Rounding Third and Heading For Home
Oklahoma State University was slated to open a new home ballpark, O'Brate Stadium, for its baseball program in 2020. Christening a sparkling new facility is always a branding opportunity, and creating a mark to commemorate the inaugural season in the new home of Cowboy Baseball was a given.
But the new facility and its accompanying marks also presented an opportunity to revisit the interlocking 'OS' mark long associated with the program.
Project Background
The interlocking 'OS' has been a part of Oklahoma State Baseball since the introduction of Gary Ward as the program's head coach in 1978. Ward's teams quickly became a dominant force in the world of college baseball, winning the Big Eight Conference regular season championship in all but one of Ward's 19 seasons with the Cowboys, making ten trips to the College World Series (including seven consecutive appearances from 1981-87) and turning players like Robin Ventura and Pete Incaviglia into household names.
The OS disappeared from the program's caps after a department-wide rebranding campaign in 2001, but would return a few years later in the form of throwback uniforms. The OS made its official return to Cowboy Baseball caps in 2013 with the introduction of Josh Holliday as head coach.
However, bringing back the OS did not necessarily translate to bringing back the OS. When implemented across different uniform manufacturers between 2007 and 2012, the mark had become increasingly inconsistent and inaccurate compared to the original emblem worn by Gary Ward's Cowboy Baseball teams.
There were several different interpretations of the same mark, and it was like a game of telephone played out in logo form. By the time a standardized OS began to be used in 2013, the O had become slender and mis-aligned, corners were inconsistent with each other, line weights were all over the place.
Batting Cleanup
The 2019 version of the OS applies a renewed consistency to line weights and angles for each of the O and S characters. The consistency continues to the stroke, creating a cleaner and much more snug interaction between the interlocking letters. The proportions of the OS have been balanced, allowing the mark to be more faithful to its original form.
