TIMELINE OF A CSU MASCOT MARK

When I graduated from Colorado State back in 2001, I was just like everyone else coming into the "real world". I didn't know what I wanted to do for work. The one thing I did know is that I wanted to give something back to the school I had so much fun attending, especially the athletic program. Here is a timeline of what it took to get to today, October 13, 2010,  2:30pm.   • 2003 - I wanted to come up with a new alternate Colorado State logo. One that would reflect with the changing times. I really felt that some of the things the school was promoting and selling was out dated and needed a fresh look. As a new designer fresh out of college, I thought this would be no problem. Yeah right. Look how long this timeline is. Anyway,   • 2005 - I talked to a couple of people about some suggestions to make it look better so after making some revisions and showing some close friends and family I was totally ready to send it off to a random stranger that worked in the CSU A.D. So I did. I did get a response but not the one I wanted to hear. Basically they told me that they already had a logo and they were not looking for one at the time. "Thanks and keep up the good work!" Sarcasm. I wasn't about to give up.   • 2007 - For about a year, I really just sat on it. I thought about how I can improve the mark to really make it stand out. I was seeing all these other college programs with these awesome designs but keeping their original look. (ie: UCLA, Alabama, Mississippi State, Georgia Tech) So, I made more revisions, making it more 3 dimensional and using multiple shades of green. By the time I was finally finished with this update, I remember the football season was coming to an end and Sonny was about to "leave". I wanted to wait and see who was the next coach to make my next move. I also knew that the new athletic director Paul Kowalczyk was just hired a year earlier so I thought it would be the perfect time to introduce a new look. I went back to the drawing board.   • 2008 - I made a couple more revisions and sent it directly to the A.D. this time. I felt pretty ballsy. That or I really didn't care at this point. After five years you would be a little frustrated too. No response again, that is until the end of the 2008 football season. This time it was different. They wanted to see what it looked like with a full body.   • 2009 - I drew some sketches. (shown to the right) I did three different poses, aggressive, attentive, and tough. I also added an ear to the design, something to which I was amazed that I didn't add before. Other than the fact that the initial body designs were not wearing any pants, I thought they looked pretty cool. I sent it on, they came back with a "where's the pants?" Duh, SO I added some shorts, changed the color to a more natural looking animal color and sent it on.   • 2010 - They decided to go with the tough look and so I was making revisions off of this look from then on. After a number of back and forth emails, the final revisions is what you see here at the bottom. I really like the three different outfits but if I had to go with one, I would go with the first athletic look with just the shorts and CSU shirt. I've been waiting 7 years for this idea to finally be realized and in the end it feels a little bitter sweet. Having an original vision of just being a logo and having it turn into a three dimensional character is a little weird. The new CAM the RAM should look better than the one being used.  I still can't believe it took 7 years. Crazy.  Go Rams!