You Can't Miss: Logo Design for New NBA Team

I am not sure if any of you on here follow professional basketball much, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't I am not much of a fan myself. I did stumble across something interesting while reading a design blog. The New Orleans Hornets have decided to change their teams mascot. Here is a side by side of the old and new mascot.

     I love logos and branding so this story caught my eye. I like how the new logo has more of a New Orleans feel to it. I mean are there even hornets in New Orleans. I am pretty sure they have at least a few pelicans. The color scheme is much more fitting I believe as well.

     The above logo is just the primary logo. They have also come up with multiple secondary logos. 

I personally enjoy the main logo most, but I also like the simple circular logo design. It is simple and clean which I think makes for a good logo. I always like seeing new teams in the NFL, MLB, NBA and other major sporting associations, because you get to see all these new designs. It will also be interesting to see how they redesign the basketball arena to fit the style of this new team. I am sure it will be a while before we see those designs, but I am interested to see what they will do. 

Response: iPad Design Lab

I am not going to talk about the reading, because I enjoyed the format of this book so much. I enjoyed it  because you were able to interact with the learning material. They could actually show you the things they were talking about, such as the pop-up options. I think that this made the book a very easy read and it was a actually kind of fun.  Considering that I am a designer I tend to learn visually so things like this are nice. It helps me remember more information and being able to interact with the material makes me focus more on what I am doing. The chapters we were assigned were a great read. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in working with the iPad and designing for tablets or other digital devices in the future.

Critique: Raising Ryleigh Cover

Since I basically critiqued my feature spread in class today, and talked about all the things that I would change to make it a better layout I am going to talk about the process that went into making my cover.

Here was the cover that I turned in and won:

      I was really drawn to this picture. I didn't feel it was sensationalizing or focusing on the disability. I saw a really touching moment in this picture. The way that the woman is holding Ryleigh's foot so gently and how delicate her foot actually looks made me feel like it was a touching moment. I understood the concerns that people had with the photo, but I just didn't see that when I looked at it. 

     Okay more about the actually design. I had a design before this one that I apparently forgot to save, but it was this picture with the font in black placed of the hand. I knew covering the picture was a bad idea, but I couldn't find out where else to put it because the background of this photo is so dark. Then the simply solution to change the text white hit me. I like the soft pink bar at the bottom because I felt it accented the picture and pulled out the softer side of the photo instead of the harsh or medical feeling.

     Once I won, Andrea (TA design capstone) asked me to come up with some other possibilities for the cover since the picture I chose was maybe going to be used in the feature. Also there was concerns with it looking to much like a cover from two weeks ago. 

All the other possibilities:

     I added a few other photo options, but also messed around with the text and the placement of the text. I wanted to give options, but not get to far away from my original concept since that is was what the staff wanted in the first place. I personally thought that my original was the strongest cover while making all the alterations. I am not sure if that was because it was the first design I submitted and I kept wanting to come back to it, or the fact it was the one that won so I felt it was the best.

     After talking with Erica (design capstone professor) we narrowed it down to the two final designs that would be chosen for the actual cover of the magazine.

These were the two final designs:

If you want to see the one they picked or see if any last minute tweeks were made I guess you will just have to pick up a copy of the Jan. 31 Vox Magazine.