I must be having a brain freeze because nothing I draw gets it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. It will be for a Bluebird 25.5 foot bus with graphics on the sides and maybe a little up onto the windows.
 

and lastly, your attempt at a layout (that you didn't like):

I still want your input on the original questions of casual or formal, bold or subtle, etc, and I guess I should ask a real obvious question - What color is the bus now???

I hope these images aid in getting some feedback for you.

I'll give mine now:
First off, you already know the layout you tried isn't working. Aside from the stripes being messed up, the blue field starts in an awkward way, and it's going to be difficult to put those GLTA letters over a red striped background without some kind of heavy outline separating them. A bright green like you show makes this all the more urgent. Those two colors can never touch without fighting. The eagle's pretty good.

Here's something that might work better - Simplify the flag graphic so it's only the top edge of a flag - about two red stripes and three or four stars that undulate across the lower portion of the body only, under the windows, and flow right off the bottom of the body. Let the blue star field go all the way to the front (as if it's wrapping around) and have it stop somewhere around the middle of the front wheelwell. Tha GLTA letters would fall mostly in a solid red area of the top stripe. That's how I can envision that layout.

Another concept would be with the eagle facing you straight-on in the middle of the bus, with his wings out to the sides, either gripping the GLTA, or standing with the GLTA falling across his body, backed up by the outstretched wings. That would separate the letters from the stripes completely. The flag could be treated like I first suggested or it might look ok as two flags radiating left and right from behind the eagle.

That's all I have for now. Try some thumbnails of what I suggested and see if you can work it out. It's late, I gotta go to bed now, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

[ December 24, 2001: Message edited by: Joe Rees ]

If you were savvy in photoshop, You might want to blur the flagg and make it the background image. Then use a real eagle crisp and clear coming in for a landing to the logo but not on the logo.

Of cours it is just an idea in my head and not on paper.
 

My designer and I already knew his design wasn't getting it. I turned the GLTA green so that you could see it. What I was thinking for the logo was doing the GLTA or the rings (but not both) in metallic gold ShineShine and then siliconing it onto the bus. I just knew that that wouldn't show up in the design that I sent. I hated sending this file because it wasn't anything near what kinda designing that we do - only that it was the smallest file at the shop that I could email home to work with.

As far as the eagle goes - I had found a straight on pic of an eagle coming into its nest-with talons outstretched and wings back but it was in the encyclopedia. I had envisioned this shot with the eagle coming in grabbing the rings of the logo. I have been searching websites, books, high resolution photos on clipart packages, for another eagle in the same position. I can't find anything. (I even posted a message here looking for a photo).

I know more than the "tip of the iceberg" about PhotoShop and wanted to mess around to see what I could come up with. Today I plan on taking my digital camera out with me and taking a pic of some flags blowing in the wind-just to see what I could come up with. We could either airbrushed the vinyl to look like the flag, do straight vinyl (ugh!) or print it on my PC-60. I am a little nervious about this as I am afraid that it will wear the head out on my machine. The biggest graphic that I have done is a 7.5 sunburst that went on a 8' round black can sign with channel letters mounted on to top.

I hope this helps. I have gotten a few more ideas from this post. Both Chris(my designer)and I have done thumbnails until they came out of our wazoo. We do thumbnail on tissue paper and then overlay them onto the bus design that is printed out on regular paper and taped down to my drafting table. This helps as we can lay two tissue paper designs ontop of each other to see if part of one will work with the other.

Thanks for the help so far. I hear my new grandchild crying so I have to go.
 

One of our sketches had it so that the flag tapered down and then looked like the swoish of an eagle flying. Thr driver of thisbus has some say-so and one of his things is that he wants the eagle to look real and not clip-artie.

It threw me when Dave (the GLTA head guy) came in and said the we couldn't use the flag flowing to the left.
 

:0