The 5 month project taught him a great deal - technique, workflow, design principles, visual cohesion, thematic imagery, process, etc.
It started from procrastination. He designed a few logos and posted them online - and got responses. Some wanted to see their favourite team's logo as designed by him. It was about improving his hobby. This is how I should view my own work at the moment: as a hobby. Envisioning it as a big professional job is putting too much pressure and gets in the way of playing and learning.
Talk about denver broncos and O'Brien's idea of a 'successful redesign'
Look at the Patriots logo and questioning the use of the Confederate Flag
Look at Ravens misleading silhouette
Bengals very un-tiger-like-swirl
And some positives
Baltimore Ravens
Original
O'Brien's Redesign
O'Brien's aim - try make more scary, try to put some subtlety in the place of that big overly obvious 'B'.
Negatives:
The issue with the redesign is that the silhouette is far too misleading - it could be seen as a creature facing either right or left. No clear indication that it's a raven, and this is only made worse by the very low contrast.
Original image's silhouette doesn't look particularly raven-like either, but the beak (made prominent by contrasting light value) makes it quite clear what we're looking at.
The strange in-and-out at the back of O'Brien's raven head is a major cause of visual confusion, as is the cut-in just below the beak - are we looking at a bird with it's mouth open, or is the mass below the beak simply the bird's chest?
Original - great sense of left-to-right speed created, and bulky, rounded beak gives a sense of physical robustness. O'Brien's raven loses that clear sense of directional motion, and the beak is thin and more pointed - a pecking beak rather than a battering beak - doesn't quite match the idea of a NFL player charging the enemy team's line to beat his way through.
Purple background and high-value yellow outline only serves to emphasise O'Brien's dodgy silhouette.
Original has 3 seperate focal points - the letter B, the eye, and the beak. And lines of motion lead us loosely from one to the other. Lack of tonal and colour contrast means O'Brien's image has only one clearly defined focal point (the eye) with the spike at the back being a prominent focal point as well as the beak. Beyond the red eye there is very little visual hierarchy.
Positives:
O'Brien's is much darker and more menacing. Creates a more frightening presence than the original, which I imagine could be a good morale choice.
Neutral Notes:
O'Brien's depiction seems to echo the more occult and omenistic view of the Raven, while the original is a bit more cartooned, a bit more friendly.
What is the 'culture' surrounding the NFL - would it be better to have a slightly more playful logo to encourage community and family involvement?
Cincinnati Bengals
Original logos
Positives:
Pleasing spiral pattern, if the aim is to create a playful family-friendly (celebratory) logo that has some 'bite' and aggressiveness, then this is well done.
Limited colour pallete (3 + black + white) facilitates easier printing, but could be simplified further (removal of shading on back)
'C' form created by tiger for Cincinnati calls back to team name and heritage
The face passes the squint test, and the bold tiger patterns definitely help the initial read. The detailing in the cheek though does still confuse the eye a little too much.
Negatives:
The curled tail doesn't fit with the idea of a fast, powerful, bulky and dangerous tiger, if the aim is to create a logo that exhudes strength.
Feel like the amount of detail throughout leaves the eye somewhat too distracted and removes focus from the front-face region of the tiger - we're drawn more to the beard region in the center of the spiral.
Is this also an effect of the spiral form itself, that we find our eye pushed inwards to where we estimate the center of the spiral to be?
What if the heavy line weight that we have on the back was shifted to the front of the face? Could perhaps impede sense of forward motion, but would maybe draw eye better.
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