High School Re-Branding

[wILL-INI]

So, I am working on a school project, self initiated, so I choose to rebrand my high school's athletic branding or lack there of. I am from a small small school in the middle of a corn field in central Illinois. To give some background of out school. We consolidated in '92, and had I been older than 3, I wouldn't have let the travesty that was about to be committed occur. The naming of our new school was put to a drawing. They landed on Fieldcrest (someone saw it on a brand of towels and thought it sounded good) and Knights (because they are so culturally relevant to our geographic area). We have a staple logo of see pic 1. Awful. On top of the bad design, the actual makeup of the knight isn't factual, and my biggest pet peeve is the sword doesn't match up with the knight. We also do the classic let's just steal a college's logo and pass it off as our own, and we've seen how that has been affecting High School's. Examples..

So there you go, background. And my goal is to give them an acceptable logo and usage. So I am starting this thread for advice on my logos. I am striving for CONTINUITY, and to separate from the Knight helmet as much as possible and avoid the cliche (as much as possible, but we are the Knights). I'll post better quality stuff later, but here are my screen grabs..

K, so there we go. My first question is are there too many disparities between these too for them to work separately but function in the same set...

[nuordr]

I love it! Then again I am huge fan of any logo of name that has a shield, a suit of armour and swords. Great job!

[zajeb]

i like the shield and i like the helmet rly much except the part on top (the feathery thing) that looks 2 robust and draws eyes to it , maybe try making it more simple or liter , the rest of the helmet is rly good

i love the sword middle (line) in the capitol letters rly nice touch

[wILL-INI]

i like the shield and i like the helmet rly much except the part on top (the feathery thing) that looks 2 robust and draws eyes to it , maybe try making it more simple or liter , the rest of the helmet is rly good

i love the sword middle (line) in the capitol letters rly nice touch

Yeah this was intentional, a lot of decisions I made I played off the previous logo (like the half and half, but I made it more subtle). But if you look at the original, the plume on the top of the helmet is rather large as, so I let that influence this one. Maybe it's too large... Thanks...

[GatorHunter]

If your actually wanting to present this to your school, I would keep it to 2 to 3 colors, you have 4 in the helmet. The less the colors the cheaper the cost to print.

I like the sheild

[Rambulance]

What was your school's name before they consolidated?

[wILL-INI]

If your actually wanting to present this to your school, I would keep it to 2 to 3 colors, you have 4 in the helmet. The less the colors the cheaper the cost to print.

I like the sheild

Good point, I'll keep that in mind...

What was your school's name before they consolidated?

It combined 3 schools.

MDR Mohawks (Minonk, Dana, Rutland)

Wenona Mustangs

Toulca Bulldogs?

[Rambulance]

OK, I'm from that general neck of the woods, Seneca, and couldn't remember if we played you in football playoffs before consolidation.

[pianoknight]

It combined 3 schools.

MDR Mohawks (Minonk, Dana, Rutland)

Wenona Mustangs

Toulca Bulldogs?

Ok, Fieldcrest is definitely an upgrade, sorry to say.

However, your logo and wordmarks are top notch. Make sure you watermark the crap out of them and get compensated if the school wants to use them.

[Cola]

I'd work more on the helmet logo. A lot of little details that could be brought out to simplify what you are wanting to get across.

Not only do colors and accents need to be simplified, but it appears that smoke is coming from the helmet. Also, the rivets could be simplified.

[andrewharrington]

The plume on top of the helmet need to have some fluidity to it. It looks like a tuft of cotton candy blowing in the wind, very clumsy and irregular. Give it some style, and make not draw so much attention. Integrate it with the style of the helmet.

Speaking of which, I don't think you need the second grey. Just use blue as your shadow color.

[wILL-INI]

Over-night updates:

*fixed the weird Fieldcrest

*kept the two greys, added more depth I felt like. There will be two color iterations mocked up for cheaper uses as well, but I'd really like to keep the 2 grays..

Now some CC. I really need some... Like what do I do here fill in / leave how it is

[Firefly]

I'm not big on the helmet. As a logo, it has many fine details that would be lost in the distance.

I vastly prefer the F shield logo as it seems the most iconic. However, I feel like the F shield would work best without the crossed swords as the F already has a fine blade on it. I would also enlarge the F on the shield or even making it large enough to break the boundaries of the shield.

[wILL-INI]

Still looking for some more feedback... and I did work in black and white and sketched these for a while before I started all of this, just didn't show that step.. I've ditched the helmet for the time. It will take a back seat for the shield I think anyway (in terms of logo hierarchy) so please CC... please...

Shields

So included in this is our 20 year anniversary. k So my thoughts: I love the XX I really wanted that / I don't know what all the text I want to include / is it too busy? / does the "20th" text fit well"???

[lich0037]

Try putting the "20th Anniversary" in a banner. Also Make the 20th and Anniversary the same font size. It looks different to me.

Great start! I always like High School concepts. We could use more concepts in this section on High School re-brands.

[eRay]

Funny.

I am also from a small town area in the country, we also combined a couple towns/schools to form a new high school, and we also landed on the Knights....annnnnnd we also ended up with Navy/Silver/White.

I plan on rebranding them this upcoming summer to be ready for next school year. I think you've landed in a great place with your shield/swords identity and 2 very solid wordmark options. I might try making the swords more bulky. Right now they look like swords and are probably the right proportions, but they read as kind of frail and thin. But maybe them being bulky will read as too cartoony. I hope not, but it's possible. So just try it and see. You'll know. I love everything else and just think that tiny change could make this amazing. I'd stick with the options you have right now. "Fieldcrest" shield, "Knights" shield, and "F" shield. They look great and all work by themselves. With the "Fieldcrest" shield there is absolutely no mistaking it for anything else, they're the Knights and they're from Fieldcrest. Great work on this. Hopefully when I tackle this almost exact same project, I can come up with something that works this well. Big fan.

[wILL-INI]

Funny.

I am also from a small town area in the country, we also combined a couple towns/schools to form a new high school, and we also landed on the Knights....annnnnnd we also ended up with Navy/Silver/White.

I plan on rebranding them this upcoming summer to be ready for next school year. I think you've landed in a great place with your shield/swords identity and 2 very solid wordmark options. I might try making the swords more bulky. Right now they look like swords and are probably the right proportions, but they read as kind of frail and thin. But maybe them being bulky will read as too cartoony. I hope not, but it's possible. So just try it and see. You'll know. I love everything else and just think that tiny change could make this amazing. I'd stick with the options you have right now. "Fieldcrest" shield, "Knights" shield, and "F" shield. They look great and all work by themselves. With the "Fieldcrest" shield there is absolutely no mistaking it for anything else, they're the Knights and they're from Fieldcrest. Great work on this. Hopefully when I tackle this almost exact same project, I can come up with something that works this well. Big fan.

I pity your school, yeah we are the second school to do it also in our conference. It seems a popular trend for some unknown reason. It's easy maybe? I donno. But thank you. I'll work on the swords. I am also considering a bevel on the letter to give them a little extra pop, depth.

[wILL-INI]

Sorry to bump my own almost dead thread but I was really hoping to get some final CC before I present this, make sure all the screws are tightened. So please CC!

I tried a bevel on the type to give it a little more depth I'm not sure how it works, I'm partial to the plain, so I think it's just ok. Comments?

FINAL STYLE GUIDE

(flickr with em all)

[eRay]

As I said before, I like the shield w/ crosses swords look. I think you can do away with 1,2,3,9,10,14(the F-Shield one).

I'd use a modified version of 12 as the primary logo. The modification would just to put "Fieldcrest" above "Knights" in smaller type. I'd try it either above the shield, on the shield, or above the lettering as you have it in 1 & 2.

I think you can then use #11 as an alternative mark, to be used when you want the school name front & center instead of the mascot. For secondary marks I'd use 13(F-Shield w/ crossed swords), and 4. I'd keep the "Knights" and "Fieldcrest" "university identity marks" for use on jerseys or shirts or anything like that. Then the FHS mark could be fixed so the border around the F is cut like in other marks, and used sparingly as another secondary mark. The final mark "Fieldcrest Basketball" I'd keep as a template for sport-specific marks to go in programs or on shirts or what-have-you. That's my two cents, and I think if you do that then you have cooked up a great little identity here.

[rcb05]

I feel like the gray should be a bit lighter. Many of the marks you've designed have gray touchin the navy, and I think from a distance it would all blur together since there's not much dark/light contrast there.