bowling green sinkholes
theme night DESIGN
————————On February 12, 2014, sometime in the early morning a large sinkhole formed under the sky dome of the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The sinkhole grew to about 40 feet wide and 25 feet deep swallowing up over 8 rare and one of a kind Corvettes from the museum’s collection. The combined value of the destruction of the cars alone was more than 1 million dollars. Believe it or not, my Dad’s first day as the plant manager of the Corvette Assembly plant (across the street from the museum) happened to be this day. He even had to go on the news for a press conference explaining what happened.
Five years after the Corvette Museum sinkhole, the Bowling Green Hot Rods wanted to commemorate the event on the final day of the Corvette Caravan, the largest annual festival celebrating all things Corvette. The team changed their name to the Sinkholes for one night. My task was to design the branding and uniform designs for the promotion.
Due to copyrights, the final designs could not be exact recreations of a Corvette car. This proved to be a challenge in the design process. The final design mimics one of the cars that survived the sinkhole with the initials BG hidden in the undercarriage of the car. A mole mascot was also created as a nod to Kentucky’s extensive cave systems that create these sinkholes. You can actual obtain sinkhole insurance in the area.
The design of the Sinkholes jersey is based on a geochronological map of the sinkhole created under the sky dome of the Corvette Museum. A geochronological map shows how rock layers are arranged in a rock formation. The different layers follow the “law of superposition,” meaning that the youngest rock layers are found on top while older layers are found towards the bottom. The rock layers form a timeline that tells us about the area through fossils and sediment composition. The fossil record on the jersey tells the design history of the Corvette, as well as the logo history of the Hot Rods franchise. Within each layer, you will find a different generation of Corvette. The first series on the bottom and the newest generation on top.
