League of Legends game buys YSU graduate’s Vulcun logo

Staff report

youngstown

A Vulcun logo designed by Youngstown State University student Zach McCartney was featured at the 2013 League of Legends World Finals in the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

McCartney, a graphic-design major, who graduated this month with a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, sold the logo to League of Legends, a competitive and free online game that draws in 32 million active players monthly.

McCartney created the symbol for Team Vulcun, one of the top North American teams, which competed against groups from Europe, China and South Korea during the world finals at the Staples Center.

The team has a legion of loyal fans and sponsors, which have featured the logo on promotional advertisements and eSporting events.

“Just searching Twitter, I have found my logo carved into a jack-o’-lantern, fashioned into a keychain, worn by fans, worn at the Taj Mahal and part of countless fan art,” said McCartney, who plans to work for a design firm or do freelance work after graduation.

When crafting the logo for a posting he found on Reddit, a social news and entertainment website, McCartney considered what the team was looking for.

Vulcan is homophonous to the Roman fire god and a high-tech fighter jet, so McCartney combined the two to create the bird of fire, a phoenix, as the team’s emblem.

“They picked my logo over hundreds of submissions, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “I got around a thousand people in a day, responding to how much they favored my logo over the others.”

McCartney grew up in Sharon, Pa., and moved to Missouri at age 12.

Shortly after high school, he earned an associate’s degree in graphic design from East Central College in Missouri.

He moved to Los Angeles at age 20, where he majored in Media Arts and Animation at the Art Institute of California.

In 2011, after declaring a change in majors and California too pricey, he enrolled at YSU, his mother’s alma mater, and has been impressed with the art department ever since.

“I feel like my time at YSU has helped sharpen my design skills, which helped me to design a successful logo,” he said.

Although Team Vulcun recently changed its name to XDG Gaming, it has decided to keep McCartney’s design as its logo.