OKEMOS, Mich. — Okemos Public Schools has officially released the new logo incorporating the wolf mascot.
“It screams confident to me," said logo designer Gabe Viscomi. "It’s very all inclusive.”
Viscomi owns Fabricated Customs, a screen printing business in Portland. He says being involved in the new logo was a full circle moment.
“Mr. Hood was my sixth grade teacher and I graduated from high school in 2003,” Viscomi said.
Superintendent John Hood said the community submitted designs.
“We said give us as many renditions as you want, but what we’re not going to is come back and have you vote on A versus B or B versus C,” Hood said.
The student mascot committee then picked their favorite parts of each submission.
“People wrote down I like number 49 because of this, I like number 62 because of this," Hood said. "They wanted it to promote that family approach that togetherness, they wanted it to be noble when you saw it, but not too aggressive.”
They gave a long list to Viscomi and he went back and tweaked the original design coming up with over 40 slightly different logos.
“They didn’t want one that looked too male or too female,” Hood said. “Even to the point of the group didn’t want it to be symmetrical. We didn’t want it to be perfect and the students brought that up because we don’t want to strive for perfection we want to strive for students to do the best they can and be unique.”
Until Viscomi and his team finally settled on the final one.
“We went through several versions and then I was going through and simplifying and updating things and really ended up getting to the final version that everyone looked at and was like yeah that’s going to be the one,” Viscomi said.
Viscomi said each element of the logo has a meaning.
“Half of its face is shadowed and really that lends to being more of an athletic thing as the way I look at it,” he said.
From the new 'O'.
“You’ll see an O that’s not a circle and it’s not a block it’s a little bit of each which I think just speaks to us valuing the diversity in our community,” Hood said.
To the two stripes in the right corner of the wolf's mane.
“That’s intentionally meant to look like a 22 like the 2-2 for this year so as kind of a throwback you know if in 30 years I want to come back and be like yeah that’s right, that was back in 2022,” Viscomi said.
Each element was carefully chosen to incorporate in the logo and they hope it represents the district proudly for years to come.
“I think all students are going to be able to see themselves in this whether it’s a club, or an extra curricular or sports team or district letter head," Hood said. "I mean it’s really going to we think stand the test of time.”
“It’s exciting to think about you know 30 years from now I’ll be back in Okemos and be like 'hey there’s the school and there’s the mascot they’re still using and it’s part of the Okemos history,'” Viscomi said.
The web store is now up and running with some apparel featuring the new logo. A portion of every sale will go back to Okemos Public Schools.
Hood said the next steps is ordering uniforms for athletics in the fall and replacing courts, fields and scoreboards this summer.
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