Wanted: basketball pool logos!

All right, artsy readers, it's time for another Irish Trojan design contest.

My 13th annual men's basketball and 11th annual women's basketball pools will be starting up on Sunday, and once again, I need a logo. Two years ago, Marel Nasinnyk won the design contest, while last year, I skipped the contest process and simply commissioned Tom Greca to create the logos, in Halliburton no-bid-contract-like fashion. :) This year, I'm going back to the open contest model.

[Details after the jump. This post will stay on top of the homepage for a while. New posts will appear below.]

I'm planning to create Facebook and MySpace pages for the pools in advance, as I did last year, so I'd like to have a logo picked out by Thursday evening. Thus, I'm going to set 5:00 PM EDT Thursday as the deadline. You can submit your entries either by e-mail (irishtrojan [at] gmail.com) or by uploading them somewhere on the Internets and linking to them in comments on this post. The sole judge of the winning logo will be... me, based on whatever criteria I choose. ;) Basically, I want something that looks cool. You can submit as many entries as you like.

The prize will be, well, getting to see your logo on my site all month... plus, I'll owe the winner a beer (or alternative similarly priced beverage of your choice). Be warned, though, it may take me a while to pay up. I haven't seen Marel in the last two years, and thus, I still owe her that beer from the 2006 contest!

Ultimately, I need three separate logos: one for the 13th annual men's pool, one for the 11th annual women's pool, and one overarching logo for both pools (the "13th annual basketball pools," or words to that effect). The logos should generally share the same basic design, though, so for contest purposes, you can just submit one, and then if I choose it as the winner, we can go back and tweak the text to create the three different versions. (Or you can submit all three. Your choice.)

Many of the rules from two years ago still apply. In particular:

• Don't call them "NCAA Pools." The NCAA doesn't like that. For purposes of the official logos, they're "pools" or "basketball pools" or "college basketball pools."
• Remember, the official sponsor of the pools is The Living Room Times (my old unofficial high school newspaper), not BrendanLoy.com or the Irish Trojan's Blog. They are the "Living Room Times pools."
• That said, I'd love to incorporate "BrendanLoy.com" and/or "Irish Trojan" into the logos somehow, for branding's sake. Maybe "The Living Room Times pools" (big text), "presented by the Irish Trojan" (smaller text), or something like that.
• The pools are "moneyless," so it wouldn't make sense for the logo to have dollar signs or money clipart or whatever.

Submissions should be at least 400 pixels wide, or thereabouts, although I will probably shrink them to various smaller sizes as needed. They should be roughly square-shaped -- i.e., not too narrow, either vertically or horizontally.

There is a chance, if UCLA beats USC in the Pac-10 semifinals Friday night, that the men's pool version of the winning logo will have to be modified to include a mention of UCLA, per the terms of my bet with Mike. But since we won't know whether that will happen until early Thursday evening at the earliest (if the Trojans or Bruins lose in the first round), and possibly as late as Friday night, I've decided to just go ahead with the contest and then make that change if it becomes necessary, which hopefully it won't.

Anyway... have fun! Design away!

Comments

[Marty West]

I am going to be on vacation and sans internet from the 15th - 22nd. So I won't be able to pick any teams for a pool! What a bummer.

[Marty West]

Brendan....what happened to Gonzaga last night buddy?

[Brendan Loy]

Dude, you've got to stop going on these poorly timed vacations! Where are you going? Maybe I can find you an Internet cafe, like I did in the above thread. :)

As for Gonzaga, I actually didn't watch the second half... I was super tired yesterday. Poor planning on my part to stay up late watching the semifinal and then blogging about it, so I was exhausted yesterday and couldn't watch the final. Anyway, I express no opinion on any alleged shambolic or non-shambolic qualities of the Zags' performance. :)

[Marty West]

I will be back in Culebra again. They don't have any internet cafes on the island. :( Oh well...I should be glad that my only complaint is that the island I will be on doesn't have internet access!

I can't believe they didn't hit one 3 pointer last night. I think at some point one of the announcers said that it was the first time in 460+ games that Gonzaga hasn't hit a 3. Pargo played his ass off too. He must be a little frustrated with that loss.

[Marty West]

Luggage is carry on only so bringing my laptop is out of the questions because space is a priority. My girlfriend would kill me anyway if I brought my laptop on vacation...between work and personal use it gets enough attention as it. Plus it's nice to unplug and take a break for a little while.

Last year I got sick with the Norwalk Virus and my trip was over 2 days into the week. This year my immune system is a fine tuned machine.

[Trisha]

Any size requirements?

[Trisha]

And can we submit more than one?

[Brendan Loy]

I'd say they need to be at least 400 pixels wide, though I will most likely shrink them down as needed. And yes, you can submit as many as you want.

[Trisha]

Great, thanks! 400 pixels wide is no problem. I usually create in at least 800, but most of my stuff is done in 3600 and then resized to 4 or 5 hundred.

[Brendan Loy]

Yeah, that's fine. I've got no issues with the submissions being huge. :)

[Trisha]

lol, don't worry. I won't actually submit them in 3600 x 3600 ;)