Mark Thompson may have graduated from Austin High School (AHS) 38 years ago, but he has permanently left his mark on both the school and Minnesota with both his design of the new Packers logo and his design of the first Minnesota Timberwolves logo in 1987.

“Austin is where I grew up, so this is a pretty neat deal for me,” Thompson said.

Thompson, who started Thompson Creative Graphics in Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1986 and has managed that ever since, entered into the AHS logo contest in July and was chosen as the winner on Aug. 17. However, this summer was not the beginning of Thompson’s journey with the Packers logo.

Gordy Harder, one of the members of the Activities Advisory Committee that held a community-wide submission for an updated logo, had asked Thompson to create a Packers logo in the mid-1980s, but somewhere along the line the logo was forgotten.

“From 1986 to now I don’t really know what became of the Packer guy,” Thompson said. “I don’t know how much he was used.”

Thompson said the logo has been through several stages over the last couple of decades, including one with the Packers man running, one with a hockey stick, one with a circle around it and one with a pennant in his hand. Thompson also created a female version for women’s sports.

“In the first one I did back in the ‘80s, the guy was charging with a meat cleaver,” Thompson said. “I thought it was pretty cool, but it was not very politically correct.”

Thompson heard of the contest through Harder, who encouraged him to draw the logo in the first place.

“I basically resubmitted the logo I did for Gordy 26 years ago,” Thompson said. “I dug through boxes and found the original art and tweaked it a little bit.”

‘I fell off my chair, literally’

The AHS contest isn’t the first logo contest Thompson has won, either. In 1987, Thompson was the designer of the first Minnesota Timberwolves logo after being selected one of the top three finalists in a Timberwolves logo contest.

“That was a really neat thing,” Thompson said. “That was about the same time my first daughter was being born so it was a pretty exciting time. And the Twins won the World Series too, so it was like boom, boom, boom!”

Thompson said he spent about a week going to the library just to research timberwolves and to sketch some designs.

“I had stats and books in my office of wildlife timberwolves, and back then nothing was done on a computer like it is now,” Thompson said. “I grew up with magic markers. You used a lot of magic markers and they actually drew things.”

A previous logo Thompson had designed came in handy when he was constructing the timberwolf. Thompson had already done a logo for the North Iowa Husky hockey team, so he said that was inspirational when he was sketching timberwolves.

Thompson said that winning the Timberwolves contest helped get his business jump-started, and he won $2,500 for the logo, too.

“I fell off my chair, literally,” he said. “It was really neat for me.”

Hometown ties

Although Thompson graduated from AHS in 1972 and hasn’t lived in town since 1976, he is excited that he created the Packers logo and can still maintain ties with his hometown.

“It’s really neat for me because my dad grew up in Austin and my uncle grew up in Austin,” Thompson said. “I still consider Austin to be my hometown. This means a lot.”