Unofficial Big Ten Logo Dance-Off

I know the art work isn't the best, but give me a break; I’m not that Photoshop guy.  I think the idea is great, so I hope anyone out there who is more artistically capable would be able to run with this and reply.  The better part here, I feel, is also the story behind the idea:

It’s Saturday, November 6th, and I am at Matilda's (the greatest Michigan bar in Chicago) with some friends watching the most exciting game of the season.  At halftime, my friends and I are a pretty hammered, and I have the bright idea that we should try and come up with a new logo for the Big Ten right there at the bar.  So I grab some bar napkins and some pens, and challenge everyone that the worst logo has to buy the next round.  After much frustration, I jot down this masterpiece - like last supper type masterpiece.  Yeah, I’m hammered, so of course I think I’ve got skills like Da Vinci, but when I looked at the napkin the next day, I was still mildly impressed.  Below are the original napkin and a cleaned up version.  Anyone have Delany's email?

Thanks

'B' and '12' in the Gray

'IG' and '10' in the Blue

I think that Brian had a lot of great ideas with his logo, but it looks a little bit too hardwired for football-only use, as the hash marks look like threads on a football. Tweaked a little bit with this one, might add something. Extended the lines through the letters, thought about weaving them, but didn't. Also added logos.

As always, work in progress. But it made for a fun hour.

Here's another version — and yes, I do realize that I had the divisions backward, and that can be fixed soon, but they'll hopefully be given the heave-ho soon anyway.

Any of the ones offered up here are better than that fuggly thing the Big Ten spat out (did they actually pay somebody to come up with that crap??)

Anyway, I really like the shield logo, especially the one where the school logo's were moved up so they were positioned along the bottom edges of the shield.

The Big Ten is a conundrum wrapped in a cabbage leaf.  Every once in a while they make a move that you can honestly say was brilliant, but more often than not they come up with these half assed ideas that look like  they were put together over a 20 martini lunch.

I work in advertising so I follow a lot of design and advertising blogs in addition to this one.  Knowing how much the MGoBlog community hated the new Big Ten logo you can imagine how funny it was to read this article with just-short-of-effusive praise for the design. Read it here.

I want it understood that given the choice, I would have voted for the "go fuck yourself" logo. 

And might have created a legion of Mgoblog sockpuppets to vote for it as well.

It boggles the mind how these dashed-off logos from a fanboard are head and shoulders above what some professional design firm (with god knows what kind of pricey contract) came up with. 

This is more of an homage that the Big Ten Conference is more than football or basketball, but a collection of sports.  It's also a collection of academic institutions.

I chose a simply dignified Georgia script to show that even though the Big Ten is hip and new, it IS the oldest conference.

I added stars at the top (which can be enhanced in case of more admissions), dividing them 6 on each side.  You could even change that so that the stars go around the entire shield.

I added the lamp of knowledge on the bottom to show the academic integrity of the conference.

Please give me some feedback.  I have a higher rez version should anyone require.

Thanks for allowing me to submit.  Go Blue!

The BTN-derived one is excellent - clean, and it matches what we have already. (The stacked version posted in the comments looks even better.)

The shield logo (with the school logos moved up to directly underneath) is great. And both can be tweaked to school colors (not as easily with the shield; you'd have to go with light and dark variations of the main color along with the lighter secondary color - for Michigan you'd just change the text to yellow and maybe a slightly different shade of blue, MSU would do dark green and light green background, etc.).

The first one would look great if we were a football-only conference, but it wouldn't really look right for basketball or anything else.

All three are infinitely better than the piece of crap we actually got.

it's amazing how much better ALL THREE of them are compared to what was chosen.  Shields in logos are kind of cliche' but it looks nice.  The first one is great for football.  And the 3rd one really does make more sense than anything. 

Are/were most people opposed to change of the conference name?  I personally wouldn't have minded a change to the Big North Conference or something to that effect.  I realize most are probably attached to the history of the Big Ten but I'd much rather have a name change than the current abomonation of a logo.

The number 2 logo is awesome, minus the team logos at the bottom! WHy can't we get that one? The current is just stupid!

Can we get #2 without the team logos at the bottom? I thought this was very good...a friend of mine in Colorado did it:

EDIT: can't get it small enough (TWSS) to fit the page...link below

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/hs1214.snc4/156668_101004364...

Or, Lol

These are from Sports Pickle and there are a few more here.

Great that it evokes the laces of the football. But I also like the numeral 2 sort of hidden in the elongated s, as well as the imagery of railroad tracks; I envision haulers of coal or ore or grain moving through the Big Ten geography.

there, i said it.

ok, maybe should have dropped the legends and leaders crap. Damn...

Oh well.

reminds me of the Tennessee Titans.

My personal favorite if the color was the same blue from the original logo (from sportslogos.net):

Who's cuisine reigns supreme?

Duh.

Who cares? Brothers are dying and shit...

but seems too football oriented for their grand vision.  The modified 2 would be my pick if it didn't look exactly like the pac 10 logo.

my apologies to the creator of this one, but it was by far the best....

I realize I'm too late with this and that it's very poorly crafted, but I had an idea about an hour ago and threw this together on paint.  I figured if the pac10 could use mountains and waves, we should use corn and waves.  So here it is, a corn stalk where the husk is replaced by waves that form a B and G around the corn that is the I.  Then the 10 in there.  I would need someone with a ton more artistic ability to clean it up and make the waves on the left look more like a B.  That's my contribution to society...

I like the Choi entry.  It's simple and doesn't resemble the Pac12 logo.  Also doesn't look like it belongs on a soccer jersey.

not derivative of the PAC 10, nor infringing near the B10 network's copyrights.

It might look MOSTLY like football laces, but I also saw them as shoe laces, which pretty much includes all sports, regardless of gender (sorry water polo). Maybe they could be little research test tubes as well.  It probably needs a bit more polish, but "all of the above" are still an improvement over the festering sore that is our current reality.