High School Logo Concept

[Xodius]

I've dedicated myself to redesigning our school logo before I leave. Right now, the school is having a t-shirt contest and it must incorporate the school in some way or another and I thought it'd be a perfect time to apply myself to a brand new logo. Our current emblem is lacking (which you can find here). After a couple of hours of revision, here's what I have so far:

It's obviously a work-in-progress. As you can see, I tried to stick with the same sort of idea with the shield and the banner, but took a different approach with a horse. I've got a few things...

- It was brought to be attention that having a horse for the logo is a bit of a stretch, since our name is Hayward Farmers. It's tough to make a fierce looking farmer, so I decided to choose the next best thing; an animal representing a farm. Should I stick with the horse, or go back to the drawing board?

- What direction should I approach the actual design of the horse? There's a lot of heritage to my school and I don't want to make the logo too modern, but I also don't want to set us back another 10 years.

Thanks

[JackFr]

Trying to steal my thunder are you?

jk This looks like a good start, considering you don't want to make an angry farmer with a pitchfork. I would however put maybe a shovel and a hoe crossed in the background to make it a bit clearer. You may want to be a bit careful with the shading on the horse, because given the angle of the ears it will be a bit difficult to render believably.

[aci]

Try a guy riding the horse, holding a pitchfork menacingly?

[Xodius]

Try a guy riding the horse, holding a pitchfork menacingly?

My initial idea was to do exactly that. I was following Davidson's tutorial but decided to go in a more traditional, yet still somewhat modern, approach.

@JackFR, my friend suggested adding tools as well. My only worry about that idea is how distracting it may be, and how out of place the tools might look.

[cameroncrazie07]

I think its a good start but I agree with JackFr that you should try to get a shovel or pitchfork in there somehow.