Way back before I was really confident in my career (AKA still scrambling for work every day), I decided to take on The Futur's Spartan Logo Design Challenge. The idea was to create a new, clean logo design for the Spartan Race, and submit the design publicly on social media. To be honest, the challenge was pretty fun and since multiple submissions could be submitted I had a blast trying different ideas.

The designs I chose to make are mainly abstract marks based on symbols related to ancient Sparta. A few are stylized to resemble the Spartan helmet, and others are typographic. You can see a pair of process animations on this page that show how the logos were developed. I also layered in a bit of grunge to symbolize that the Spartan Race is a really messy thing. An event that leaves you totally soaked in mud probably shouldn't have a pristine mark.

I started all the logos in pencil on grid paper. These animations show some of the process they undergo in digitization. The second example demonstrates how multiple concepts can be integrated into one mark.

The contest called for all logos to be presented as apparel, using the Spartan Race's red, white, and black color scheme.