Vintage Michigan Wolverine Logo

Submitted by GoBlueNorthside on

I made then while working on a design for a beer pong table. I thought other people on here might like it for their own endeavours. The original image is very large (but there's only 3 colors so it's a small PNG file), so you may need to scale it and maybe add some anti-aliasing. I'm not really sure what the origin of this logo is, but I thought it looked cool.

 

LSAClassOf2000

October 30th, 2013 at 1:54 PM ^

Since the OP had asked about origins, there was a piece in the Hoover Street Rag a few years ago which served as a primer for Michigan logos through the years. 

(LINK) - this is the article. According to this, it was fairly common in the 1930s to 1950s to have some cartoon version of the mascot at one's school. 

kvnryn

October 30th, 2013 at 2:48 PM ^

Here you go, buddy. Click for the full size.

I also resized the image so it's not 10,000 pixels wide (although it's still plenty large enough for a desktop background) and removed all of the little artifacts that didn't add anything to the structure of the image.

Benoit Balls

October 30th, 2013 at 3:53 PM ^

on a MBB clock that my Sister found at a garage sale. Judging by the technology, it has to be from the 70's, but it was still in the box and in pristine condition.  It is now in my son's room

The FannMan

October 30th, 2013 at 4:36 PM ^

Boy, oh boy.  I sure hope that the Athletic Department takes action to protect its trademark before anyone saves this on their computer and uses it for a background or something.  That is something that I would certainly never, ever do and I would never, ever tell people to hurry up and do that before the AD goes all cease and desist.  Yep - would never do any of that.

Alton

October 30th, 2013 at 11:21 PM ^

This was a weird, probably unexplainable trend that seemed to last from the '30s to the '50s, although its vestiges can still be seen a few places today.  Back before the concept of "branding," many college logos seemed to feature the cartoon-animal-with-sailor-hat theme.

Some quick google searches show "sailor cap" logos for Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, Brigham Young, California, Cincinnati, Colorado State, Kansas State, LSU, Maryland, Miami (Florida), Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Carolina State, Oregon, Oregon State, Rice, UCLA, Virginia Tech, Washington and Washington State (they were apparently quite popular in the Pac 8).  I found ones for Colorado and Texas, too, but it looks like they might be "fake retro" logos rather than actual logos that were used.

There are probably many more, especially if you add schools in what are now the lower levels of the NCAA.  Looking at the logos for Auburn, LSU and Missouri, it looks like the exact same tiger image with different letter(s) on the hat.  Again, it's back before the concept of "branding" really existed for collegiate athletic teams, so nobody seemed too concerned about copyright.

 

uofmUT

October 31st, 2013 at 4:32 PM ^

I have an old 3'x5' Michigan poster my Dad got when he was going to High School at Pioneer in the 70s. I'm not sure where it came from but it's kind of a sweet old logo. It needs some touchup work though. We scanned it with a huge scanner.

The full size can be found by clicking here