So once again, a decade later, I find myself playing on a rugby club at Northwestern, however this time it’s for the Kellogg School of Management’s grad student team. And once again, I decided our logo needed to be brought into the 21st century. This was the shield used by the team last year.

It’s a mishmash of low-res clipart which screams “1996″. My first real issue with this logo came when I became part of the leadership team late last year and we wanted to have some team beer coozies made with the logo on it. This logo was incredibly unwieldy for screen printing, and in trying to clean it up, I got fed up and decided we needed something completely new. On top of that, none of the current team really knew what any of the origins of the various shield elements were. The history was completely lost on us. Our team nickname was the Rhinos, yet our shield had a boar on it, supposedly representing the strength of the forwards, and a pheasant, representing the speed of the backs. Not a real consistent theme here. It was clearly time for something new. So I did a little research on the series of tubes, and when I came across the logo for USA rugby, I had my inspiration.

It’s simple, it’s got an old-school shield feel to it but it’s much more modern. Even though the rugby ball looks more like a football, it’s pretty solid. So I did a little doodling and here’s what draft no. 1 looked like.

And then after some Photoshop magic, here are two versions of what I ended up with. The boar and pheasant are gone, the rhino is in, and the palm tree was preserved because that actually has some significance as a nod to our annual winter tours to the Bahamas.

Here’s the post on the KRFC website announcing the new logo: KRFC unveils a new shield.

But I’m not done yet. I decided that there’s probably some lingering attachment to the old logo, especially for recent grads that played with it on their jerseys week after week. So I’m working on a new “throwback” version of the shield. Here’s what it currently looks like. It’s real rough, but I think it’s got some potential. Now if I can only find the time to finish it.

[Kellogg Rugby Football Club]