“After about five or six iterations of his drawings, it kept getting better and better and better,” recalls Jordan.
There was a specific look that both Jonathan and Jordan wanted to achieve, and neither was going to stop until they reached it.
“In the beginning, I’d seen a lot of logos, and some looked kind of cheesy,” Jonathan recalled. “I wanted him to look like he was standing on the first tee and ready to kick some butt. I felt like that could represent Clemson Golf.”
“From start to finish it probably took four to five months before we had something we thought we could work with.”
The process for creating a logo can be long and tedious, but they had help along the way. Jordan brought the idea and the drawings to Tim Match, Clemson Athletics’ chief revenue officer.
“I brought it to him [Tim] and showed him and he was like, ‘This is really cool. We need to do this, and this is how we should do it.’”
Jordan and Jonathan took the sketch and presented it to an outside company that could develop it into the logo they both envisioned, bringing it to life.
At this point, Jonathan’s time commitment, combined with his love for Clemson and the golf program, made him a bit nervous about unveiling his work.
“The company that helped was very flexible, and they knew we wanted to get it right,” said Jonathan. “They just kept doing it until we got it to where we wanted it. Knowing my personality, we weren’t going to stop until we got it just right.”
Jonathan was proud, but still hesitant.
“I felt like it was mine, you know?” Jonathan clarified. “It wasn’t like I didn’t want anyone else to see it, but I wanted to be protective of it. If I wasn’t happy with what someone produced, I didn’t want to go with that. I just wanted to get it right.”
Jonathan knew there was a fine line between a final drawing and the finished product.
“Once you draw something there’s way too much detail,” explained Jonathan. “If you look at any good logo, you can’t have all the detail you would have in a sketch.”
Creating something that could be printed small and still capture what they were going for was key – and that mission was accomplished.
Jordan and Jonathan began by using the logo internally and for the program to produce hoodies and hats for the team to wear to tournaments. They even put the logo on the back of the Clemson team van.
Jonathan feels a sense of pride as he sees the logo starting to populate.
“When I see pictures…
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