Designing a new Washington Football Team Logo P3

3/15/2021

Jack Lafond

I had also decided to design a second logo. This logo would be a more purely iconic logo like most NFL teams had. I still kept the name Red Tails for this second design.

I used the team colors again, burgundy, gold, and white, but also added a light gray that looked nice with the color scheme and looked similar to the color of the P-51 mustangs flown by the Tuskegee Airmen(AKA the Red Tails).

I tried to keep the design simple with clean lines and minimal detail to keep a modern look. The only place I used red on the plane was the tail to again highlight the idea of the Red Tail. To incorporate the gold I added a colored nose of the plane. This also worked to suggest the area that the propellers would be without actually drawing propellers. I also added streams of air coming off of the wings and the tail. These both help to add color, but also give the design a dynamic feel. It makes it seem as if the plane has both speed and aggression, attributes that would bode well for a football team. You may also notice many areas which the plane tapers down and thins out, like where the wings connect to the body of the plane, and the body of the plane itself. This was to reinforce the idea of speed and to make the plane seem fit for an attack.

I decided to have the plane face upward so that it was seen as rising, generally a good thing. It also helped to keep my design symmetrical which was common among NFL logos. Also the symmetry makes for a stronger and well balanced logo. Finally, with the suggestion from my professor, I added a shield shape around the plane. The shield seemed to fit the plane well and again suggest a sort of strength or royalty to the logo.

If I were to revisit this design I would perhaps try to make a trail of yellow in the shape of a W. This would reference the Washington area making the logo stronger in the functional sense as it would help people immediately identify the logo as the Washington Red Tails. I also believe I would be able to keep the shield shape as the design right now seems as though there is a sort of hidden W. I would just have to make the shape more visible

My other logo that I focused on in the beginning of this project was finalized as this:

I removed the shadow on the left side of the W to simplify the shape and the colors. I also made the remaining shadow darker to help establish it as a shadow and to compensate for the shadow lost when I took the other one off.

Conclusion:

My goal was to create a logo that could represent the Washington Football Team and it’s possible new name, The Red Tails. I believe that I have created 2 logos that would both work within the football logo space. One logo emphasizes the city and was focused on using the letter W with hints of the team name. The other was a pure icon meant to represent the team name itself, the Red Tails. Both logos are strong in function as it would be easy to recognize the images and connect them to the Washington Red Tails. I also believe that both logos provide a sense of speed and aggression, as well as a sense of strength. They do so while still looking clean and simple, attributes that would help the logo have a longer lifespan. Overall I am happy with the images I created and believe that both would be viable football logos.