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© 2000 by Gary Priester. All Rights Reserved.
Paul Harding wrote the following request to the Son of the Makeover Maven:
I'm involved in a basketball club here in Belgium (second division) - it is called Aarschotse Basketball Club, in short ABC - and for years now we've been using the logo I'm sending you. It is simple enough (and I think logos need to be simple), but it lacks appeal, luster, movement. If you compare it to some of the logos the NBA clubs use, well ours is down right meager! I would be grateful if you would be so kind as to let your inspiration loose on our logo. Many thanks and kind regards!
Since Paul mentioned nothing in his makeover request about the pathetic current state of the once great, and now all but extinct, Corel Magazine, I shall not either. Suffice it to say, Karma appears to be alive and well, and doing its job. I should also point out that NBA franchises pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for their logo designs, although I doubt if they get anything better for their money than Paul will be getting here today.
Here is the current logo for the Aarschotse Basketball Club, a stylized a, b, c with a Wilt Chamberlain-sized (Editor's Note: My fellow Jayhawker) ascender on the b. The insides of the three letters represents the seams on a basketball. While there is nothing wrong with this logo, a little more exploration couldn't hurt. Many times when I have solved the mechanics of the design problem, I find if I work on variations, more often than not, I come up with a twist, or turn, that makes the final logo design better. And so rather than go off on explorations of other designs, I'm going to show you how to explore a range of options on a single design.
The proportions of the Aarschotse (I wonder if this is pronounced Our Shots?) Basketball Club logo wanted to be more compact and refined. (The logo told me this in strict confidence). I shortened the ascender on the b making it more in proportion to the a and c. I removed the ascender portion of the a and the decender portion of the b. This subtle surgery made the logo appear more fluid. The logo confided to me that it felt better now and was ready to get off the bench and into the game.
In his message, Paul mentioned a desire for the logo to suggest motion so now that the logo was streamlined somewhat I decided to take up the speed challenge. I tried two explorations. In the first, I rotated the letters 15 degrees clockwise. In the second shot, I skewed the ascenders 15 degrees but left the basketball seams portion of the design upright.
Next, I tried creating a blurred effect using a two color fountain fill. I made a shape that encompassed the three letters and then applied a simple fill. I also tried a blend of a tall thin rectangle and a tall wider rectangle (not shown) using the thinner rectangle on the left which gave a similar appearance and would work for two-color printing.
I've been beta testing the next version of Xara, called Xara X (no longer a Corel-distributed product), and created a blend on a path using the new Profile settings to get the blend to bunch up in the middle and be more spaced out on the ends. This is similar to DRAW's accelerated blends, but believe it or not, Xara has more interactive controls. The blend elements are just a bit busy but it was fun to try none the less. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?
I think I covered the speed-motion designs so I decided to throw up some more variations. I broke the letter shapes apart and colored the inside shapes. I made a solid version of the three letters and made two duplicates. One duplicate had a very wide orange outline, while the other duplicate had a more modest white outline. The largest outline shape was sent to the back creating the appearance of a black logo with a white and an orange outline.
I tried two approaches with the letters overlapping. Of the two, I liked the second design better, although both were interesting in their own way.
Time was running out and I don't think I had anything that was better than what I had at the start. I tried three approaches with colored shadows or inlines and outlines. The first design was comprised of five evenly-spaced logos. Every other logo was filled white creating the red and blue outline effect. The second design was made up of three center-aligned logos. The bottom logo had a wide outline, while the middle logo had a thinner white outline and the top logo has no outline at all. I slightly overlapped the logos as well and tapered the top of the ascender and the bottom of the decender. For the third design, I created a blend of two blue-colored logos to give the logo an extruded look. I then took the overall outline of the extruded shape, made it heavier, and applied a deep blue outline color. The logo on top of all this, I filled white.
Just before the final buzzer, I decided to try a non-aligned design, placing the b over the a and c. This worked for me and I liked the way the arc shapes inside the letters lined up and created S-shapes. I think this might be the three point play that could tie the game and send it into overtime.
I used the same technique from some of the previous designs of stacking three logos with different width outlines. The rear logo has a very wide blue outline, the center logo has a thinner white outline and the orange logo on top has no outline. This was the game-winning shot. No need for overtime. Or was there?
If you remember from last month, when I did the Cedar Shake logo, I used Xara's Xara 3D 4.0 to create some cool-looking 3D designs. You should not be surprised to see I used it again. While I don't think this was the game winner, it does create an interesting effect. And it brings another tool to bear against the problem.
I think there are some interesting directions here, and among these, the second to the last design with the stacked letters and thin and wide outlines is my favorite. The design looks professional and I'd like to think that this design will coax a little extra effort out of the Aarschotse Basketball Club team, enough to win their division and go to the playoffs, where they will win as well.
Just as practice, practice, practice is the key to winning games, patience, patience, patience is the key to coming up with a winning design which will take your design to the big leagues. When you think you have the winning design, crank out a half dozen more. Your extra effort will often be rewarded with something even better! So, file away what you have learned here today, and get out there and start practicing! When your done, we'll all go out and run a few miles.
Xara 3D 4 sells for a trifling US $39.00. CLICK HERE to purchase and download Xara 3D 4. You can try the product free for 15 days. When you purchase Xara 3D 4, Xara will send you a CD with the application, some fonts, a ton of additional texture and sample files. It's a really good deal, and a really cool product.
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