The finished vector mark (left) and the same badge embroidered on a left-chest polo (right).
A crossed-axe team mark for Team Tomahawk, taken the full distance — graphite concept on paper, redrawn as clean vector, and digitized into a finished embroidery that lives on an actual garment. No AI, no traced stock art.
Team Tomahawk needed a badge with real personality — crossed tomahawks, a feathered detail, and a dimpled ball motif inside a circular crest with a name banner. The catch is that a team logo rarely stops at the screen. It has to hold up as a yard sign, a printed tee, and — the hardest test — a small left-chest embroidery where every stitch counts.
That constraint shaped the whole project. A logo destined for thread can't lean on gradients, fine hairlines, or tight interior detail that turns to mush at two inches wide. So I designed backward from the embroidery: bold shapes, deliberate negative space, and a single confident red that reads cleanly whether it is printed or stitched.
Every element started on paper. I want clients to see the work is genuinely originated by hand, so the arc below is the real one — pencil concept, clean vector translation, then a digitized embroidery proven on an actual garment.
Crossed tomahawks framing a central crest, a feather hanging from each handle, and a banner anchoring the team name and year. Working in graphite first let me lock composition, silhouette, and balance before committing a single vector point.
This sketch is the proof of process: fully hand-drawn, no AI, no auto-trace.
I rebuilt the sketch as true vector paths in Illustrator — redrawn, not auto-traced — so the axe edges, feather lines, and banner curves were intentional and scalable. The interior detail was simplified just enough to keep the mark legible when it shrinks to chest size.
A single red on white keeps the badge bold across print, signage, and stitch.
The vector was digitized into an embroidery file — stitch directions, fills, and a tight outline tuned so the small interior dots and banner lettering would hold at left-chest scale. This is where production knowledge earns its keep: a design that ignores stitch density simply fails on the machine.
The detail shot shows the finished stitch-out — clean satin edges, readable banner, and the dimpled ball rendered as discrete fills rather than fine line work.
The final test: the badge stitched onto a charcoal performance polo as a left-chest crest. It reads instantly at arm's length, holds its shape against the fabric, and keeps the personality of the original pencil sketch all the way through to thread.
The badge went from a graphite sketch to a stitched garment without losing its character — exactly the result a team wants when their logo will live on apparel for years. Beyond the deliverable, it demonstrates a pipeline most digital designers can't show: a hand-drawn concept carried through vector and into real-world embroidered production.
I design marks the way this one was made — sketched by hand, built as clean vector, and prepared for the format they'll actually live on, from print to embroidery.
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