KDSU - Excessive Elegance

The local college radio station, KDSU (K meaning "west of the Mississippi" and "DSU" being the acronym for our university--Dakota State University), has been in need of a new logo. I struggled a fair bit while trying to come up with a good design. I had thought of perhaps using some headphones tilted at an angle and hanging off of the words, but was concerned that it was too cliché on its own, and, on top of that, was something of a weak design. That was until a friend offered a brilliant solution: combine DSU's Trojans logo with the concept of a DJ: that is, headphones and the like.

Once the design idea had settled, it was a fairly easy matter to create a finalized version of the logo, although I wanted to steer away from the color scheme I used in the Trojan Times logo. While the Trojan Times' logo is more accurate, color-wise, to DSU's Trojans logo, I fear that I'll fall into a pit of monotony with the repetition of colors and designs will start looking all the same. Besides, I felt that the red worked a lot better to signify the energy intended to be portrayed in the radio station.

While I like the use of negative space, it may not be such a good idea in this case, since the "headphones" need to be clearly visible. I may end up filling that area in with white.

It was after I had finished this clean logo design, however, that I found it would not work: it was too clean. I am still fiddling with a possible grunge-y version, but, until that is completed, here is a glimpse at the clean version of the logo.

This is essentially the design I envisioned as soon as the idea was given to me. While, in the Trojan Times logo the helmet was negative space, in this case the complexity of the headphones pretty much demands that they be the object of negative space. Additionally, making them in negative space saves me the trouble of having to detail precisely where the headband goes, so I can combine the appearance of the headband with the look of a separation between helmet and the brush of the helm. The colors were chosen for their brightness, and, in the case of the helmet, their metallic tint.