Couguars

Established in 2002, the francophone secondary school named "La Rose Sauvage"[French for The Wild Rose] is located in Calgary, Alberta. My three boys are attending this school and their sport's team is called "Couguars". The coaches, staff and the direction are doing a remarkable job and I wanted to get involved in helping them to raise awareness and create a greater sense of belonging for the student-athletes.

The first step was to acquire knowledge around branding, marketing and design, with an eye toward helping to participate the school forge, refine and promote an identity reflecting their history, traditions, and aspirations.

My role working with LRS is to facilitate the development of a unified, effective and dynamic identity.

Former logo made by a student at "La Rose Sauvage"

Research – visual references used to develop the "Couguars" brand

1. iStockphoto - copyright: Dirk Freder 2. Copyright: Simon Rimmington Fine Art Photography 3. Copyright: E.J. Peiker Photography 4. Corbis - copyright: Doug Berry 5. Copyright: Art G. 6. Copyright: www.startribune.com

The cougar is Canada's most elusive and largest wild cat. Cougars are also known as mountain cats and also pumas. The cougar's coat is made of sandy-brown to reddish-brown, or greyish to dark brown colours and it helps him to blend in with its environment. The realistic colour palette [earth tone] represents its natural camouflage and wasn't an option to consider because we wanted a bright, colourful and dynamic solution to represent the energy of the team.

Colour composition – to better understand the colour composition of an image, simply reduce the resolution drastically [example above is 40 x 30 px.]

The solution I found was to use classic, yet very official and dynamic colours, blue, white and red. Interestingly, these colours are the colours of the French flag, so they represent well the francophony.

Primary colour palette

Secondary colour palette

1. Couguars – right profile symbol [primary mark]

2. Couguars – front symbol

3. Couguars – silhouette

Wordmark – development of a custom typeface for the Cougars' wordmark that reflects their dynamism

Numbers – development of custom numerals inspired by the numbers of the Lamborghini LP700 [Aventador] odometer

Applications

Here is a selection of elements that have been created during the brand design and development phase to help the client to visualize the brand in action.

Polo t-shirt concept

Team t-shirts – creation of six icons to illustrate and differentiate the sports

Team t-shirts – volleyball

Team t-shirts – track & field + basketball

Minibus concept [Ford econoline wagon e150 xlt] – lettering

Gym Mural

With the help of my three boys, I painted the mural in the LRS gymnasium. The blue rectangle in the middle on the artwork below represents the safety mat no.1 [12ft.x6ft.].

Gym Murale [700in. x 100in.] – I used a projector to trace the wordmark and the crest and masking tape to isolate the blue elements of the wordmark and the stripes. The key elements were traced with the Letraset Tria Markers from the Pantone collection.