Colorado Buffaloes is the name of an athletic program from the University of Colorado, a public education organization, established in 1876, and located in Boulder, Colorado. The program is composed of 17 men’s and women’s teams, which are members of the Pac-12 Conference.
Meaning and history
Colorado Buffaloes’ athletic teams are all members of the Pac-12 Conference, a collegiate organization, affiliated with the first division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The Conference was created in 1915 under the name Pacific Coast Conference, and today has twelve members (hence the new name)c which is all colleges and universities from the Western part of the United States.
What are Colorado Buffaloes?
Colorado Buffaloes is a collegiate athletic program of the University of Colorado, which consists of 7 men’s and 10 women’s (Lady Buffs) teams, competing in various sports disciplines including indoor and outdoor Track & Field, Skiing, Cross Country, Football, Golf, and some others.
In terms of visual identity, Colorado Buffaloes have been very consistent and stable with their logo. The teams of the program still use the badge, created at the beginning of the 1980s, just its refined and strengthened version. Also, the badge has always featured a gold and black color palette, so no experiments here either.
1950 – 1967
The original logo of Colorado Buffaloes, designed in 1950, was executed in a simple black-and-white color palette and only featured one element, a silhouette of a large black buffalo bull, with a tiny white accent, and a sharp moonlike horn on its head. This version of the logo stayed active for seventeen years without any changes.
1967 – 1981
The redesign of 1967 created a more vivid and energetic image of a running Buffalo, which was still drawn in a black-and-white color palette, but in a more realistic way, with a lot of white accents on the body of the animal, which created shadowing and motion on a simple image.
1981 – 1985
Another version of the Colorado Buffaloes was introduced in 1981 and boasted a colorful composition with a solid blue buffalo silhouette drawn on a plain white background and overlapped by a golden “CU” abbreviation in a bold geometric serif typeface, supported by a small golden horn, drawn as an upside-down comma. This logo became a basis for several following redesigns.
1985 – 2005
The redesign of 1985 switched the colors on the logo, making the Buffalo black, and the monogram — gold. The small horn on the Bull’s head was also colored gold now. It was a brighter shade, than on the previous version, more yellow, which created a good contrast with the black background, and made it look cool and vivid, instead of being dramatic in a bad way.
2006 – Today
In 2006 the shade of gold got muted and became more beige. The new monogram was drawn in the same style, but now was slightly italicized, and its refreshed color is now balanced by a bold gold outline of the whole badge, which merges with the “CU” abbreviation in two spots. The badge looks powerful and stable, just like the teams of the athletic programs from the University of Colorado.