I decided to stick with my original image for my final illustrator project logo. This design was one that I felt had a strong embodiment of what I wanted to create. I listened to my groupmates words of advice and tried to make the edges of the football sharper to no avail. The pen tool would not allow me to create a point already on the path and adjust it so that it was scalable to the entire shape. I then tried the point tool and it continued to distort the entire footballs shape and did not allow me to create the exact shape I wanted. In the end I settled on this shape and decided to stick with it. I did head their advice by changing the color of not only the football but the backdrop. I felt as though the light red backdrop did not help the image at all and the red and black really had little to do with the entity I was creating. I went with a gray background and made the opacity just  above 10%, this gave it a noticeable detail but did not take away from the rest of my image. I then decided to instead make the football brown like a large majority of actual footballs as the black outline did not do much for my football image in general. The final piece of advice I listened to was that of the grips. I decided that moving the words over and allowing the lacing to stay whole looked much better and by erasing some of the parts to fit the words over them did not help the image overall. I also went through and made the center lines stroke equal to that of the outer lines. Overall they were very minor changes but I definitely think that they helped my image in the long run to look better and more professional.

In my logo project draft I was able to create a draft that actively reimagined my fantasy football league. This image was meant to serve the purpose of being our new league logo. Our fantasy league which is ironically named after the relatively popular show “The League”, which aired on FX between 2009 and 2015, pays tribute to the fantasy league in which the friends in the show systematically revolve their lives around. In the draft I kept my design relatively simple and included some of the color in the background to compliment the black outline of the football and our lettering. This relates to my course topic of Sports, specifically the ensuing NFL season and the multitude of ways to enjoy it. I researched dozens of football related logos in order to decide on this one during my final draft. The importance of blending our league name in with the sport that it is devoted to makes the design encompass all of the important aspects of our fantasy league. I began by creating the footballs outer shape using the circle tool and deluding the perfectly shaped circle into the oblong design of a football. I then added the text and used the scissors tool to remove the edge of the football. I then used the line tool to add the seem that would be on an actual football and included some stitches again by using an oblong circle from the circle tool. Finally I used the eraser tool so that the football grips would not interrupt the text in the image and added a rounded square so that the image would be more vibrant. I found plenty of inspiration from the NFL, college football and similar leagues that are found around the United States. I had some trouble when trying to scale the object and get everything to fit together just the way I wanted it to. I eventually had to use two separate text boxes for the two words so that the space between them was not too vast.

When it came to the final tutorial, once I reached the stage of grouping all of the circles together it would continually place a new half circle over my pre-existing circles and then it would add the gradient to that half circle only.

I eventually decided to change my mind and create a homage to the NFL’s 100^th season. My topic completely revolves around the world of sports and the everyday happenings of the NFL. After seeing the NFL’s new logo that depicts their great accomplishment I knew I wanted to do something similar without exactly copying their design.

I decided to use the three most important things that I could depict, the football for their sport, the faded image of Levi’s Stadium and the faded image of the 100, standing for their 100^th season as a league. I began with the largest of the images I possessed, deciding that I wanted to add more to just the football sitting there, I changed the opacity of the stadium image and layered it over the top.

I began by overlaying the American flag image (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/american-flag-usa-flag-symbol-2144392/) over the text of the “100” to commemorate the 100^th season of the NFL. I then added the image of the football laying in the field (https://www.pexels.com/photo/american-sports-4198/) and overlaid the “100” layer over it. I used the dissolve filter to the “100” to give it another personal touch. I then brought the opacity of the “100” to 35% and layered the final image of Levi’s Stadium (https://www.pexels.com/photo/football-stadium-during-night-200986/) over the football image.   

I brought the opacity of the Levi’s Stadium image to 30%. I used the opacity variation a lot as well as the paint brush to remove the image of Levi’s Stadium from the bottom of the football. The trick we used in creating the Pullman collage came in handy with layering the flag over the “100” and creating a copy of the layer. I had trouble with this step until I went back and re-watched the tutorial video on how to do it. All of the images I used had free-licenses attached to them, allowing them to be manipulated and transformed.

Some more things that I have added to my artwork include using the drop shadow effect I made the “100” stand out more and made it more of the main focus of my design. This helped to focus the image to the center of the piece so that it would be more recognizable. I added a text box to further this process and implicate the meaning of my project. I then made both the images of the football and the stadium fill to the edges of the border so that it would fill the entire area. This was done using text box and command “t” to transform the image. I held shift to move the image proportionately to the original photo.

I eventually decided to change my mind and create a homage to the NFL’s 100^th season. My topic completely revolves around the world of sports and the everyday happenings of the NFL. After seeing the NFL’s new logo that depicts their great accomplishment I knew I wanted to do something similar without exactly copying their design. I decided to use the three most important things that I could depict, the football for their sport, the faded image of Levi’s Stadium and the faded image of the 100, standing for their 100^th season as a league. I began with the largest of the images I possessed, deciding that I wanted to add more to just the football sitting there, I changed the opacity of the stadium image and layered it over the top. I began by overlaying the American flag image (https://pixabay.com/illustrations/american-flag-usa-flag-symbol-2144392/) over the text of the “100” to commemorate the 100^th season of the NFL. I then added the image of the football laying in the field (https://www.pexels.com/photo/american-sports-4198/) and overlaid the “100” layer over it. I used the dissolve filter to the “100” to give it another personal touch. I then brought the opacity of the “100” to 35% and layered the final image of Levi’s Stadium (https://www.pexels.com/photo/football-stadium-during-night-200986/) over the football image. I brought the opacity of the Levi’s Stadium image to 30%. I used the opacity variation a lot as well as the paint brush to remove the image of Levi’s Stadium from the bottom of the football. The trick we used in creating the Pullman collage came in handy with layering the flag over the “100” and creating a copy of the layer. I had trouble with this step until I went back and re-watched the tutorial video on how to do it. All of the images I used had free-licenses attached to them, allowing them to be manipulated and transformed.

I am going to create an invite for those in my fantasy football league to come to the week 2, game viewing.