Vancouver Bears

[logoman]

I was working on another project, when I strayed into this design. It is based on the "Spirit Bears" created in 2005 for the city of Vancouver. I believe it is much like the Snoopy and Peanuts characters here in the Twin Cities, except the bears were part of a city pride promotion. Anyway, someone who actually knows anything about that can correct all my errors. So then, to the concept. Not much, really, just a set of logos for what would presumably be a minor league team. I hope you enjoy.

[chickenfish13]

Thats pretty sweet. The only thing I don't like is the Snow. I know that is what snow and ice would look like on a baseball, but to me it looks kinda awkward. Not sure theres much you can do there, as that is what it really looks like, I just don't like it.

P.S. Also, I don't know if Brendan's mentioned anything, but I am the other designer working on something for him. It's gonna be tough to beat your work though, so nice job, and good luck ( Not that you need it )

[KCScout76]

Logoman,

I really like this concept. Great ball of ice

[Brendan]

Actually, these are the spirit bears

[logoman]

I used these statues as my basis for this design. I'm a few years late, though.

http://www.boardoftrade.com/sov_page.asp?pageID=1816

[sergeimakarenkov44]

I like this logo, but have a couple nitpicks. For whatever reason, I think the shading on the bear's shoulder makes it look like it has a cape. The way you have his eyeball is a little awkward. The snow on the baseball/bear logo looks a little awkward and could probably have been left off. Just a few aesthetic things, but I really like this concept and will look forward to seeing uniforms should you so choose to do them.

[VC//]

That logo makes no sense for Vancouver, being a Vancouverite...Polar bears? really?

[mcrosby]

I think you should make it less icy, more blonde. I had a similar request regarding my ex girlfriend.

But really, the colors are the only thing keeping this a polar bear, add some warm colors, and maybe thing of something new with the ball, something native as the spirit bears held significance in mythology of the region. Something along the lines of this...

[logoman]

Okay, so I was an idiot in my description. I was using the Spirit Bear statues that were around the city in 2005, I believe, as a basis for this design. I mistakenly used the subtitle of Polar Baseball! in the topic header. My mistake. My intention was to present this with kind of an ice sculpture feel to it.

I did the secondary logos as an after thought and the ice ball seemed to make sense to me. I believe I underestimated the importance for Vancouverites by not making this "native" enough. I do not believe there is a rule stating that every team from British Columbia must use native imagery in their logos. It's a just a concept. I have included a picture of one of the statues that inspired this design.Granted, I am not the smartest guy around, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the statue was the Coca-Cola bears from the X-mas commercials. I always thought they were polar bears.

[MaximGan]

Logoman- great work!!!! I like it!!!

[Hoopskid]

Logoman, as always, that looks amazing. The eye is the only thing that bugs me a little bit, other than that it's perfect. It'd be cool to see a baseball somewhere in the primary.

I guess I'll just ask here.. Does anyone know how to get that effect he has on the text in illustrator? I don't mean to hi-jack the thread, but the effect is the exact one I want to learn to do. So if anyone can point me in the right direction it would be great.

[sergeimakarenkov44]

it's a bevel that you can do either in Illustrator by hand or in corelDRAW by following some sort of process. logoman is the master at it

[Hoopskid]

it's a bevel that you can do either in Illustrator by hand

Any tutorials on that?

[9erssteve]

Okay, so I was an idiot in my description. I was using the Spirit Bear statues that were around the city in 2005, I believe, as a basis for this design. I mistakenly used the subtitle of Polar Baseball! in the topic header. My mistake. My intention was to present this with kind of an ice sculpture feel to it.

I did the secondary logos as an after thought and the ice ball seemed to make sense to me. I believe I underestimated the importance for Vancouverites by not making this "native" enough. I do not believe there is a rule stating that every team from British Columbia must use native imagery in their logos. It's a just a concept. I have included a picture of one of the statues that inspired this design.Granted, I am not the smartest guy around, but the first thing I thought of when I saw the statue was the Coca-Cola bears from the X-mas commercials. I always thought they were polar bears.

I much prefer this version, the light blue in the previous version was so light it was getting lost, but this warmer colour doesn't suffer the same way and is, after checking out the info about real Spirit Bears, imo far more appropriate.

The only suggestion I would make with regards the bear, which I like a lot by the way, would be to adjust the mouth slightly. Right now it's just so flat it almost looks like the poor thing is sulking, the top lip should have a slight curve to it and meet in a cleft at the centre. If you check the statue you'll see what I mean. Other than that I think it's a really solid concept.

9erssteve

[Wasatch]

Love the logo if it's going off of the statues! Really, the only thing I would change is the eye.....the white dot just doesn't do it for me. Other than that, great job on capturing the look and feel of those statues.

[Corvus]

Neat set, others have already covered the spirit bear particulars. Vancouver has done three of these statue things, whales, bears and eagles.

[bohob]

Love the bear, except for the eye. It looks like an abstraction of a human eye, and not a bears eye. The frozen baseballs from version 1 looked kind of disgusting (not in your rendering, but the idea of dripping white stuff on a ball). Overall, great work.

[tBBP]

Logoman, as always, that looks amazing. The eye is the only thing that bugs me a little bit, other than that it's perfect. It'd be cool to see a baseball somewhere in the primary.

I guess I'll just ask here.. Does anyone know how to get that effect he has on the text in illustrator? I don't mean to hi-jack the thread, but the effect is the exact one I want to learn to do. So if anyone can point me in the right direction it would be great.

What you're looking at with the BEARS script is essentially a dropshadow and an offset-path. It's actually really simple to do...take your basic script, copy/paste behind (or in back, depending on what you're using), move that group down and to the right a little (use the arrow keys for fine-tune precision), then, select both and do a Object -> path -> offset path (if you're using Illy; I have no clue what it is in CorelDraw), find a pixel amount that looks good, and from there, you may need to make a few pen tool tweaks to some of the corners, but other than that, not much to it.

(This is at least one way of achieving this effect, anyway.)

As to the logo design, I ain't feeling the drippy-droppy ice thing on the baseballs...but the rest of it I'm totally digging. Nice work! (I honestly liked the blue one better, since blue is a cool color, better conveys "ice" to most, and helps advance the whole "polar bear" thing, if that's what you were going for, o/p.)

[Jarred Revolver]

Ummm, that bear is not in Vancouver, it's in Nanaimo. I was just down on thw water front 15 min ago.