Emerald City Masters Swimming Logo

This commission was done for a new U.S. Masters Swimming Team from Syracuse, New York to be used on flyers, banners, shirts, and other identifying paraphernalia. The only limitation for this piece was to incorporate the emerald green into the color scheme.

My solution for the piece was to create a simple, vector based logo in Adobe Illustrator. Based on a pencil sketch, I played around with the line weights until I had a result that portrayed the motion that was needed. I chose to use recognizable iconography in showing a swimmer performing the freestyle stroke. To make it more memorable and easily reproducible, I did so in as few lines as possible while incorporating the green as the shadow. Through similarity, the viewer can deduce that these areas are simulating depth. Inferring closure was also achieved by only drawing half of the figure exposed above water.

Following this, another logo was requested, this one sporting the abbreviation of the team name and even more simplified. While mainly focused on the font, the container was diamond shaped to reference the gemstone in its namesake. The lettering was made in the style of many popular sports teams; bold, readable letters accented by heavy strokes. Two different shades of green were used to add more overall dimension to the piece.