CRITIQUE: SJI logos and travel covers

This week, I worked on designing 20 logos for the Sports Journalism Institute. The most difficult thing I ran into was trying to find a balance between diversity, sports, journalism and great typography. I think designing a diversity graphic is always hard because you want to be inclusive and obviously not at all offensive. That can be hard to do sometimes. I think it was also hard to include the sports angle because there's not really a universal symbol for sports. I had a lot of ideas that involved different sports balls, but I felt like if I couldn't include all possible sports, then I shouldn't include any.

On the right are the five designs I'm going to work on for next week. Greg Bowers said that the only thing he was disappointed in was that we didn't reflect the diversity of the organization in the logos, which is really the most important part. I tried several different types of logos with the phrase "Equal Access" a play off of the "All Access Pass" that get sports reporters on the sidelines. I like the lanyard one as an overall design, but it doesn't work very well as a logo to put on the header of a website. I'll have to get creative with that one. There was also the suggestion that I shouldn't include any other words, but I think taking out "Equal Access" takes away the whole concept behind the design.

One design that I just decided to work on after hearing Greg talk is the Tiger-striped one. I thing it can be very symbolic of diversity and I think SJI said they were open to including a Mizzou theme, since the organization is moving here. I didn't see many people try to go for that angle, so I think it might stand out. It obviously needs a lot of work though.

I tried to work in the woman's symbol to the bottom one, but Jan thought it was a bit feminazi. My favorite logo was the top right one, but I think I need to make it more apparent that the line on the right is an "i."

 

This week I'm also working on my final draft of a cover for the travel issue of VOX. Above are the three drafts I came up with. While the editors got a kick out of the baby one, they ultimately agreed that it probably wasn't appropriate to run and didn't really fit the target market. They said I should work on the first two. I think I'm going to try to do a combo of all three. I might stick with the Stay-cation, google map theme, but also include something like the paper airplane (but not, since the focus isn't on flying). I want to bring take the vibe of the baby cover though and incorporate some humor. It's a fun issue, and I think making someone laugh is one of the best things you can do. Not to mention that it encourages people to pick up the magazine.