It’s been 20 years since Virginia Highlands Community College introduced its Wolf mascot. Originally designed by Nikelle Hagey, the logo has served as an inspiration to the students at VHCC to give them a sense of identity. The logo inspired the naming of their on-campus snack bar, the “Wolves Den.” It was also the inspiration for several campus literary publications.
The administration decided to give the logo a facelift and a more modern iconic look and called upon Hillhouse Creative to put our logo skills to the task.
It always starts with the sketches.
Every good logo begins with a pen on paper. Or, in this case, with Apple Pencil on an iPad. The freedom to explore and try new ideas in a simple sketch is often overlooked. In this case, art director Matthew Childers took to his iPad to sketch out a few concepts to gauge the look and feel the client was going for based on their initial comments and thoughts.
This approach allowed us to quickly serve up some concepts to get a sense of the direction we needed to go.
The first concept.
A bit too cute.
We really liked this one.
The simple silhouette.
Cleaning up the look.
After receiving feedback from VHCC, we knew where to go. We moved ahead simplifying the look and experimented with various color treatments to add visual interest and depth. We also explored other profile options and how the wolf integrated with the VH logo.
Exploring nuances and refinement.
Here you can see all of the different variations from the video.
The final mascot and its many variations.
The mascot in use
We are simply thrilled to have helped Virginia Highlands upgrade its mascot. Even more exciting is seeing how they are putting their mascot to use.
We also had a hand in helping VHCC obtain an actual mascot costume for use at their events.
Nikelle Hagey, the designer of the original Wolves logo presenting the new logo.
And finally here is a cool video and photo of the Wolf logo being engraved by Johnnie Keene.
