Responses by Sam Lane, cofounder, Alphabet Design Agency
Background: Football Beyond Borders (FBB) supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are passionate about football but disengaged at school, in order to help them finish school with the skills and grades to make a successful transition into adulthood. Our goal was to create a lively, modern brand that resonated well with a younger demographic in order to keep them fully engaged with the charity and the content it creates. We also needed to ensure the brand could flex enough to work in a more corporate setting, attracting investors, professional athletes and public speakers. Finding this balance was key when working on the brand refresh.
Reasoning: We worked with FBB and its existing logo on a brand refresh to help create a more cohesive identity, which included an updated color palette, photography, typography and a variety of graphical treatments to help bring the personality of the culture the charity has created to the forefront.
Challenges: The project was completely different than what we’re used to, which was challenging at first. A lot of our projects are based around creating brands for larger corporate businesses or packaging for products, where as a charity is a completely different task, especially a charity that is focused on young people. We needed to be much more personable and human in our approach, and I think that comes across in the final design. It was a challenge that we relished and loved.
Favorite details: How the individual assets come together to create something that is visually rich, bold and engaging. Deliverables use a combination of imagery treatments, typography and handwritten lettering, and the result is a bold and vibrant identity to celebrate strength and confidence.
Visual influences: We really love the hand-rendered typography and iconography pack, which was directly inspired by the young people involved in the charity. We referenced marks that you might find in the back of a school exercise book and also symbols that you might find on a football tactics and formation diagram. Our aim was to blend these two references together to create a unique icon suite that brings real versatility to the brand when combined with imagery and typography assets.
Specific demands: We were working with an existing brand, which made the project a little trickier since we had to work with an exiting logo and some other brand assets. However, it was also easier as some of the assets we worked with, such as photography, were high quality, which made it easier when combining with our brand assets to create a cohesive and stand out identity.
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