Team Logos/Mascots

[tar.ancalime]

Hey guys-

So I had a quick question about the team logos and/or mascots of the teams that have been around for quite a few years.

Do you have one established logo that you put on just about everything? (and the art portions of your team don't really have to come up with new things every year?) If an artist came up with a new logo or theme, how easy would it be to get your team to adopt it? So I guess my question is more along the lines of, do you think it's good for a team to pick one design or theme and stick with it from year to year, or allow new blood to come and revamp every so often? And to what extent?

I was thinking there's definite benefits to both...just taking t-shirt printing for example, if you had one design and you had extra prints one year, you could still use them next year. Providing your sponsors didn't change. But yeah, any thoughts/advice/comments?

[Tim Arnold]

We've stuck with the same logo for our 4 years of existence and I really think it has helped us with brand identification. Our school, and many of the community recognize our logo from our T-Shirts, robots, and visual media. We use it on PSA's we've done, and its also a large part of our effort for the imagery award. We pull colors out of the logo and use it for our team colors, which really styles up your robot and our overall appearance, keeping things consistant.

As you said, it allows you to re-wear shirts from previous years without anybody noticing. Also, it saves costs with screenprinting as it is a 3 color logo, but we've been able to re-use the screens from the previous years. We just make a new 1 color back that lists our sponsors and we're good to go.

I would strongly recommend sticking to the same logo, perhaps with slight modifications, after our experiences. I doubt most of our members would allow us to change the logo if we wanted to, as its an integral part of our team anymore.

[AdamC]

We've used the same general theme for the past 4 years or so (chili peppers), although we're incorporating new variations on it because the new artists on the team weren't content. I think it's best to keep the same theme going throughout your existence. Because of the bewildering amount of teams in competition, usually your team name and sometimes even your number will be forgotten. However, a consistent and memorable theme or mascot REALLY aids in jogging the memory of a lot of participants, making your team more likely to be recognized. For example, we have bright red shirts, and when viewed among an audience, we really pop. That's why team leadership vetoed a request by new members to switch to black shirts. Red is somewhat of our color.
Or, for an even BETTER example, what would MOE be without their green? If they suddenly changed to black, people would probably not even recognize them.

[Koko Ed]

As long as I have been an X-Cat the logo has been the same. From the early days the logo was different but it looks like in the early to mid 90's is when the current logo took hold.
Of course our logo is used on most everything associated with the team. You should think of your logo as your corporate identity. Because each FIRST team is like it's own corporation and is run like a small business of sorts. Your logo design is a big part of that.

[Taylor]

Although we're a relatively young team (4 years) people seem to identify us by our logo. When we introduced our logo for the 2006 game, it got more attention than our robot. Luckily we were able to attend two regionals that year, so we got twice the exposure.
This year, we're incorporating a completely different theme in our robot design and teamwear, but the CyberCard logo is still present.
I highly endorse the use of an eye-catching logo or theme for your team.

[feliks_rosenber]

Team 2217 from Kiryat Motzkin, Israel, adopted an orange theme and has stuck with it for 2 years now.

Initially we chose this for political reasons, to show our opposition to the 2006 disengagement plan, but right now we stay with it because we like the color.

Our team logo has been the same those 2 years of participation.

Our team t-shirt has changed this season when we added pictures of the 3 abducted soldiers.

As a matter of fact, we decided to dedicate our team to the Habanim organization and together we call for their release.

We also hand out stickers on the roads as part of broader partnership.

Sometimes it gets really frustrating when you know that they are still kept hostages somewhere..but you do the little you have to do and still there is hope...

[Cynette]

Originally Posted by feliks_rosenber

Initially we chose this for political reasons...
Our team t-shirt has changed this season when we added pictures of the 3 abducted soldiers...
As a matter of fact, we decided to dedicate our team to the Habanim organization and together we call for their release...

Wow, this brings the selection of team colors and mascots to a whole new level. Thank you, Feliks, for sharing that.

And now back to the superficial... our team logo was tweaked after our first year, but has since remained the same. And after two years with the same shirt we added some extra details this year to make it distinctive for 2008 (umm, it actually says 2008 on it! ) But our trademark Red Camo will be around for a while! That was actually challenging this year, since we have been buying a large bolt of the cloth each year, and this year found it to be unavailable. But we've recycled old camo team pants (the pants are still available for sale) for our robots bumpers and other decor.

As for the mascot. We use our school's mascot, a bald eagle. If we ask nice, he sometimes comes to our competitions.

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by Cynette

Wow, this brings the selection of team colors and mascots to a whole new level. Thank you, Feliks, for sharing that.

And now back to the superficial... our team logo was tweaked after our first year, but has since remained the same. And after two years with the same shirt we added some extra details this year to make it distinctive for 2008 (umm, it actually says 2008 on it! ) But our trademark Red Camo will be around for a while! That was actually challenging this year, since we have been buying a large bolt of the cloth each year, and this year found it to be unavailable. But we've recycled old camo team pants (the pants are still available for sale) for our robots bumpers and other decor.

As for the mascot. We use our school's mascot, a bald eagle. If we ask nice, he sometimes comes to our competitions.

We use Wilson Magnet's Willie the Wildcat outfit with a team shirt but we haven't taken it to a competition in a few years because the kids say it smells.

[Meredith Novak]

We have a solid "brand" and it has served us well. Our blue shirts with "BOMB SQUAD" on the back are easily recognizable year after year. I like the feel that the new kids get of being on an establised team - it gives them confidence and pride. We had some rough years after losing our corporate sponsor and our solid team identity helped us keep going. It also makes it easier to use the same general designs every year. We encourage our students to design one new shirt each year and we wear that on the Thursdays at competitions. Our students are required to wear a blue hoodie over the "BOMB SQUAD" when we go out in public - there's nothing that will clear out a Burger King like seeing a bunch of excited folks in "BOMB SQUAD" shirts.

[catsylve]

Being a young team (this is our second year) we haven't really faced the problem of having to design a new logo. However, when our student artist designed our first logo, he designed several versions, which will allow us to put it on different colored shirts. That way we have the same logo which will be recognizable, but we can change the color of our shirts and banners. We tend to use one version for FTC and the inverted darker version for FRC.

Our team t-shirt has changed this season when we added pictures of the 3 abducted soldiers.

Talk about getting your team involved with the community! Takes it to a whole new level.

[etalli]

Personally, I think that although brand recognition is important, a stale design is completely unattractive, and turns people away. If the design that a team is using is too old-fashioned, or an eyesore, a redesign can be a breath of fresh air.
This year, some of the members of Team 830 did a draft for a redesign that eventually failed, however if that logo had been much better than our current logo, it would have been good for the team's public image.

[vikram31291]

we were the Pirates of the Blackpearl for the last four years, but this year we decided to change it to BlueCheese (www.bluecheese1086.org) It is hard to change your theme after establishing something. The first thing is you have to get people to agree with the change in the theme. We had to come up with new logos and different versions of the logo to go on letterheads, website, banner at competition, new t-shirt desgin, etc. It is tough because everything has to be redone and you also have to establish your image in the FIRST Community, because once you change your theme, people don't have a way to recogonize your team except through you team number.

[EricH]

330 went through several years with no set logo/image--it changed every year (other than the gray or white of the shirts). Back in 2003, we decided to settle on one that could be used again and again, so we set colors to blue and yellow and came up with a logo. It has happened that someone wears the wrong year's shirt without knowing it, but the only thing that changes is the back, other than slight shirt color variations.

1135 uses black and yellow with a distinctive student-designed logo.

[BandChick]

1089 has a generic logo, we make buttons with it, put it on all our official documents, etc. It's on our banner, and our (coming soon!) flag. But we don't use it a t-shirt logo. That logo is pretty "modern," and it's already been revamped once, so I don't see a problem in having it revamped again in the future.

The one logo for shirts we do have standardized is our polo design. It's a simple silver lightning bolt with orange "Team Mercury" and "1089" around it. We know our team logo isn't changing, so making that a simple, yet consistent image choice was easy.

What we do change year to year is our silver soccer jersey logo. Yes, that's right, every year we have new logos. Personally, I enjoy it because our t-shirts become collectables, every year you can take home something new. Our students and mentors vote on a yearly theme (usually something to do with Mercury the planet, Mercury the God, something silver, or at last resort, the game). We usually try to design our t-shirt logos around the game and the theme we've chosen.

Some examples:
2005: Triple Play - T-shirt logo was a Tetra with wings
Tetra = game piece. Wings = Mercury the God reference
2007: Rack N Roll - T-shirt logo was "Mercury Rising"
Arm mechanism = game strategy, planet as the game element = Mercury
2008: FIRST Overdrive - T-shirt logo is Mercury traveling around the sun
Track = game element, planet = representative of our robot (and of course, the planet Mercury).

We also make new game-themed buttons every year.

I honestly think that's enough. It gives new students the opportunity to feel like they have direct impact on the image of the team, while still allowing us to maintain a solid, defined identity. We like being known as the silver kids, and most people who know us associate lightning bolts with us. The rest, well, we can keep redefining with new blood.

Hope that answers some of your questions!