DFL - Northern Divisions

[Artisan219]

EDIT: At the advise of 9erssteve, I decided to retool this thread a bit. So from here on out, all my logo and uniform concepts for my northern division will be posted here, rather than trying to do all my development legwork on the other thread.

In this thread, at some point, I will have concepts for Grand Rapids, Toronto, Columbus, Milwaukee, Iowa (Cedar Rapids), Dakota, Omaha, and Wichita (I'll have to see if I can get a mod to move those posts or else just quote all of the replies here).

I took my time coming to a decision with Grand Rapids. Ultimately, though, I decided to pay homage to the now-defunct Grand Rapids Rampage and make a new rhinoceros logo. While I was reading up on Grand Rapids, I read that the climate in West Michigan was ideal for the agricultural production of blueberries and I just immediately was set with indigo as a primary color (indigo is very hard to define in RGB, so individual monitors my skew violet or blue).

[cohenj21]

First of all, just wanna say how much I love that logo. It's a daring color scheme, but a cool one. The only thing I don't like here is the number font, at least partly because Wichita has the same one, I would play around with that. The helmet looks cool, great overall job on this concept.

[Artisan219]

They are indeed two separate fonts. Grand Rapids uses ATROX while Wichita uses National Debt. The most distinct difference is that ATROX uses chamfered corners and angles. National Debt uses curved lines. If you look at the 2 in Grand Rapids and the 9 in Wichita, you'll see that they are different fonts. That said, I don't believe that I changed the font for the player's name for Grand Rapids. Also, having taken a closer look at the two concepts side-by-side, I realize that the ATROX font is smaller than National Debt, so I really should make the jersey numbers larger.

[9erssteve]

I'm with it's a daring and unique colour scheme you've gone with and I think it could work, but right now the logo is far to detailed to get the most out of your colour choices if you ask me.

Rhino's are big bold animals. Strong and powerful yet your logo is full of little bits of highlights, thin lines and tiny shadows. Be bold with the logo. The outline shape or silhouette is great and that's the first thing people will use to identify your design, as a result you can really simplify what's inside that shape and still have a strong recognisable logo. It's a fine line to tread I know, but right now it doesn't feel logo like to me, especially compared with your cheeta logo. I know you dont want them all to look exactly the same style but I think this one needs a push in that direction to get the most out of it.

Great start tho and cant wait to see it progress to completion.

9erssteve

[Artisan219]

This thread is intended for discussion of the uniform, so please, for comments relating to my logos, post to Minor League Football - Discussion & Logos. Logo feedback will be appreciated, but I do reserve the right to gripe endlessly if the board makes me backtrack and do more work.

I thank you for doing exactly what I asked nicely no one do. I'm sorry if I sound like I'm being an ass, I probably am. I really am operating on too little sleep. But honestly, how hard is it to follow a hyperlink. Or, you know, read the article to which you are posting a reply?

[9erssteve]

This thread is intended for discussion of the uniform, so please, for comments relating to my logos, post to Minor League Football - Discussion & Logos. Logo feedback will be appreciated, but I do reserve the right to gripe endlessly if the board makes me backtrack and do more work.

I thank you for doing exactly what I asked nicely no one do. I'm sorry if I sound like I'm being an ass, I probably am. I really am operating on too little sleep. But honestly, how hard is it to follow a hyperlink. Or, you know, read the article to which you are posting a reply?

Quite frankly yes you are. I see absolutely no need for your insistence on two threads for what is essentially the SAME TOPIC. The branding of single team. At the end of the day the logo and the uni alll perform ONE job, to create an identity for ONE team so why split it up?

I can almost understand the idea of doing individual teams in their own thread, but even then your project is branding an entire league! Why not have everything in the one place? Plenty of other people have done bigger leagues than you've proposed and executed the project exceptionally well without producing multiple threads.

With regards reading everything written, I often dont bother. If I'm posting from work I dont have time to read screeds and screeds of text, and to be be quite frank explaining everything in detail will often do nothing to change a viewers opinion of the concept anyway. Peoples opinions are based on their personal tastes, education etc. So knowing you chose lime green cos it's your grans favourite colour or for whatever other reason really isn't going to make people change their mind if they think it's a bad colour choice to combine with pink. Plus you've already got a whole OTHER thread devoted to just TALKING about this project, so if you're gonna write an essay on stuff why not put it there?

If I was a Mod (which I'm not and dont want to be, but thanks to them for the excellent job they do here) I'd have merged all your DFL threads into one to save you having to rant at people, who are only TRYING TO HELP YOU, posting in the wrong thread!

Whether you like where I wrote it or not my advice regarding the logo stands, whether you decide to act upon it is up to you.

9erssteve

[Artisan219]

First off, let me apologize for my early morning post. It's not a reflection of you specifically, and I am sorry I singled you out to vent some of my frustrations. I was sleep-deprived, but I really should have just let it go and approached it later. I do value your opinions, you have given me some insight to better thread organization.

I see absolutely no need for your insistence on two threads for what is essentially the SAME TOPIC. The branding of single team. At the end of the day the logo and the uni alll perform ONE job, to create an identity for ONE team so why split it up?

That is a completely understandable question. The simple reason is just because I wanted any comments on the logos to bump the other thread and try to get more people to comment on the logos I have in the draft stage. I get that no matter how "finished" I think I am with a concept, someone seeing it for the first time is going to have an opinion on it, and I'm not always going to get good ideas when I want them.

I posted my first draft logo for Grand Rapids back in early June, to remarkably few responses (those that commented liked it, so I never set it aside for tweaks). But for reasons I don't fully understand, people that haven't posted one comment in my logo development thread suddenly have things to say when I post a separate thread. On one hand, I like this because, like now, I get commentary that I otherwise wouldn't have received.

The thing is, though I do appreciate constructive criticism, I would like to save myself later work, too. Any and all valid criticisms of my logos at the uniform stage mean going back to Illustrator or, worse still my sketchpad, and then going through the C&C process again. All this before then going back to my Photoshop file and replacing the logo images and then going through my image hosting and adding more and more iterated images, or else trying to fight photobucket to upload new images over top of old images.

Granted, you posting your issues with my Rhinos logo in the other thread will not save me from having to do that work, but hopefully you posting a new reply will get other people to see the other logos in progress. I haven't gotten but two replies on my Dragons logo, for instance. But I know if I were to post a Dragons uniform, I'd immediately get a bunch of comments on just the logo. It drives me bonkers that I can only get C&C when I make the mistake of thinking the logo is good enough to move on to another stage.

I can almost understand the idea of doing individual teams in their own thread, but even then your project is branding an entire league! Why not have everything in the one place? Plenty of other people have done bigger leagues than you've proposed and executed the project exceptionally well without producing multiple threads.

The problem with that is something I see in those massive, massive threads. You will get comments on page 19 about something posted on page 2, and so on. Also, with some of those projects that go more than 20 pages, I find it discourages some people from commenting at all. They look at it like they missed the boat or something and generally you don't see as many new contributors to the thread, just the people that have been following from an early stage.

However, you did make a point that I will have to take for my next DFL thread. It makes more sense to just post my logo first, get the C&C for the logo, and then move on to the uniform, rather than trying to keep all my logo development in one thread. I don't think I'll post 32 threads, I don't want to monopolize or clutter the board with all my DFL crap, but I think I might split it up into four threads, each focusing on 8 teams. That way I can get more focused C&C.

With regards reading everything written, I often dont bother. If I'm posting from work I dont have time to read screeds and screeds of text

I didn't post screens of text. I do tend to go on, look at this post, but I didn't here. I said why I picked a rhino, why the primary color was indigo, and to please post logo comments on the other thread. If you don't have time to read two or three sentences, I don't think you have time to write two or three sentences. That is the only thing you've said here that makes no sense to me. It is a lacking in internet etiquete that I find very disturbing. "I'm only going to read half of this, but comment on it anyway." For an art post here, the image speaks for 90% of it so it makes no difference here, but I see this BS in all sorts of places and it is a huge pet peeve of mine.

Plus you've already got a whole OTHER thread devoted to just TALKING about this project, so if you're gonna write an essay on stuff why not put it there?

My original thread for this league was not ever intended to be posted in the Concepts section. It got moved by the Mods. I originally wanted to get some feedback on banal aspects, like which cities should have teams, how many teams in the league, spring or autumn season, and specifically team names. I did later split that off for some more in-depth discussion (there are a lot of small, regional semi-pro leagues, so I wondered the logistics of a national second-tier league and some of the other issues as to why the NFL never needed a AAA system), but that thread ran it's course quickly.

But in any case, once my other thread was in the Concepts section, it became a hodge-podge of city selection, divisional alignment maps, and logo development. But because it started as just a discussion thread, I never really generated the C&C on the images I did post there. Even now, I have a new Dragons logo and no real comments on it. I'll have to take your suggestion and do all my city branding in one thread.

Whether you like where I wrote it or not my advice regarding the logo stands, whether you decide to act upon it is up to you.

Your advise is sound, The logo is a little to busy, especially when I scale it small. I wasn't at all upset to have the criticism (neither, by the way, did I "rant" at you, though it's entirely debatable whether that's what I'm doing now), I was just a little miffed that I didn't get this kind of C&C two months ago.

[9erssteve]

Dude, plain and simple you need to do TWO things...

1 Lighten the hell up! You cannot EVER control who will comment on your stuff or WHEN they will comment on it! I guarantee that three years from now when you've "finished" this project and moved on to other things and possibly even completed those, someone WILL dig this thread up from the depths of the past and make new comments on it. It'll probably be some newb who's just joined but it will drag the thread back to the front and you'll get other comments on it then too. What then? You gonna have a go at them, or start the whole project again?

2. You need to have a bit more confidence in your work. You cant always wait for feedback as sometimes it wont come. And you wont be able to act on all of it as some if it will contradict other feedback you've received previously or will receive later!

The internet is it's own organism it has a life of it's own, you cant force the way things go, once something is out there you just have to wait and see what happens. Which is why I firmly believe in putting everything in one thread as it stops people getting confused and thinking I've read that one before or putting comments in what is considered the wrong thread.

You'll ALWAYS get people commenting on stuff after you think it's finished, you just have to accept that and deal with it as you see fit. Right now all your system is doing is confusing folk and provoking reactions that are frankly causing people (ie me!) to think why bother?

9erssteve

[Artisan219]

You're right, you're right. My system just isn't going to work, and I've accepted that. I made changes to the thread.

What really bothered me was just that I really have little patience for people posting without reading. I don't mean this about you specifically, though, just in general. Sorry that I went off on you.

I once posted a concept for the Salt Lake Leopards and I explained in the thread that it was a relocation of the Jaguars, and I still got post after post of how using teal and gold was "just too close" to Jacksonville, because no one actually read the part about it being a relocation design, or if I posted how I had no particular skill at wordmarks and was just using a poster font for now, I'd get replies about how generic the wordmark was.

But burying the hatchet here (sorry again for going off, rough week), what specifically would you want me to change in the logo? I get that I have a fair amount of detail work and you have a valid point about making the logo bolder if I work in broad shapes, but is that just a general impression or do you actually see elements that flat out aren't working for you?