I don’t mean to brag, but I never marched a single tour at the United States Air Force Academy. Broke plenty of rules, came close on a couple occasions, even had to monitor the tour pad a few times as part of a job I had…
But I did my four years without ever having the pleasure of walking back and forth for an hour in full service dress.
The Zoo Logo
Marching tours, however, is an iconic part of the cadet experience. And I thought that if I were to design a logo for the Zoo – it would definitely involve the tour pad in some way. I am a big fan of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and everyone kindof seems to do a spin on that logo for their thing – so I thought, why not?
But where do you find a picture of someone marching a tour?
That turned out to not be as easy I thought that it should be… but YouTube definitely came through in the clutch after a few hours of research.
Check out this amazing USAFA promo video from the 1950s.
Sticker Design & Promotion
As soon as I saw the thumbnail for this video, I knew that I had hit pay dirt. It is fairly simple to trace an outline of the cadet marching a tour using the Pen Tool in Adobe Illustrator, once you’ve gotten the hang of the Pen tool…
And as soon as I had the cadet’s silhouette, I was able to use Adobe Illustrator’s Shape Builder Tool to add color so it would resemble the NBA logo… That’s it. Pretty basic from a design standpoint, and you can check out the final result in greater detail by clicking this link.
From a promotion standpoint, this design was very well received on Instagram – which exceeded my expectations.
All I did there was use the section from the above YouTube video that focused on our guy marching a tour and threw in some Cypress Hill for good measure, because I have loved how that track kicks off since I wore out the cassette single I bought when it came out.
You can check out the promo video on Instagram here – if you haven’t already seen it and drop a comment to let me know what you think.
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