About the CBJJ Gargoyle

We initially considered making our mascot a Koala Bear but quickly nixed that . Cute and stinky was not the look we were going for.

Though leaning toward the bottom left logo, it was around this time that we started toying with the idea of a gargoyle. In 2005 I’d started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under Leo Dalla. His logo is posted below.

In my time training with him, I came to know Leo Dalla as a great coach, friend and person. To show my respect and as homage I decided to use a similar gargoyle as Dalla’s. I approached my friend, Centreville High School art teacher Kris Killinger, with my idea.

Here is the first attempt at our gargoyle:

We weren’t very enthusiastic about this one. Second attempt below. Here you can see the beginnings of our current logo with the body.

However, we needed to do something with the wings:

These wings were better but still a little large. This next one looked good…not really sure why we changed it.

A few different concepts for the final product below:

The bottom two logos were the most popular and are what we use to this day.

But wait, it’s not over. We created a banner featuring our new logo to hang on the front door of our academy.

After posting this banner, the owner of the building informed us that many of his Tai Kwon Do students were getting frightened of our gargoyle and the parents didn’t like it.

So back to the drawing board. We needed a kinder, gentler gargoyle. Back again to Mr Killinger. A few of his initial rough sketches:

And a few more:

And finally; this one looked good but the head was a bit large.

With the smaller head, here we have the final kinder, gentler version. We currently use this logo for our Kid’s classes.