“‘Can’t Control’ from Curtin University!”
“‘Expensive Vacuum Cleaner’ from Bunbury Senior High School!”
“‘The Angry Birds’ from Swan View Senior High School!”
“‘Panic! at the Drill Press’ from Kalamunda Senior High School!”
“‘HALESTORM’ from Hale School!”
“‘Lil Timmy’s Big Team’ from Ashdale Secondary College!”
And then the announcement came through the loudspeakers; “‘Bob Hawke College’ from Bob Hawke College?”
WARP 2023
This weekend, we were at the Curtin University stadium to watch the ‘West Australian Robotics Playoffs 2023.’ WARP brings together high school students who build robots and organize competitions for them. Usually students use funny words, rhyming wordplays and pop culture references to name their teams. My favorite names are ‘Expensive Vacuum Cleaner’ and ‘Can’t Control.’
We were supporting the Bob Hawke College team. The name of the robotics team was the same as that of the institution. That’s why the announcement of “‘Bob Hawke College’ from Bob Hawke College” sounded in the Curtin University stadium.
So I kept thinking — can I come with an interesting name and logo for the Bob Hawke College robotics team?
DISCLAIMER— This is an unsolicited design attempt and is not an official commissioned work. This is a fun, personal design project. Peace!
Naming the Robotics Team
Taking a note of Hale School’s HALESTORM, ‘Street Hawk’ was a name that first popped up in my mind for the Bob Hawke College robotics team. ‘Street Hawk’ was a very popular TV series from Universal Pictures which I saw as a kid in the 1990s. The introduction narration of “The man… the machine… Street Hawk” still rings in my ear.
Then, on the lines of ‘Panic! at the Drill Press’ by Kalamunda Senior High School, I came up with the name ‘Rumble in the Box’ — a node to the Jackie Chan starrer ‘Rumble in the Bronx’ (1995). But I was still not satisfied with it.
Then I remembered the badge distributed by Curtin University students in support of their team. I visualized a badge showing the name ‘BHC’ which is an often used abbreviation for ‘Bob Hawke College.’ What if I can coin a team name whose abbreviation is also ‘BHC?’
Everything was so fast — out of the blue, I got the name ‘Big Hero Chip!’ Everybody knows about the Marvel comics or the Disney movie ‘Big Hero 6’ that tells the story of a team of superheroes and Baymax — a friendly robot. The name ‘Big Hero Chip’ rhymes with ‘Big Hero 6.’ The robot theme also rhymes with ‘Big Hero 6.’ The ‘Chip’ of the name represents an integrated circuit or a microprocessor chip at the brain/heart of a robot.
The ‘BHC’ Logo
The idea is pretty straight forward — the logo is built on a minimalistic quad flat packaged integrated chip (QFP IC) featuring Betamax-like eyes and with the letters ‘BHC’ prominently visible on the body. When I did an ‘unscientific test’ with target audience, one person told me that the logo looks like a cute spider or a bug with expressive eyes. Well, I can live with that!
‘Big Hero Chip’ is written using the tall typeface Agency FB and the words are stacked one above the other mimicking the original ‘Big Hero 6’ title design.
The ‘BHC’ Logo Animation
This animation video shows an IC chip crawling along the tracks on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB) just like a wheeled robot. The IC chip transforms to the ‘Big Hero Chip’ and the video abruptly concludes with a reversed image of the logo that appears for half-a-second.
I managed to get the perfect ‘Cyberpunk’ music for this video from Pixabay. Audacity tool is used to cut the original music file to the required length and export as WAV file (Audio sample rate of 44.100kHz). This entire logo animation video is created in Microsoft PowerPoint using inbuilt animations and ‘Morph’ slide transitions. The video is exported in 4K (3840×2160) 60fps WMV format and uploaded to YouTube.
I have made only black and white colored versions of the logo now. In the future, I might revisit this and change the colors.
