Way back when, in the days of yore, I played on the club rugby team at Northwestern. Back in the 90s, the team used this standard NU logo on all its gear.

This is all well and good. It’s a solid logo. But rugby clubs throughout the world tend to have much more elaborate rugby-specific crests and shields full of meaningful elements that point to their club’s history and affiliations. The crests tend to have fanciful representations of lions, griffins, ligers, pegasuses (pegasi?) . . . much like this half-lion half-chicken figure replete with sharp talons.

I decided we needed something a little more specific for the rugby club that used some elements of these classic shields and went about painstakingly creating a new wildcat, using the same head from the NU logo.

Considering that back in 1997 when I was working on this, I think I was using MS Paint just as much as I was using Photoshop. And on a 1-10 scale, 10 being a Photoshop wizard, I would say that I probably ranked a -3. This thing took me waaaaay too long. My grades in physics and differential equations bore out the effects of this obsession.

The final product of my efforts is below. We began using this on all of our gear soon after and the current team a decade later still uses it on their website, jerseys, kitbags and more. I’m proud of its staying power, but I would definitely like another crack at it. There’s really not much to it aside from the wildcat. Other standard shield elements, like a rugby ball, or other items that refer to unique events in club history are unfortunately absent. I wouldn’t mind spending some time on a V2, but then again, I’m not part of that team any more, so I need to let it go.

[Northwestern Rugby]