Logan Myhre
A professor from the School of Art and Design, Erik Evensen, redesigned the Blue Devil logo. This new logo is not the official mark of University of Wisconsin–Stout Athletics, but will be used alongside the two other athletic marks UW–Stout has.
The Athletics and Marketing Department approached the School of Art and Design a year and a half ago, and Evensen took up the project. He completed the design early last semester. Activities Director Brett Schreiner and Director of University Marketing Amy Luethmers spearheaded the project.
“The Blaze logo in the past, the running and smiling Blaze, was developed in 2010 or 2011,” Schreiner said. “It turned out to be a little bit more friendly than I think we wanted it to be.”
Schreiner said that the goal for the new logo was to make something “more fierce, more athletic looking and more modern.”
Schreiner said that the Athletics Department started looking into a new logo over two years ago. They contemplated outsourcing the project to a larger organization but didn’t have the funds to do so. They also considered having a student competition, but decided against that as well.
Evensen said that the professors in the School of Art and Design thought about presenting the redesign as a class project, but he decided to take the project upon himself.
“In the end, we don’t really teach any classes that use this kind of illustration technique, so it wasn’t a perfect fit in any one class. I decided I’d offer to work on the project myself,” Evansen said.
Evensen also mentioned that projects like these do not offer much “creative freedom” and he was “kind of limited” in the design of the blue devil.
He said he made dozens of sketches of potential logos and brought them to the Athletics Department. Schreiner said that a small team chose the aspects they liked from the sketches, and Evensen made another draft.
“I was very impressed with how professional [Evensen] was. It was basically like working with a professional organization in my opinion,” Schreiner said. “He did a great job. Everybody likes it.”
Evensen said that it is very difficult to do projects like this for universities because people have so much invested in their school.
“However,” he said, “it was fantastic working with Brett Schreiner and Amy Luethmers on this. I think we were able to find a really fun solution that will hopefully stick around for a while.”