Benson Bunnies logo
Oxide's proposed new logo for the Benson Mighty Bunnies
About a year ago, the team here at Oxide engaged in a very unusual behavior. It’s something we had never tried before, and something we’ll probably never try again. Without being asked, we designed a new identity for the Benson High School (Omaha, NE) athletics department. That’s right, the Mighty Bunnies.
Let me set the stage. I’ve been fascinated with the Bunnies since my wife and I moved back to Omaha. All three of the homes we’ve owned have been within about a mile of Benson High, and I know scores of people that are alumni. I’ve always figured it was some kind of sick joke that their athletics department was saddled with such a wussy mascot. Bunnies are about as far from ferocious or aggressive as you can get, even if they are “mighty”.
Early concept sketches for the new Benson Bunnies logo
So in my spare time over about five years, I’d been doodling bunnies in the margins of pages, looking for some way to make the mascot more…respectable. I figured it was the ultimate challenge: design a Benson Bunnies identity that people saw and thought “awesome.” Around January of 2009 — hundreds of sketches later — I found a great solution and built it out.
Then came what would turn out to be the really hard part: giving away a great logo. Early in the process, we found out we had an in. Chris Heuertz, executive director of Oxide’s client Word Made Flesh, happens to be the brother of Adam Heuertz, head football coach at Benson High School. Chris put us in touch, and Coach Heuertz was open-minded enough to let us come in and make a presentation.
A small sampling of the Benson Mighty Bunnies logos in use at the time
The primary pitch was this: We want to give you this logo. For free. Forever. We’ll even help you implement it across the entire athletics department. We want to do this for the good of the school, and for a chance to see our logo unifying all the Mighty Bunnies teams.
Since I’d been thinking over the project for years, I also had solid business rationale in support of a new logo. The school was using a random, hodgepodge collection of logos across the athletics department, with each sport deciding on their own what kind of art they might use for each season. We established a core set of reasons behind why they’d adopt a new, cohesive logo:
1. Consistency builds value: the more consistently a cohesive identity is used, the more people get invested in it, growing pride and allegiance.
2. Creating a professional image for Benson High School will help build support and donations from alumni, partners, and other interested parties.
3. Under a proud banner, people strive harder individually and work better as part of a team.
Plus, we outlined what we attempted to capture in the new logo:
1. Swift / fast / forward-moving: positive attributes for both athletics and academics.
2. Non-gender specific.
3. Highlight the positive characteristics of the rabbit, and treat the “Mighty Bunnies” mascot with respect and pride.
4. Professional-sports quality designed to inspire and motivate students and athletes.
Coach Heuertz listened politely, even implying that he liked the new logo. He said he’d think it over, perhaps share the presentation with the Athletic Director. After a week of confident patience (assuming that no school could possibly turn down this offer), we heard back…
“Hey, I spoke with the teams, and it seems that everyone still wants to use their logos. But if this ever changes, I will keep you posted.”
So, that’s the end of the line for our new bunny.
It’s important to note that there are no hard feelings here. The Bunnies did not ask us to overhaul their identity. This was our crazy plan, and we appreciate the time Coach Heuertz has given us.
But to be perfectly honest, we are really surprised that a great logo was met with such a lukewarm reception. We understand that it takes a lot of resources to rebrand an entire athletics department, but we’re even offering to carry a lot of the load. Even a year later, all of us at Oxide are still harboring a tiny glimmer of hope that one day this logo can become the unifying symbol of pride for the Benson Bunnies.
What we’re hoping is that somewhere out there is someone connected to Benson High School who loves this logo as much as we do, and will champion the cause. We ask that you send this story around to anyone you know who has a vested interest in the Mighty Bunnies. With any luck, we’ll spark someone’s passion who can breathe new life into this awesome bunny.
Gigga— huzza— whuzza—?!
HOW IS THIS DIFFERENT TO SPEC WORK? Drew! Drew! How could you of all people expect anything different? I’m flabergasted. I’m dumbstruck. I’m looking for irony that I’ve missed.
FACEPALM.
Great logo. Would you be able to put the logo on stickers, decals, tshirts, etc – especially if you don’t add any direct reference to Benson High School? Cheap paraphernalia with such a quality logo might allow the students to embrace the logo through viral means…maybe handing out a few hundred stickers to kids in the Benson area that appear high school age.
I think this is a fantastic solution and a great gift to your neighborhood public school. We’ll keep at it from our end — great work.
Nate,
I think you bring up an excellent point. I think it’s fair to say that a practice like this falls into the gray area of spec work. That’s one of the reasons we won’t be doing anything like this again. I think our story above actually reiterates some of the dangers associated with working in that fashion.
In our defense, I’ll submit that this was not the general public being asked to invest their time in a project with only one winner. It was a passion of ours that we followed on our own, not in competition against others.
I can clearly see now that this is a place where people leave reasoned, rational comments, instead of loud cries of facepalming. Pardon my lack of manners before, please.
So I agree with your point, but respectfully submit that you guys may have known better.
Yours sincerely,
Facepalm. I mean, Nate.
Hey Drew,
First of all. LOVE the logo. I think its great, and a really good take on the Benson Bunny. We used to mock Benson for their mascot for years. Who’s afraid of a Bunny? A bear, cougar, bulldog. Absolutely. But not a bunny. And especially not their version of the bunny.
That being said, I’m surprised that you were surprised at the lukewarm response. Its simple human nature. Even if they picked the logo, they would never appreciate its value because it cost them nothing to obtain it. You were giving it to them for free. Plus, it was probably put to a committee of decision makers. A good logo almost never makes it out of a committee.
I’d chalk it up to experience, throw the logo in the portfolio(cuz it is nice!) and move on down the road.
Best,
Matt
Heart-wrenching. Truly heart-wrenching. Living 6 blocks from Benson High School and driving by it everyday to work, makes it all the worse. I’ve daydreamed about how to make the “bunnies” aggressive myself. Great execution.
“You gotta get more of the glossy-plastic-reflecting-logo-thing in there. Y’know, like maybe some chrome or something? I hear that all the hip kids in high school these days put little plastic rhinestones on their cellular telephones. Can you maybe put a few rhinestones in there too? Maybe the insides of the ‘B’ could be rhinestones. Yeah, I bet the insides of the ‘B’ would be a GREAT place to put some rhinestones. Try the bunny’s eye too.”
Love this idea and can totally relate to wanting so badly to help an image that you would go to these lengths. I have been designing for screen-printing for a few years and find that great ideas like this are given to committees, and often not the students. I’m sure the students would love this…..but it’s just too hard to get past those committees! The key may not be to find someone connected to the Benson faculty, but a student who would run with it and get all the kids talking about how cool that would be!
note: Fascinating take on this story over on Brandon Vogel’s “Rogue’s Rookery“.
I think that a “lukewarm reception” shouldn’t be that much of a surprise since the “client” wasn’t involved or invested in the project. I’m sure you know that branding is more than external imagery.
Drew,
What a killer logo! As a small business owner who has struggled with logo ideas of my own, this is very impressive. I found you when I looked up the Bunnies to be sure my friend wasn’t pulling my leg that this is really their mascot. So though you haven’t been embraced by the district as of yet, you are at least getting some traffic to your site out of it! And it is never wrong to do a public service, even if it is not appreciated in the near term. So thank you for doing something on your own without any promise of compensation. You will get paid for this effort, just maybe not the way you think. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I am the President of my local school board and understand the challenges of trying to get changes through the layers that come with running a district so don’t mean this comment as a negative towards the Bunnies. I’m just saying that you have obvious talent, my friend. And please do not stop doing things out of the goodness of your heart. Schools need more people to try to help, not fewer.
I love this logo. It may take some time for some to warm up to it.