I wanted to try something different, not just a golf green, but start an iconic symbol of your course. So I've tried to work in the bird (Heron?), as seen on the website, as well as bring the river into the logo. So I've hopefully combined the winding river and bird into one image that can be seen in either way. I've always loved how the Kapalua butterfly also has a small pineapple in the center as the body of the butterfly. It hints to more than just a butterfly by bringing in the old pineapple plantation history as well. I hope this might do a similar job. By the way I've golfed the Plantation course a couple times and it is amazing!
That is really cool. Good stuff. I need to think about that for a minute. In the image, the right side of the river would correspond to the golf course, and the left of the river would be the natural wetlands area. Maybe you could try using different colors for either side of the river - a green for the right side representing the course and a brownish? for the left wetlands side. I don't know if that would mess up the look or not.
Ya, I could play around with it a bit. It feels really close, but could use a little tweak to make it even more clear. Is the type of bird ok? I believe the Thunderbird is sort of a Native American mythical bird, that can create thunder and lighting when flapping it's wings etc. Usually depicted as a large bird, maybe more hawk or eagle like. Should I try any of that angle? is there a meaning behind the Thunderbird Hills name, or is it more just an area of your geography? If I was creating a landscape image to go with the name it wouldn't matter as much, but as soon as I incorporate a bird, it kinda feels like it needs to be more accurate of the name Thunderbird Hills. If that doesn't matter than ignore all of my babble above :) Thanks WC
The bird that we use as our logo now is an egret (the one at the top left of our home page). It's a large bird that is found in areas like the wetlands surrounding our courses, so we should definitely stick with that bird. We aren't really sure where the name Thunderbird came from, but we have never really affiliated with the "Thunderbird bird." I was kind of concerned about the beak area. It looks a little strange with it open like that, but I like how the open beak is where the river splits. If you had to make a pointy beak, the river would narrow down to nothing, and that wouldn't look right.
Here is a better cleaned up take on the egret/river icon. I really think it does a good job of creating a recognizable icon for your course. Something different. It has a double meaning that is always great to have in a logo as well. I think it can rival the simplicity of a Kapalua, Pebble Beach, Poipu Bay. I think it has just enough detail to get the point across but no more. It should be quite distinguishable at a small scale, like on golf balls, ball marks, hats etc. If it has too much detail or a painted look it can get pretty tricky for reproduction at small scales or with embroidery on garments and so on, it gets all muddy and hard to see what it is. Anyways I hope you like it... I'm proud of it. By the way I tried the two colors on either side of the river, but it didn't look as good as I hoped, it's cleaner with one color.