although it is progress.

[gingerbreadmann]

As far as the primary, what if we flip the curves on the sides vertically to give it less of a boat feel. I think we should include the North State part somewhere in there...but I'm not quite sold on gbm's idea although it is progress.

Oh I'm not sold either, I just slapped what I had on there to give an idea.

[mania]

I can't quite get the .ai file to open like it should (seems disjointed, which version of AI was it made in?), but I had a very rough idea for how to distribute the text.

[lets_go_red]

So i've been kicking around another idea...it would be an old Colnel Sanders lookin guy using a bat as a crutch. Reactions???

[mania]

Sounds.... odd, in concept, but maybe in execution it will look great. See what you can come up with, man.

[jake22]

Jake, how would powder blue work with Royal Blue do you think?

It would be Rolal blue, powder blue, and white. (powder blue being mostly an outline color)

kind of like the royals atlternate powder blue uniform (invert), i just think that the two colors would go good together, and red, white, and blue is all good but i just thought it would flow smooth on a softball uniform.

Like so,

I know its only arial black, but its just for the colors

[heernumurr]

Here's a more compact version of what I;ve already posted:

Could be used as the patch or the wordmark. I'm really not a fan of the silver, it just looks grey and washed out and I think it would look even worse on a T-Shirt.

[ShinyHubCaps]

Here's something I tried with the secondary logo. I tried for groundbreaking... what would be better than making a politician look like a viable sports logo?

Actually, it looked better in the conception stage:

I'm working on the primary now. Hopefully by some time in the afternoon we'll have some consensus... and I hate to backtrack, but I'm working with powder blue like Jake suggested, and it actually looks pretty good. It might look too much like the UNC Tarheels, but I'll see what I can get.

I can't quite get the .ai file to open like it should (seems disjointed, which version of AI was it made in?)

The one I posted was made in Macromedia Flash and exported in AI 6.0, supposedly.

[ShinyHubCaps]

Today is the day when I wanted to have our logos set, so if you have any more concepts, let's see them. Other parts of the project should not take as long, so we could extend the logo deadline. However, I'd still like everyone to weigh in on the primary as soon as possible.

My thoughts: Above logos =

[mania]

I really like it, in the red.

Except I don't like the upturn in the text box.

[gingerbreadmann]

Today is the day when I wanted to have our logos set, so if you have any more concepts, let's see them. Other parts of the project should not take as long, so we could extend the logo deadline. However, I'd still like everyone to weigh in on the primary as soon as possible.

My thoughts: Above logos =

The red one is great. Here is all I don't love about it:

-The "Senators" font, I'm not 100% on

-I think "North State" is too small though I don't know if it's worth fixing

-At least on the red one, the stroke on the bottom is inconsistent.

How about if you made the first and last "S" bigger?

Edit: Also don't forget to get CMYK values.

[lets_go_red]

I think the red one is definitely the way we need to go. Lets try some other fonts/sizing schemes to see what looks best. I also have the Senator Guy drawn up on paper. I'm not to big on it...but I'll scan it in when I get home from my uncles house.

[heernumurr]

I'm happy enough with the primary wordmark, if that's what everyone else is looking for. It still seems a little boring to me, like a stock logo or something. To me it says "Insert-city-name-here Senators" not "North State Senators".

[mania]

I think the crown on the top of the dome gives it more of a personalized look than a stock logo. It's well rendered, attractive to look at, and I think it will work extremely well on a T-Shirt.

[ShinyHubCaps]

I did mess up the stroke on the red one because I rendered it differently than the light blue. While most of us will be celebrating our Independence tomorrow, I will also try to make some assignments toward cleaning up the logo, so check in if you can. I feel that the response is good enough to continue with the above logos, but we may try some different fonts, and I'll see if I can get the end letters "S" bigger than the rest of the letters.

Still time to post secondaries, so show 'em if you got 'em.

I am currently working on the display (template), so you guys don't have to worry about that.

I'll try to post in 5 hours or so with the rest of my end-of-day thoughts. I'd like to get the lettering set so that we can focus on complementary numbers, and of course, since we're fitting all of the text into the wordmark, I'd like the secondary to be a picture with as little text as possible.

[ShinyHubCaps]

End of day news:

1.) The template for the presentation is finished, so no worries about that. Here is a small hint as to what it looks like:

2.) Sources have informed me that one of the symbols of Raleigh is the acorn. Just throwing this out there, but as I feel that an image would work for the secondary more than anything with text, I would love to see this executed. Alternately, I'd like to see Troy's idea for a politician like Colonel Sanders. It's a little obscure, but if executed well, I think it would be great. These are some ideas, and I hope to see more ideas for a secondary.

3.) Here is the .svg for the logos above. Because of a filesave error, this is only the powder blue one; one logo has negative space instead of royal for the purpose of the background. I needed to mess around with the file a bit because I have Flash which can export in .ai, but my last somehow got messed up. Anyone that can download this and improve it any way, I would be interested to see it. GBM had some good ideas earlier, such as making both "S"s larger than the other letters. The colors are not set in stone, so play with those at your leisure if anyone decides to do so. There were also some questions with the font, which is a varsity serif, but there are other, similar fonts which could work just as well.

http://www.mediafire.com/?d1nkjxbvwnm

[gingerbreadmann]

Wait... so we're not using the layout from the first challenge?