LaGrange designer wins logo contest
Original Article by Brad Stephens, Sports Editor, The Oldham Era
July 3, 2014
Michael Manning knew the logo for Louisville City Football Club, the area’s new pro soccer team, wasn’t professionally done when he first saw it.
“I didn’t think it was that good honestly,” Manning said.
A lot of people agreed and the team responded by opening a contest to design an improved logo.
Manning, a New Albany, Ind., resident who works as a production specialist at Take Note Designs in LaGrange, read about the contest on Twitter and entered.
On June 22, during halftime of a USA-Portugal World Cup watch party in Louisville, Manning’s design was announced as the team’s new logo.
He said he was reluctant to enter the contest at first, but he did so thanks to support of his wife, Danielle.
“My wife wanted me to do it, so that’s kind of the trump card,” Manning said.
There were three design elements that had to be incorporated in the logos entered in the contest – a bourbon barrel, a Fleur-de-lis and the team colors, purple and gold.
The original logo had a gold Fleur-de-lis sitting on top of a purple barrel with the words “Louisville City” sitting over the top of the barrel in white.
“The thing it lacked most to me was consistency and depth, ” Manning said. “That’s a big thing in most sports logos. They used basically three elements of clip art you can just get online anywhere.”
Manning decided to make the barrel the base of the logo because “it kind of to me serves as the roots of Louisville because of the bourbon industry.” Manning used a gold barrel with purple trim and sat a purple Fleur-de-lis with gold trim on top of it at the bottom of the logo.
Whereas the original logo featured “Louisville City” in two lines at the top, Manning made the words in one line in the middle.
Then he graced the top of the logo with four buildings from Louisville’s skyline – Preston Pointe, the Aegon Center, National City Tower and Humana building.
The buildings are featured left to right in the order they’d be seen from the pitchers mound at Louisville Slugger Field, Manning said. Slugger Field is where Louisville City FC will play its games starting with its inaugural season in 2015.
“I was looking through logos of other MLS teams and other professional teams and I noticed that they didn’t have any (skylines),” Manning said. “To me, that kind of tells the story of Louisville, the skyline.”
For his selection, Manning was given a $500 stipend and tickets to Louisville City’s first game. He and his wife will also be given polo shirts featuring the Louisville City logo.
Congratulations to our team member, Michael Manning!