After a year-long process of meetings and revisions, the University of North Carolina Wilmington unveiled its new athletic logo Wednesday, Jan. 28, before a crowd of students in Wagoner Hall.
“It looks like he’s saying, ‘Don’t mess with us,’” junior Reagan Barnes said after the unveiling in Wagoner Hall, snapping her fingers for emphasis.
The university entrusted Pennsylvania-based design agency Joe Bosack & Co. with the task of creating the new identity. The firm has extensive experience designing athletic logos, Aycock said, including the NCAA championship logos.
The agency began the lengthy design process by communicating with UNCW athletic faculty, student-athletes, coaches and various UNCW community leaders to determine what they liked and what they didn’t like about a variety of brand identities, creative director Joe Bosack stated in a Feb. 2 email.
The logo development phase consisted of multiple focus groups and numerous revisions, Aycock added.
The new logo depicts a seahawk’s beak forming a triangle pointing toward the UNCW logotype. Bosack said his team drew inspiration for the front-on view of the seahawk from Wilmington sculptor Dumay Gorham’s 20-foot metal Soaring Seahawk sculpture at Belk Plaza in front of Hoggard Hall.
“Looking at that beautiful sculpture face on displayed the fierce and aggressive attitude of the Seahawk that we want this brand identity to communicate,” Bosack stated.
Another noticeable departure in the new logo is the use of bright yellow in place of gold, which Bosack said gives the brand much-needed energy and solves a lot of problems the color gold creates when applied to various fabrics and uniforms.
Aycock said he believes the slanted yellow eyes are what really give the mark a dynamic presence.
The Seahawk logo has now been redesigned six times over the years. Local artist Gary Longordo created the former logo in 1992 depicting a seahawk in profile on an ocean wave.
“[It] was a great piece of art, it said a lot about where we are … with the wave,” said Rob Aycock, senior associate athletic director. “But we wanted to really move in the direction of having a fierce athletic logo.”
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