‘Sup, Fam? 

(Translation for the Old Heads, “hello, buggy family, how are you doing today?)

I’m Kristen. In my senior year of 2016-17, I gave in to three year's worth of pleading from my SPIRIT friends and joined the team.  I painted buggies, and did shirts and stuff, and formally turned that into a Media Chair position. After graduating CMU (hallelujah), I couldn't let the team go when I knew I could give back more -- so worked with students and alumni to build this website. My main goal now is to make a consistent brand for SRS, much like any successful organization.

History

The Running Man and The Hysteresis

It’s been said that a hysteresis was chosen 1) because it looked like the letter “S” for “SPIRIT Buggy”, and 2) because is a graph found in physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, and economics, as-- in very, very basic terms-- “the work you put in effects what you get out.” The running-man logo was often paired with the hysteresis logo, and appeared on the team’s main webpage.

The Compass

Though a logo that represented SPIRIT as a whole rather than its sub-group SPIRIT Buggy, it is still important in order to understand the history of the team. The compass logo, as it was described to me, was meant to represent knowing where we’ve come from, and knowing the direction of where we’re headed. It's all very deep. I can't speak to it more, since I wasn't there, but if you're an alumni who knows more of the history, we’d love to hear from you in the comments below or in a more private setting if you prefer.

The New Logo

The newest version of the logo from 2016 was created at a time when there was significant distance between alumni and students, and so was intended to represent the bridging of a gap. The logo merges the old logo with the SPIRIT Buggy (later renamed SPIRIT Racing Systems) logo to represent the closing of a structural gap as SRS moves forward. Alumni and students are actively engaged in communicating more effectively with each other (case in point: you’re reading this newsletter right now, on a website that facilitates this goal), and we strive to include SPIRIT and other multicultural organizations in our engagements moving forward.  Hopefully, this logo sticks around for as long as the team as a whole feels like it represents us.

NFJ,

Kristen Smith

Media Chair 2016-17 / Alumni Media Group 2018 / Webmaster General