temple university
owl athletics logo
sports brand identity
art direction: bryan satalino & joe bosack
Given as an exceptional project, Temple Univeristy Owl Athletic Logo focuses on the rebranding of the Temple University’s Atheletic sports logo. Working both in a collaborative and individual environment, the goal of this project was to design a new and original owl mark that would be identifiable to that of Temple University’s brand.
This new owl mark would define a new and competitive look that could be shared with Temple University’s alumni, students, student-athletes, coaches, faculty, and staff.
Creative Brief
To better understand the business and design world of sports logo, we were given the chance to work alongside Joe Bosack & Co. This was an amazing opportunity to have as Joe would come to our class to give individual advice as well as presentations to the process of designing sports brands. In addition, we also met with Temple University’s Strategic Communication & Management team to understand more about Temple’s athletics brand identity, history, and the goals of the new logo.
We were also given the special privilege of meeting Temple’s real life owl mascot, Stella. She joined our class as we were able to study her features and mannerisms in hopes of influencing our designs within our personal owl marks.
The Branding of Temple University
To better understand and visualize the branding of Temple University’s current athletic logo, we took a trip to the school’s bookstore to see how the logo applied itself on t-shirts, stickers, sweaters, water bottles, and any other applications. This gave us more of a visual of how the logo worked or didn’t work and based on those observations what we could apply to our own designs and our future collateral applications. The current logo is inspired by the heavy and dramatic stylization of the 90’s in which thick lines and immense details construct the composition of the logo. Due to the excess of details and limited functionality, the goal became to create an owl mark that could function within multiple variations to maintain a simpler and cleaner look.
During our research and initial sketches, we met Kristine Herrick (up above) who designed Temple’s iconic T logo.
What made this extra special was to see the parallels of how a design team of Tyler students were asked to
redesign an important logo and brand identity for Temple University.
Initial Sketches
Through my initial sketches I was aiming to achieve the gazing look of an owl’s stare. Owls have very distinct eyes that have terrific binocular vision compared to other birds which allows them to have increased depth perception. I believe this concept relates back to the information we had learned about Temple University’s branding and perfectly captures the perseverance energy that the athletics program was aiming for.
I began my process by sketching heads and eyes that would be able to correlate to that feeling of perseverance. The pose that I found to be the most effective was that of the owl being in a forward position with it’s glare placed within the center. Having that dead on look allowed for the designs to give the owl sketch’s personality and an increased focus on the gaze.
After my initial sketches, I refined them into more developed concepts where I studied on how to make the eyes, eyebrows, and nose of the owl work together within one composition. For the eyes I was inspired by superhero eye masks and decided to utilize a circular method to give both a roundness and cutting look to the eye’s gaze. The eyebrows would be designed to interact directly with the eyes. Fitting into the eye shapes, the eyebrows brought to them a heavy and thick line that would be angled slightly just over the eyes. That shift in angles gave the owl concepts different expressions and showcased which angles either gave a softer or harder expression. The nose would vary in design but would always be placed as a placeholder between the eyebrows and eyes.
The Final Temple Athletics Logo
The finalized owl mark logo is a striking gaze that is to reflect the perseverance that Temple University inspires to have within it’s community.
The design of the logo focuses solely on the piercing gaze of the owl and how the eyes, eyebrows, and nose work together to make that effect. The eyes use overlapping circles to create sharp curves that move within a downward path to connect the space between both eyes. The eyebrows use a thick weight that is angled ontop of the eyes to give it that piercing look with the addition of curved corners to mirror the curvatures of the eyes. The eyebrows and eyes meet at a point which creates an empty space between them resembling that of the shape of a diamond, a reaccuring symbol with Temple University’s culture. Finally, the nose reflect the sharp lines of the eyebrows and is designed to drag down the composition allowing for complete balance between the owl mark’s characteristics.
Collateral
Through my collaterals I wanted the logo to be placed within not only the athletic compartment but also visually within Temple’s campus as well as items that the community from Temple University would be interested in getting. Parellel to our visit at the bookstore, my owl mark would be able to represent itself on any surface given while being consistently eligible.
