*Let's be honest. Purple and black is where the twee "Hurr durr...spooky...spooky!" way of thinking leads to. Down that path lies madness.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Miskatonic University Varsity Style Logo
This is one of the new patch designs for the Miskatonic Alumni Package. It's a faux varsity letter logo using the conjectural crimson and white colors of the University. Why that instead of the oft repeated purple and black? Two
reasons, aside from taste.* One, there's very little visual contrast between
purple and black. Two, given that Lovecraft based Miskatonic on Brown
University, and their colors are red, white, and brown, it seems
appropriate to use the red and white while leaving the school its namesake
color.
*Let's be honest. Purple and black is where the twee "Hurr durr...spooky...spooky!" way of thinking leads to. Down that path lies madness.
*Let's be honest. Purple and black is where the twee "Hurr durr...spooky...spooky!" way of thinking leads to. Down that path lies madness.
I'd love to see this as a clear-backed sticker for laptops etc.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't care for the stereotypical HPL colors (Green & black & godknowswhatelse)... Too clichéd, and usually used poorly.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me a lot of one of Michigan's logos, very similar, though I'm sure any school with an "M" name has done the same thing. Marshall, etc. I used to work at a collegiate licensed goods company for about 6 years. It was interesting to see licensing and manufacturing from the inside. I designed the occasional National Championship logo, though more recently we'd simply use whatever the CLC made.
A couple words of design advice: I'd suggest a condensed block font for the name, rather than Futura. Though Futura is a period-appropriate font, it likely would have been avant-garde at the time. More likely a stuffy old New England university would have used something more traditional. Google 'varsity font' or condensed block fonts. Or Google old college group photos to check their sweaters / varsity jackets.
I've seen places online that will do the ... fuzzy varsity 'letterman' letter patch type embroidery. "Chenille" patches. I think that would really be unique. And if the end-user so desired, they could separately purchase a matching colored letterman jacket and sew the patch to it. Sweaters appear to pre-date the jackets, which would require a much larger patch...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/lynchburgcollegarchives/16476413704/
-MJ
@ Mortis
ReplyDeleteI'll see what I can do.
@ gndn
The similarity to the Michigan letter logo is no accident. An embarrassing number of my high school classmates, Lovecraft fans all, ended up there.
Unfortunately, red is also the primary color of Michigan's arch-rival, that school in Columbus, which will discourage your Wolverine friends from collecting these. :)
ReplyDeleteI like it! Of course it's also reminiscent of my own alma mater, Miami University.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not as though blood-RED can't be melodramatic, especially when set against a black background like this!
ReplyDeleteThe SCA's medievalist "Mongolian" household of the Dark Horde uses a red-and-black logo (designed by yours truly back in 1975, as it happens.
Or consider that song in Les Misérables (premiering a bare five years later):
Red: the blood of angry men!
Black: the dark of ages past!
Red: a world about to dawn!
Black: the night that ends at last!