The Beloit Buccaneers have replaced their swashbuckling, Errol Flynn-esque design from the 1970s with a new, grinning skeleton pirate logo.
Beloit College Vice President of Enrollment Marketing and Athletics Karen Schedin told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that the new design highlights the courageous and adventurous spirit of the school’s students.
In the 1970s when Beloit first picked its old logo, the athletics director at the time selected it out of a catalogue of options. This time around, Schedin said the college set up a design committee and hired a branding firm out of California to draft the new look.
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“I decided I had the intestinal fortitude to be willing to withstand whatever the result was after the fact, because you know there would be people who love it, people who really don’t have an opinion and plenty of people who really object to the change,” she said.
Staff and students at the college also have a strong affinity with turtles, with some locals considering the turtles their unofficial mascot. Schedin said she isn’t sure where the turtle love came from exactly, but suggested it might come from local turtle-shaped Indigenous burial mounds. The new Buccaneers logo has an “Easter egg” hidden in plain sight, with the skeleton pirate wearing a turtle shell earring.
“It’s sort of the ‘If you know, you know,’” she said. “We asked the designers to make it a component of the design, so that the students who aren’t athletes or never saw themselves as belonging to that part of the institution would feel welcome as if they belong.”
Beloit’s new design comes as a number of sports teams are reworking their logos into a more streamlined, minimalist design.
What’s in a logo, now
Scott Starr is the owner of the brand design firm Rev Pop in Milwaukee. He told “Wisconsin Today” that designing logos hasn’t necessarily changed over the years, but the tools artists use have — referring to developments in computer programming to help streamline the design process for artists.
“I think it’s become easier to get from point A to Z, but I think the process and the ideation of visual storytelling hasn’t changed much,” he said.
Starr over his career has worked with national and international brands like BMW and also local organizations like the Milwaukee Brewers.
He said the “creative spark” can be a challenge to hold onto when working with major brands. There are significantly more people involved in development, to the point where the product needs to be more “vanilla” to satisfy everyone.
Scott has operated Rev Pop in Milwaukee for nearly 20 years. He said he initially started the company in the hopes of working with smaller brands to let that creativity flourish.
“When you’re working with sole ownership, you’re working with somebody with passion, with somebody that’s got a vision,” he said.
