It was announced on October 17 at Midnight Madness that UNC Wilmington will be unveiling a new athletics logo on January 28, 2015. This announcement has sparked the curiosity of many students, alumni, and fans, as the current logo has been in place since 1992.

Rob Aycock, Senior Associate Athletic Director and Executive Director of the Seahawk Club, spearheaded the new logo project.

“Once I’ve been here we’ve moved in a very clear and upfront direction about getting this done,” Aycock said, “A lot of people here for a long time have been at least interested in investigating a possible new logo.”

Joe Bosack & Co., a design firm located in Pottsville, Pennsylvania specializing in sports brand identity, designed the new logo. They have designed logos for schools such as Mississippi State University and Boise State University, and are currently working on new NCAA Championship logos.

The UNCW athletic department reached out to many people across campus and held focus groups with student athletes, members of SGA, faculty, and staff throughout the design process.

“I want people to know that this has been a university process. This was not something athletics launched into on our own,” Aycock said, “We’ve gone to great lengths to try to involve as many people on campus as we can.”

The current logo has been used in various ways across UNCW for the last 22 years, however the new logo is designed specifically for athletics branding. 

“I think one of the interesting things is we have a logo right now that’s a spirit mark and it works really well for the university but it’s not necessarily a dynamic athletics logo,” Aycock said, “so that was one of the things we really wanted to address through this process.”

Although the new logo will be used for all athletic department sports and merchandise, the current logo will stick around UNCW for a while. 

“We’ll still have it as a secondary mark. We’ll quit selling merchandise with that logo on it as it relates to apparel but we know that logo is ingrained in the culture here and we anticipate that a lot of the university will continue to use that mark,” Aycock said, “Moving towards a new logo in not an indictment of that mark.”

In addition to the new logo, there will be new secondary logos and custom fonts the university will own. This will add a new level of versatility for every team’s uniforms across all UNCW sports.

“Once we launch this, we will be committed to the brand and identity guide that goes with it,” Aycock said.

Three pieces of the new logo were revealed at the Men’s and Women’s Basketball exhibitions on November 8 , a few days later on UNCW Athletics social media pages, and at Wagsgiving.  

The full logo will be unveiled on January 28, 2015 at Wagoner Dinging Hall before the Men’s Basketball game against Elon. New merchandise featuring the logo will also be available that day.