Spotlight: Eddie Ray Design

I'd love to be able to give you guys a glimpse into the worlds of all 25 IceHL artists, but unfortunately, only a fraction of our phenomenal designers have written in for their Artist Spotlight bios. That means I'll likely be wrapping it up next weekend (after the final week of logo voting).

However, tonight we go behind the scenes with Eddie Ray of Eddie Ray Design — responsible for logo finalists for four different teams. Despite his amazing work, his finalists were runners up. The competition in this project is stiff!

As you can see, Eddie put together some simple yet effective designs for the Lagers, Olympiques, Sharpshooters and Lumberjacks. I asked him to give us some background and talk about why he entered the IceHL competition.

Throughout my life I have loved two things consistently: being creative, and sports. As I got into art and different disciplines in high school I figured out that graphic design was the area for me.

Once attending college at Alfred University, I realized that combining my two loves would be the path to my dream job. I became interested in sports logos and the creative process behind branding, and never looked back.

I have graduated and I am working at a screen printing, embroidery, and engraving company in Maine where I am a graphic designer and digitizer. I am hoping to begin a big project soon centered around branding Maine high school athletic programs. I feel like the IceHL and Icethetics as a whole is a stepping stone to what I hope to do in the future.

The contest lets me flex my creative muscles while getting proper feedback from others in this field. I know it will be beneficial to me, as I hope to do this same sort of thing on a much bigger level (professional sports teams). In design and art I like to keep things simple, and the IceHL was no different. You won't see any gradients or intricate designs coming from me, just straightforward designs that (hopefully) get their message across.

Simple is always the way to go.

www.eddieraydesign.com

I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Eddie Ray's designs. If you have any questions or comments for him, leave it below.

To make up for last weekend's MIA Artist Spotlight, I'll be serving up a double-helping tomorrow. Get ready to meet the guys behind the pseudonyms Sean Cox Tattoo and tdog.

Poll: Atlanta Arsenal

Joey Light

John Wriston

Ogre39666

Click on a logo above to see the complete set to the right. Then vote for the best one below! All sets include a primary, secondary and corporate mark. Some include an additional tertiary mark if provided by the designer. The identifier at the top of the image is the signature provided by the artist.

Poll: Houston Hellcats

Six Zero

tdog

Chris Smith

Click on a logo above to see the complete set to the right. Then vote for the best one below! All sets include a primary, secondary and corporate mark. Some include an additional tertiary mark if provided by the designer. The identifier at the top of the image is the signature provided by the artist. Note: The artist here named Chris Smith is NOT me.

Poll: Baltimore Blue Crabs

John Wriston

Chris Smith

Joey Light

Click on a logo above to see the complete set to the right. Then vote for the best one below! All sets include a primary, secondary and corporate mark. Some include an additional tertiary mark if provided by the designer. The identifier at the top of the image is the signature provided by the artist. Note: The artist here named Chris Smith is NOT me.

Faux Embroidering: Abridged

Obviously, the news has been keeping me busy here the last few weeks. I promised you guys a tutorial on my process to achieve the embroidered look you see on all the winning IceHL logos. I have not had the time to write it but I didn't want to leave you hanging.

If you're a designer who knows your way around Photoshop or comparable software, these bullet points should be pretty easy to follow. If it's over your head, you'll just have to keep waiting until I can put together an actual tutorial.

There's no one way to achieve this look, but here is my workflow:

• Separate each color of your logo into its own layer. This can be easily done with the magic wand and fill tools. Then fill up any holes within your color layers.
• To each layer add a pattern overlay of angled scan lines (10-15% opacity) along with noise, beveling and a drop shadow to a degree that looks good to you.
• Draw vector lines near the edges of each color (black or white) using a dashed stroke to get the stitched effect. Set that layer to 20-25% opacity.

There are probably better ways to do some of this in newer versions of Photoshop. I'm actually using Paint Shop Pro 7 (and have been for eight years) to create the graphics for Icethetics. Enjoy!

If you need a little more direction or just want some different ideas, PuckDrawn has collected up a decent set of similar tutorials worth checking out. Also, feel free to add suggestions in the comments if you've discovered a better way or a better tutorial. I'm sure Icethetics readers would love to hear about it.