Berry Student Charts the Course for SAA Branding
By Matthew Stokes
BerryVikings.com Staff Writer
Building a new collegiate athletic conference is quite an undertaking. One of the many different aspects to take into consideration is the logo. Some of America’s powerhouse athletic conferences boast immediately recognizable logos.
Berry joined the brand new Southern Athletic Association with seven other NCAA Division III institutions this past summer. A question mark in the following weeks was who would design the official conference logo. Berry sophomore Ellie Fox ended up beating out several professional designers with her work.
A Roman Through and Through
Fox was born and raised in Rome, Ga., attending Armuchee High School. Her interest in graphic design did not come on strong until her junior year at Armuchee, when she took a course at the Floyd County College and Career Academy. The next year Fox did an honors internship at Print Works, a local business in Rome. The internship ran from Aug, 2009 through May, 2010. Her experience at Print Works went so well that the company hired her on as an employee after she graduated from high school. That job lasted until this past January.
While all these experiences gave Fox a great knowledge, she still had to tussle with a decision all high school seniors must take by the horns: where to attend college.
When the dust settled, Fox narrowed her sights on Shorter University, Art Institute of Atlanta, Savannah College of Art and Design, and Berry College. In the end, Berry’s small, private environment and Fox’s desire to not leave her hometown quite yet had her ready to call the Mount Berry campus her new home for the next four years of her life.
“You get a better academic experience when you have smaller classes and teachers that actually care about teaching you,” Fox said.
Creative Services
After spending her first semester of college plugging away at Print Works as well focusing on her Berry coursework, Fox inquired about a job in Berry’s Creative Services, a department that falls under the umbrella of the Office of Advancement. As it turned out, there was already an opening there for the spring 2011 semester; and the group had heard good things about Fox’s work.
Meaghan Marr, Fox’s supervisor and a graphic designer in Creative Services, said Ellie had been recommended by her former art teacher at Armuchee, Michaele Slynn, as well as Berry alumnus and Print Works owner, Mike Robinson. In addition Fox had experience with Adobe Suite, a program that Creative Services uses frequently, making her an easy hire for the spring.
“We posted the job online because we had to, but I had actually already met with her and saw some of the work she had done,” Marr said.
Marr was effusive in her praise of the quality of work Fox did in her first semester in the office as a freshman.
“A lot of times with this job, we come in contact with students who are extremely talented and who have a lot of creativity to them, but they don’t really want to keep up with the details of each project,” Marr said. “Ellie did great with both.”
During that spring semester, Marr said a standout project of Fox’s was her brochure design for Jonathan Huggins of the Chaplain’s Office.
For Fox, this job meant diversifying her skill set in graphic design. Instead of specializing in apparel design, Fox said Creative Services introduced her to new projects like publications and web banners.
Designing the Logo
Spring soon became summer in 2011, and though the seasons changed, Fox’s job did not as she continued working in Creative Services.
A full-time student employee over the summer, Fox took on more projects, such as T-shirt design and postcards . Then a great opportunity came in her direction.
On July 8 Berry President Stephen R. Briggs approached Fox and the rest of the office at Creative Services with a task involving the college’s entrance into the SAA, whose eight members will begin competition in the fall of 2012.
He was adamant that a student undertook the job of giving the conference logo design a shot. As the lone student worker in the office over the summer, that meant the job was Fox’s. She said Briggs was upfront with her: there would be no guarantee that her design would be chosen. Full-time, professional designers would also be submitting artwork for consideration.
Beginning on July 11, Fox dove in headfirst, burying herself in literature on logo design since she had yet to work in such an area, let alone take on this large of a project. Upon her request,, Briggs provided Fox with a list of the top values for the conference. Through the process she jotted down a simple list of the most important values, balance being a major theme since the conference’s schools aim to find a happy medium with academics and athletics. Then was came research.
“Every decision that you make when it comes to a logo is
supposed to have a purpose,” Fox said. “You’re
supposed to have a reason that you chose those colors, the typeface
and the shape.”
A key part of designing the logo was giving it a distinct look.
“I tried to find letter forms and typefaces that I’d seen before or that looked athletic,” Fox said.
To accomplish this Fox played with the color and combined different typefaces. Along the way, Fox consulted Marr and Shannon Biggers, the director of Creative Services, for advice. Marr said she suggested twisting the oval to create movement and edited drafts of Ellie’s style guide manual.
“Anytime you have a logo for an organization, you want to include a manual addressing what can and cannot be done with the logo,” Marr said. “She had to sit down and think of all of the different scenarios where that logo might be used, so it was pretty intense.”
The process of settling on a final design included several rounds, Briggs said.
“All of the design options were presented anonymously to the college presidents, athletic directors and public relations officers,” Briggs said. ”We also informally polled a number of student-athletes, coaches and other students at several campuses.”
“First we looked at six design concepts from three different designers. We narrowed the options down from that and explored with and without the full name, Southern Athletic Association, and considered six or more different color schemes. All of the selections were done through informal votes.”
The final winner was selected on Aug. 12. It was not one of Fox’s original three designs, but Briggs described it as being clearly in the family of one of them. The addition of the conference’s full name, the size of the font for the name, and the color choice all came about through the process of feedback that Fox received and was able to incorporate.
Jay Gardiner, the SAA’s interim commissioner, said it was fairly easy to see early on that Fox’s design was the best, calling it “clean and simple.” The bigger issue that required multiple votes was the logo’s colors.
Moving Forward
On Friday, Aug. 19, a release was sent out officially unveiling her design to the public. Fox called this moment great for her portfolio and noted that it has brought her a bevy of new project offers. Marr did not hesitate in saying the logo’s release was an exciting moment for Creative Services.
In some ways Fox is just getting started.
The studio art major and business minor plans on continuing to do graphic design freelance work to supplant the projects she does at Creative Services.
Marr says this specific job well done as well Fox’s overall body of work in the office makes her a great role model for other student workers at Berry.
“If you think a job is just going to come to you on a silver platter, [then] you’re sorely mistaken,” Marr said. “And Ellie knows that already, and she’s young.”
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