Capstone Project Wiki

Each team must create a team name but may choose to create a team logo. Creating a name and logo gives the team a sense of identity and helps foster a sense of professional pride in the team's work.

Teams who do not create a logo will not use a logo in any presentations or artifacts. Before you can use a team name and/or logo in any documentation produced by your team, they must be approved by the Capstone office.

Neither the team name nor logo can use any part of the sponsor name or logo, or violate any intellectual property considerations (for example, no use of Disney characters or names).

The logo must be a color logo that will print clearly at about 3 inches wide and 300 dpi. It should also contrast with and look good against a white background.

The logo must be created as a vector graphic (created in applications such as Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, or Inkscape) rather than a bitmap graphic (DO NOT USE Photoshop, Corel Paint, the GIMP). Adobe Illustrator is available at cloudapps.byu.edu (Note that you log in with username of “byu\netID”). You will submit this vector graphic file as part of this assignment.

The name and logo must be approved by the Capstone office and submitted by the deadline shown in Learning Suite in both PDF and original vector file format with the completed Team Name and Logo Checklist. Please make sure you work with the Capstone office as you are going through the approval process.

To be useful, the logo must be also be submitted in PDF format for the assignment (use “Save as PDF”, not “Print to PDF” in Adobe Illustrator) with an artboard size that matches the logo size. If there are fonts in the logo, they must be embedded in the PDF, or you can also elect to convert any text to paths or curves when creating a PDF file. Additional help with obtaining properly-formatted logos can be found on Learning Suite under Content.

The Team Name and Logo Checklist is available on Box under Class Documents/Forms.

When saving the logo in Illustrator and opening the logo in Acrobat there should be no extra white space around the logo.

_{Screenshots from Adobe Illustrator and Acrobat that show logos with properly-sized artboards. Note that the logo fills the entire artboard in Illustrator, and the page size in Acrobat is only the size of the logo.}

Several excellent sample logos from past teams are shown in this figure:

_{Osmosas developed an octopus-style, multichannel spectrum analyzer. Levall was working on a newly-designed ladder leveler. Blue Sky (the rearing horse) developed a kit to improve thermal insulation in traditional Mongolian gers. Heart of Hearing worked on an enhanced phone for the hearing impaired. Aero developed a self-cleaning vacuum duster. Respira developed an automated multi-dose asthma inhaler.}

Many teams choose a name that reflects their project in some way. While this would not be good advice in a company setting (because there would be multiple projects), it can be effective in the Capstone setting. The team name should be professional. It should not be “cute” or “gimmicky”. You should feel confident in sharing your name as part of formal memos, presentations, and reports.

Jacob Cass is a graphic designer who specializes in personal branding. He has shared his expertise both online and at TEDxCMU. According to his website, an effective logo is:

• Simple
• Memorable
• Timeless
• Versatile
• Appropriate

Cass also indicates that a logo should work whether printed in one color or multiple colors, and should work both small (postage-stamp size) and large (billboard size). It should work in reverse, as well (light logo on dark background, for example).

For more information on logo designs, you may wish to visit the following sites:

• Jacob Cass's article on logo design: http://justcreative.com/2009/07/27/what-makes-a-good-logo/
• A longer version of the article above, from Smashing magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/26/vital-tips-for-effective-logo-design/