Fig. A: the logo.
In the summer of 2018, I was asked if I would make a logo for the Wayne State College Newman Center, the Catholic group on campus. I gladly agreed.
In many of my projects completed for clients, particularly those at Sandhills Publishing, I followed guidelines set out by the client for the completion of a logo. This project was different. Instead of following guidelines, I advised and collaborated with the committee who had requested the logo to created said guidelines. From the get-go, we determined we wanted something that was Catholic and that showed our link to our college.
For the Catholic aspect, it was determined that a crucifix graphic would work excellently. The classic image of the death of Christ both shows the center of the Christian faith while also showing a distinctness from other Christian groups on campus, who often utilize the cross without Christ's body.
The font Garamond was chosen for the top text for a few reasons. Firstly, it invokes a sense of timelessness due to the Roman-style characters. The Catholic faith is timeless; it is ancient, and so it was fitting that a "link-to-the-past" be chosen to advertise the Newman Center. Roman styled typefaces are also quite common in educational realms. Blessed John Henry Newman, from whom the Newman Center gets its name, was a great supporter of education. Work Sans, the more modern, sans-serif font on the bottom counters the more ancient looking serif font it appears under, but this is intentional. After all, Saint Augustine in his Confessions refers to God as a "...beauty ever ancient, ever new..." Finally, the colors of black and gold directly reflect Wayne State College's colors, to show our link to the institution of learning.
Fig. B: the cover photo.
I also designed a cover photo for the group's Facebook page, which can be seen above in fig B. For this, I asked myself the question "what is it exactly that we as the Newman Center are all about?" The simplest answer I came up with was the Eucharist. Take note of the usage of the Wayne State College gold used to give the Host a glowing quality, and the appearance of smoke surrounding the host, giving the impression of incense (in Catholicism, incense is used to represent the prayers of the people rising to heaven. It is commonly used in the Mass).
You can see both the cover photo and logo in action at: