While on a recent plane ride, I embarked on a self-imposed quickfire challenge to use Adobe Illustrator to design the text “@davidpots” (my Twitter username) in the style of the Washington Capitals logo.  I was armed with only 45 minutes and a vector version of the Capitals logo; no internet connection would be at hand for additional assets (such as fonts, etc).

By the end of the plane ride, things worked out great:

Throughout the remainder of the post, I’d like to share an overview of the approach I took and the Illustrator techniques used to make this happen.  The result is not merely a tutorial, but rather a broad look at some Illustrator skills any user might find helpful in such a situation. Continue reading »

In my recent work for Professional Baseball Training I had the task of designing a logo. This was a challenge that excited me from the outset, as it brought to mind the countless hours I used to spend as a child sketching the logos of my favorite sports teams. It was with these fond memories in mind that I looked back at the evolution of sports logos of recent decades, taking careful note of how things have changed over time.

It did not take much searching before I stumbled upon Chris Creamer’s SportsLogos.net, a “virtual museum” dedicated to sports logos & uniforms. This site has been invaluable for my research needs, as it provides quite the in-dept historical record for all teams in every sporting league you can imagine. In this post I would like to share some of my findings.

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