LGO - San Jose Sunrays logo packages

[Le Grande Orange]

Since I won't be around tomorrow afternoon to post these, I though I'd do it now. Hopefully these won't change anyone's mind who haven't yet voted in the final poll - I don't want these to influence the results one way or the other.

Taking a page out of Cuss' book, for the two logo concepts I submitted I decided to do whole treatments for them, the way Cuss does for his logos. I did a primary and secondary logo, along with a wordmark and an alternate logo as well.

If anyone's curious about the design process involved, just mention it and I'll describe a little bit about the evolution behind the concepts.

Comments and feedback welcomed!

[Le Grande Orange]

San Jose Sunrays, first concept:

[Le Grande Orange]

San Jose Sunrays, second concept:

[Eugene Church]

Beautifully done, LGO.

Thanks for sharing your immense talent and skills with us.

[LivnLegend]

I agree, very well done. Your distinct style is very appealing.

[Le Grande Orange]

Thanks, guys!

[Eugene Church]

LGO...would it be too much trouble to resize the ones you haven't posted 150x150?

[Le Grande Orange]

Nope, no problem at all. Any one in particular you want to see in OOTP's size?

[jnshmoo]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

Nope, no problem at all. Any one in particular you want to see in OOTP's size?

How about the word Sunrays from the Alternate logo superimposed in the center of the 2nd logo.

For some reason, I really like logos with "baseball club" on them.

[Le Grande Orange]

How's this jnshmoo?

[plannine]

So what is your "process" for coming up with a logo LGO?
At what point do you select the colours?

[Eugene Church]

LGO,

Please resize the alternate logo...second concept.

Sorry for not responding more quickly. I meant to do it yesterday.

Thanks for the resizing.

[Mike D]

Actaully, LGO, could you resize the first logo from the first post. I would like to use it in my solo league that I started.

[Le Grande Orange]

How's this, Eugene?

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Mike D

Actaully, LGO, could you resize the first logo from the first post. I would like to use it in my solo league that I started.

If you mean either of the two primary logos pictured in the two images, they're already in OOTP's size since they were submitted for the logo contest. They should be available for download soon from the web sites hosting the logo contest submissions.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by plannine

So what is your "process" for coming up with a logo LGO?
At what point do you select the colours?

For this team name, since nothing immediately jumped out at me, I decided to try some ideas used in various real world logos that I haven't yet really tried much.

For the first concept, it started out as being a cross between the Milwaukee Brewers, San Francisco Giants, and Washington Nationals logos. Specifically, the three dimensional script text of the Brewers, the curve of the Giants name in their logo and the way the San Francisco "free floats" around the baseball, and the "drape" or "curtain" used in the Nationals logo where it casts a shadow on a baseball.

Once I added the sunrays around the baseball, it was apparent San Jose was not going to float freely around it, so I came up with the idea of framing it in the curved box, which I thought worked well. Originally, I had a background element which surrounded the Sunrays script which was going to cast a shadow on the baseball. But because of the asymmetric nature of the Sunrays text, I ended up dumping the background and letting the text cast a shadow on the baseball directly. Again, I found this approach looked better.

Colours I generally choose as the last step in the process, especially since I tend to have a hard time picking the ones I want to use, or which work well together. In this case, yellow and orange were obvious choices, but the third colour was more difficult. I wanted to follow the "three primary colours plus white" rule followed by many real-world team logos, and if I used black that would have been my third primary colour. I could lighten it by using at less than 100%, in other words, as a tint, but that would result in greys which didn't go well with the yellow and orange. So, I ended up choosing a very dark blue which when used in a light tint results in a better colour to offset the yellow and orange. When used at 100% the colour was dark enough to look quite close to black.

The second concept was just a straightforward circle design. I didn't fully intend it at first, but I ended up making it more of a "retro" look logo with a very simple layout and few elaborations. The sun and sunburst in the middle was an obvious design choice. The only detailing I added was to split the outer circle into orange and yellow halves, and to have light yellow sunbeams piercing each of the letters in Sunrays. The font I had chosen to use originally showed this much better, but because I wanted the sunbeams to be symmetrically spaced, I had to use a monospaced font so I had to change it. The font in the logo has equal spacing, but because it's a narrow font it doesn't show the sunrays piercing the letters as well. It was a tradeoff.

The colours used in the second concept were the same as in the first, only adjusted by tinting as it seemed appopriate.

The secondary and alternate logos for each concept were basically simple variations using the main elements from the primary logos with a few changes. The colours and fonts were kept in common as well so there was design continuity.

I always find choosing the colours to be one of the more difficult parts. I alwasy go back and forth trying different combinations to find something I like. It's also complicated by the fact that colours one sees in a printed logo are very different from the way colours are rendered on a computer monitor. I see a colour in one of the printed logo examples I have but can never get the same thing onscreen. It's frustrating sometimes but unavoidable due to the different colour models used.

And I think that about covers it...

[Eugene Church]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

How's this, Eugene?

Great work, LGO.

Thanks for the resize.

[dougaiton]

Simply stunning.

[jnshmoo]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

How's this jnshmoo?

That completely rocks LGO. I've got a particular solo league that is about to either expand or have a relocation to San Jose.

[James M. Rousseau]

Amzing logos.