The Brief 

"We run a Rugby Academy every Friday afternoon, where we try to give the young people other experiences as well as rugby training. One of the things we would like to do this term is to give them an idea of graphic design and marketing. To do this we would like to get someone to come in and help them develop a logo/t-shirt design and names for their clans that they will be split into this year as a bit of a competition." James Kiely

Challenge

Organising a workshop to create logos for three different sports, catering to a diverse range of ages, required careful planning to make it engaging, interesting, and easy to follow. There were 28 young people in the room, aged between 14 and 17. The students were divided into three clans before we arrived, which made it easier for us to deliver the workshop and provide more personalised attention to each clan to help them come up with ideas.

Firstly - Inspiration & Logo design

We started with the basics of designing a logo, discussing the key elements that make a logo effective. We looked at a variety of popular rugby and Scottish clan logos to provide inspiration and noticed that animal symbols were a common theme in many of them. We hoped that this exercise would spark some creative ideas for the next phase of the project.

Secondly - Naming the clans

To create logos for the Rugby clans, we first helped the students come up with names for their clans. To ensure fairness, we provided each class member with Post-it notes to write down 3-5 ideas and place them in the centre of the table. Some students found this challenging, but with one-on-one support, everyone managed to contribute a few names.

Once the class had finished, we had them vote individually on the names they liked the most on the post-its to make sure they would all be happy with the choice, surprisingly they all were, which was great and we moved on to the next step.

The clan names finalised were:

1. The Goosies

2. The Wolf Pack

3. King Cobras

Thirdly - Logo concepts

We came prepared to the workshop with pre-printed rugby shield shapes on A3 paper to help the class visualise a logo and guide them in the right direction, as we knew this was the first time any of them had done anything like this in their lives. 

The class produced many concepts individually and together, there were some great drawings produced in their clans that allowed them to be able to then vote on the logo they liked the most as a clan, again using the dots voting system. 

Final Logo Designs

We took the three concepts away with us and had one of our senior designers, Andre, create the digital versions of logos using a max of 3 colours per logo as per the client's request.

We sent these logos to the clans for review and feedback. After refining them, all classes were satisfied with their logos and proud to wear them on their tops.