UCLA Athletics Releases 4 Den T-Shirt Designs For Students to Vote On

Every year, UCLA athletics gives out a free “Den” t-shirt to UCLA students who sign up for UCLA’s $99 Den Pass — a real steal, mind you, which gets you into the door for all UCLA home football and basketball games.

Last year, the design didn’t look all that good (sorry, whichever lovely UCLA student designed it), but I’m wrong, since other people voted for it and I did not.

This year, the options are pretty solid. Here they are, via UCLA Athletics:

UCLA students were asked to submit their designs, with optional designs, and the t-shirt must say “The Den” somewhere on it.

Not a bad haul this time around. The worst one — and even then, it isn’t so bad — is the fourth one. Maybe it’s just me, but the scratchy lettering of “The Den” and “2012-2013” look stupid as hell.

If yours truly had a vote — I do, actually, and I already voted, so there — it’d be the second one. While I’ve been wanting to see more of the ucLa logo that looked like it came about in the 80s — because it’s so simplistic, clever and cool — I’m partial to big letters, and embedding Joe Bruin’s face into “The Den” in white lettering is so freaking legit. The issue, though, is that there really isn’t a “UCLA” logo there; instead, the designer opted to use the same font as they did in “The Den.”

So my second choice was, of course, the first t-shirt design. As I said before, that 1980s-looking logo looks about as cool as can be, and the designer did a damn good job of implementing “The Den” in the same typefont. My issue with it, though, is that adding “The Den” is kind of the only thing they did. That logo with Joe Bruin leaning on the “L” is pretty much most what’s existed forever. Points for using that logo, but negative points for not doing much else.

On the other hand, the Joe Bruin embed into “The Den” is so damn clever, and the designer pulled it off like hell. The large lettering has me won over.

As for the third one? I liked it. It’s not often that you see the Bruin’s silhouette on a t-shirt, and I totally dig UCLA’s cursive-font logo. The issue is, though, that it’s very enclosed and round. Too much. Like a quarter super-imposed on a t-shirt or something.

Of course, my vote’s been casted, so I’ll shut up now. What about you guys? Which are you impartial to?