Brief Bit Of The Design Process

There are days when I wish that I had artistic ability. I respect people who have this talent immensely mainly because I can't do it. I have an eye for art in terms of knowing what I like, but painting or drawing is outside my capabilities. Crayons and a coloring book? I can make that work. Blank easel, paint, and paintbrushes? I'd be better off being blindfolded with a can of spray paint. When it comes to corporate or sports logos, I can recreate them fairly well, but if you asked me to make one for my own company? You're probably never visiting my business without some laughter. I suck at art. I admit it.

What I find extremely interesting is the amount of work and rejigging that happens when a design is considered for a sports logo. Today, we have two examples of some of the process that goes into selecting a logo, but both are very brief. I believe the insight into the design process is still pretty valuable, though, so I wanted to post the video and image I have of these two processes in order to give any aspiring designers out there a peek into what goes into a sports uniform one sees on the ice.

We'll start with the AHL's St. John's IceCaps who give us a peek into the process used in coming up with their alternate jersey from this past season.

Pretty cool design by Troy Birmingham, I must admit. He was doodler when he was younger, and he's turned that into a career as a graphic artist. Through that passion, he's now the man who can claim to be the designer of a professional hockey team's alternate jersey! The message here? If you like drawing and doodling, you might want to turn your hobby into a job!

The second brief design process is from Vintage Minnesota Hockey who tweeted out an amazing picture of the Minnesota North Stars' executives looking over various designs for their logo in February of 1967. The tweet reads,

At the @USHockeyHOF we found George Karn hand drawings of different N-Stars jersey variations. Heres another rare pic pic.twitter.com/cEt9PYNb8z

— Vintage MN Hockey (@VintageMNHockey) July 11, 2014

So what does the picture look like? Check out this beauty from the newspaper.

If you click on that picture, it does blow up bigger so you can read the information. You can see in some of the pictures laying on the table that there were all sorts of logos proposed in Febraury '67, and the North Stars selected their famous logo from the bunch. If you look closely, there are some with state outlines, some that look like sheriff badges, and others that use the "N" and star together. As you can see, though, the North Stars had a wide range of options.

If you like drawing or painting or graphic artistry, keep at it, readers. You never know where it may lead you. You could find a painting of yours in the Guggenheim, a logo being used by a sports franchise or company in your city, or, most importantly, give you a reason to love your job. If more people could follow a passion and make it a job, the world would be a happier place.

Although I'm not sure we'd have any janitors.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!