The owl is a popular symbol for representing knowledge and wisdom – now, it’s the new mascot of Berkeley City College (BCC). After a district-wide call for submissions, the college selected a design created by BCC Multimedia Arts student Yunha Kim.
Kim created the original owl design for the college’s mascot hunt in Dec. 2024. The design was inspired by the college logo, mimicking the pages of an open book on its plumage. But she said that she came up with a similar concept before BCC announced its mascot search.
Kim had started working on a potential mascot for a planned esports team at the college in Fall 2023. She wanted to pay homage to the University of California Berkeley’s bear mascot, Oski, due to the university’s proximity to BCC.
While she was developing the concept, Kim took inspiration from horned owls, which are native to Berkeley. To her, the owl’s scholarly associations made it a perfect fit for the college. She was inspired by creatures called “Owlbears” from the tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons.
“I wanted to acknowledge that association but give our own spin on it,” Kim explained.
Her work caught the eye of campus administration. Last fall, BCC instructor and Multimedia Arts Department Chair Mary-Clarke Miller and the college’s public information officer Thomas Rizza approached Kim for a mock-up design that would appear on a Dec. survey for a new mascot.
Kim says they originally asked her to design a coyote. Partway into the production process, the college announced in an email to the student body that the coyote was “removed as a potential BCC mascot due to its negative associations with our undocumented community.” Instead, she drew one of the other finalist animals – the owl.
Typically Peralta’s graphic design team would finalize the details of the official mascot, but Kim wanted to keep innovating on her own idea. With so much student input already in the project, the district’s graphic design specialist Marcus Creel continued to consult Kim’s artistic insight.
“As a former design student, the opportunities for an internship [and] exposure are far and few between,” Creel said. “I tried to get student engagement from the beginning to the end. […] It’s not a marketing ploy. It’s just a way to invoke student spirit organically.”
Creel‘s version was faithful to Kim’s redesign, emphasizing the mascot’s more approachable aspects. He said he wanted the design to embody a “school spirit animal” rather than a typical sports mascot.
“I’m really pleased with how it came out,” Kim shared. “I love that they’ve got little sparkles in their eyes. It’s [a very] welcoming design.”
The college’s president, Denise Richardson, unveiled the college’s new owl mascot at the Feb. 25 Peralta Board of Trustees meeting. According to Richardson’s presentation, Kim’s owl earned 62% of the 812 votes submitted to the survey.
For now, the owl remains unnamed, although Richardson noted in her presentation that “many of us are affectionately calling it Ollie.” According to Rizza, students will be able to vote on an official name in the future.
Kim is proud of her creative process and the way her work has resonated with her peers. “It helped boost my own self-confidence in my own art knowing that people like my original design enough to want to expand upon it,” Kim reflected, “and that I was able to have a big hand in [designing] a lasting mascot for generations.”
