"Winning" Logo

Last week my friends and readers were kind enough to help me decide on a logo for our 3-Day team. My poll actually had 29 whole votes, although I will admit that I did request votes from a handful of friends who I know aren't normal readers of my blog. It was kind of a landslide, as the voters overwhelmingly chose my first attempt at a logo, which was this:

What I just couldn't come to grips with was that this graphic wasn't the most symmetrical of the three options. I just like things balanced! The asymmetry was driving me crazy, so at lunch on the day of the voting, I moved the letters around to be like option #2, which was similar but had the word "for" in between the two jugs. I felt good about the decision when my friends Erin and Amanda both made that exact suggestion later in the day!

Later in the week, I took the modified version of the above image and ironed it onto a white t-shirt. The result wasn't so hot. The image resolution was really poor, plus the white on white just looked kind of weird. In order to change the resolution I had to start over from scratch, basically starting my "artwork" on a bigger canvas. My plan was to try to recreate the same image in a bigger size, and then put it on a colored background, which I set out to do earlier this week.

While I made every attempt at getting the new image to look like the original, since I didn't really remember the techniques I'd used to create the first logo, I wasn't able to reproduce it exactly. The biggest difference is the Jayhawk himself. In the new version he turned out entirely pink--beak and all! I didn't really realize it until I was pretty far into the process, and frankly, I was just too lazy to change it! I guess pink is the color of breast cancer awareness...

After adding the colored background to help the visibility of the whole logo, it looked very little like the image everyone voted for, but I guess that's what happens when you're a not-so-experienced graphic designer! Regardless, here's the final product:

Once I ironed it onto a t-shirt, it looked like this:


I can't help but notice that the whole logo/model/pose looks remarkably similar to my first attempt at designing a t-shirt back in August. Oh well. I guess since the overall themes of the two events (saving boobs from breast cancer) were similar, my lack of creativity is excusable.

Thanks to every who voted last week! I totally appreciate your input, even though the final product wasn't exactly like your favorite! :)