What’s it like to work with Hornet’s design Team? Ask San Diego Dragon Boat Team!

If you want to become familiar with the experience of working with Hornet’s design team on your paddle design, hear from Rosauro, Lisa and their team from San Diego Dragon Boat Team (SDDBT), who had a great experience designing their team paddle.  Here is a little bit about the team.

Since its inception, SDDBT has developed in many ways amassing an impressive history of success at all levels including national and world championships. They have grown by adding other crews, including our first women’s crew in 1992. This crew won silver medals in Singapore and Hong Kong at their first major international competitions. The club has since added a women’s cancer-survivor program (Team Survivor) and a collegiate program with students from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). A youth program is also under development.     

They decided to share with us a little more about their experience working with Hornet and we want to take the opportunity to share it with all of you.

When the San Diego team approached Hornet Watersports, we were very pleased because we love to work with new teams, especially one with the great traditions and experience such as this one. We quickly realized that this team did not have a vectorized logo, but they did have great logo on their team uniform.  The professionals at Hornet are creative and resourceful, and generally we will do whatever it takes to make sure he customization process goes smoothly for all our teams and customers. Therefore, in this case, we decided to use their uniform logo and draw the image from scratch using that.

As you can see, this team shirt gives us a great feel for the style or the team and the colors they like.  Not all teams have an established logo yet like this one.  If this is the case for your new team, Hornet can work with you to come up with one or improve the one you have.

Using the uniform pictured above, Hornet went to work and came up with the following vectorized logo:

The design team then went to work coming up with a few draft images for the San Diego team to look over.  This early step is important so that the designers can figure out if they are on the right track, or need to start from the drawing board.  This is what they came up with for the first group of designs.  These designs were presented to the team for feedback:

Now the process is well underway.  Some important discussions still need to take place, and this is the stage in the process to get this done. Hornet’s team are great listeners and this is the role we take when it comes to communicating design ideas from the client.  The team expressed a desire for more color, more dynamic presentation, and a few different color combinations to choose from.  This time, Hornet’s team was ready to make an impression and this is what they came up with:

These designs were a lot of fun and some people loved them, however in the end, the team decided they were not representative of the theme they were trying to impart.  They decided to go back to something closer to the first group of drafts that were sent. This is common in the process of designing paddles.  Often, the designers hit on something really creative that the team will fall in love with right away.  But if it doesn’t happen, no problem!  This is what we do, and we love to do it for our customers.  Hornet sent over another group of designs for review and this is what they looked like:

As it turned out, our San Diego team wanted a different shade of red-orange.  Well, this is no problem at all, in fact Hornet’s team always wants honest feedback and suggestions from our clients.  We sent back these images:

SDDBT expressed a desire to have different designs on the front and the back of their paddle.  Hornet went back to work and after a few more emails, this is what we came up with for a final design. As you can imagine, the San Diego Dragon Boat Team was very excited to start using their paddles as much as they could. 

Very impressive final product was the result of great communication and responsiveness from both Hornet’s designers and SDDBT.  Everyone is very proud of how it turned out.

Some teams need more attention than others.  Whatever graphics or imagery your team has right now, contact us at Hornet and we will turn your ideas into a beautiful paddle design that you are your team will love for many years to come.  Hornet wants you to be paddling with a paddle that reflects the energy and enthusiasm that your team members put in every day.  Contact us at Hornet by phone or email so we can get started with your project.  It’s fun, it’s easy and your team will love you for it!  Just ask the San Diego Dragon Boat Team and they will tell you: Contact Hornet today!

Click here to get started with your own custom Dragon Boat Paddles!