Raven Newsom officially went all-in on the 2021 season. He’s toured and pretty much played every National Tour and Disc Golf Pro Tour event that was on the calendar. I started early and before the holiday season of the previous year to get something geared up to help his touring efforts.
Raven made the process super easy. He trusted my design skills and let me come up with a few ideas to ponder over. As you see for the very early stages, the raven was refined and some of the heavy linework from my brush pen was slimmed down a bit. Everything was bold and it didn’t allow your eye to rest. I felt it was chaotic and the bird seems way out of shape. It took some more reference gathering to really started feeling better about the bird, its outstretched wings, and the overall ability to add in “Collegiate National Champion” with a bit of class.
With the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic; it’s been tough getting this design to the masses with only one or two small releases up to this point. Keep a lookout for more runs coming from Raven. I want to thank Raven for giving me this opportunity. If you have any questions, please hit me up or leave a comment!
Raven Newsom - Branding
Raven came to me after the successful 2021 disc golf season. He was in need of a logo to represent himself on tour and have the logo represented on his soon to be need van wrap that was to be produced in-house by MVP’s marketing team. The obvious design decision was to use a “Raven” to create an iconic symbol reflecting his transformation in both maturity and disc golf game. Before that, we had collaborated on his second tour series discs so knowing Raven a little bit through past experience; prepped me before taking on this project.
How many different ways can you represent a raven? I don’t think I reached every one but I certainly tried. You want to reach, try, experiment, and fail. That’s the point of these thumbnail sheets. Move things around quickly. Copy/ Paste and tweak some more. Push an idea until you’re sick of it. Why are you sick of it? Does it have lasting appeal? Move on to then come back again. These are all things going through my head when doing them. Maybe a combination of a few of these ideas will click with yourself and the client.
I make mental notes on sheets if I can’t get on a facetime/ call. Making arrows, anecdotes, and small mental notes of what I was thinking. I understand the symbol speaks itself but some people like to understand the “How” and “Why”. What about these appeals to the designer and why out of all the thumbnails, did we choose this one to present?
Raven was extremely happy with the end result. Quickly turning around clothing with his new apparel sponsor. A vehicle wrap came a few months later with the aid of Michael Ramanauskas. I outfitted Raven with a quick usage guide so he could send to outside vendors for self promotion. Excited to see him out on tour representing MVP Disc Sports and getting to the top of the leaderboard. Raven’s a great person and I respect him a ton. Thanks for stopping by.
