Help Us Improve Public Schools: Logo Needed For "Apollo 20"

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT US:

We are EdLabs, a research division of Harvard University. We are a non-profit organization that works (like crazy) to close the educational achievement gap that occurs in poor, inner-city schools.

Our research indicates that a well-developed system of incentives and interventions can improve kids' performance in school and keep them from dropping out. This in turn leads to lower incarceration rates, greater academic and financial success as adults, and generally much better lives for the thousands of kids who attend the schools we assist.

For this assignment, we need your help to create a logo specifically for our program in Houston, Texas. Our project to help improve schools there is named "Apollo 20."

Please note: If this concept interests you, please see our related project for "The Blueprint Network," in which we seek a logo for the umbrella program that encompasses all our school-improvement projects.

HERE IS WHAT WE NEED:

We need a logo, plus layouts for business cards and letterhead.

OUR TARGET AUDIENCE IS:

Our audience is school administrators, teachers, parents, and K-12 students in Houston, Texas. (For those outside the US, "K-12" means kindergarten through 12th grade, in essence students between the ages of 5 and 18).

We want our logo to visually communicate that our programs will help improve local schools, and to inspire hope and confidence.

WE LIKE THESE EXAMPLES:

There are no particular examples we'd like to point to. We're looking for something clean, easily comprehended, and inspiring. It can be classic, or modern. While we invite you to reference the "space" aspect of the word "Apollo," we definitely are NOT looking for anything cheesy or overly juvenile, like rocketships with a smiley face.

WE ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE THIS IN OUR PIECE:

The logo (and related work) must communicate professionalism and expertness. It must look and feel natural on all kinds of school-related communications -- school websites, letters to parents, banners that hang in schools, etc.