Scarlet Onager Logo

I quite enjoyed working on this graphic for the Scarlet Onagers Guild of Salem, Oregon. The Scarlet Onagers are a group of background characters at the Canterbury Renaissance Faire in Oregon. They spend the two weekends of the Faire assisting with landscape needs, crowd control, and whatever needs the vendors and Faire staff.

What Works in a Logo

The guild wanted a simple logo that stood out, but was in some way linked to the name "Scarlet Onagers" that had been adopted. The final graphic had to be bitmapped (no shading or grayscaling, with clearly defined edges) in order to make it easy to screen print the logo onto clothing, game boards, or other materials.

Practice Makes Happy

When creating the logo, many iterations appeared. An "Onager" is a small donkey from Asia. One was a full body silhouette of a young donkey, another had the young donkey within the outline of a traditional English crest, and the third was only the head of the donkey. After quite a bit of tweaking, the neck was added, the eyes were adjusted, and the final version of the logo was adopted by the guild.

The guild has a few iterations of the final logo. They have a vector version in case the logo needs updating later. They also have a version in their guild color of a muted crimson, one in black for ease of screen printing, and one with "the Scarlet Onagers" in a lovely script font upon the neck of the logo.