The Utah Jazz are an American professional basketball team based in Salt Lake City. The Jazz compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference in the Northwest Division. They are one of the premier teams in the league, finishing near the top of their respective conference yearly.
Ever since the team's establishment in 1974, the Utah Jazz have had one of the richest brand identities in the league; full of vibrancy and personality. Their iconic stylized wordmark paired with colors and designs reminiscent of Jazz music and the state of Utah allowed for one of the best identities in professional sports to flourish for decades.
Ahead of the 2022-23 NBA season, the Utah Jazz unveiled an unexpected rebrand. It was a complete reset, with the team abandoning their past identity and pushing forward with "highlighter" yellow and black defining their future endeavors.
Apart from them bringing back the purple mountain jersey from the 90s, the design of the main jerseys and color palette was met with mixed reactions from fans, and rightfully so. Because this rebrand was unnecessary, dull and boring. Although I do understand the striking, minimalist direction they wanted to take, it doesn't make sense given that Utah and the Jazz have such a dynamic and rich history surrounding designs, typefaces and concepts.
MY SOLUTION
As I observed the reactions to the redesign, I came to the conclusion that Utah Jazz fans wanted to revive the team's old identity while adding a fresh spin. With this in mind, I decided to create a new logo and jersey collection for the upcoming season, which pays homage to the franchise's historic brand.
REJECT MODERNITY, EMBRACE NOSTALGIA
* Worth to mention that this is a concept, not an official redesign of the brand. The project is non-commercial and was created as a design exercise.
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I modified the iconic "JAZZ" wordmark into something more modern. By eliminating the rectangles surrounding the letters, it helped clean up the design. I removed the "UTAH" text as well, which felt a bit out of place, and instead extended the music note head. I added a mountain-like symbol on top of the ball to represent Utah's landscape and environment.
Taking inspiration from the 80s and early 90s, I incorporated a dark purple to replace the magenta. I also brightened up the yellow to make it less orangish. Making the colors more vibrant helps modernize the logo a fair bit.
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THE JERSEYS
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Vector Illustrations
I took advantage of this opportunity to develop a series of graphics that could be posted across the Jazz's social media channels. I architected a bold look defined by typography along with black and white treated imagery. I employed a fairly minimalist toolkit, which helped highlight the strength of the brand identity while maintaining the ability to generate fresh, inventive styles across the board. This exercise helped demonstrate how typography and strategic, selective photography can have an impact on creative direction.
Photo Preset
One of the key objectives was creating a consistent, polished look. To do that, I created a preset using Photoshop's "Camera Raw Filter" to produce a black and white look that can easily be applied to all photos being used in graphics.
Social Graphic Package
CONCLUSION
Rebranding an NBA team, even just for fun, has been an awesome experience. It has exposed me to a side of design that I had otherwise never experienced before, and it has taught me valuable skills and lessons along the way, such as how to use your audience's demands to craft an identity or architecting a design system which can be easily utilized to quickly create graphics on the fly.
I will be using this experience as leverage to help optimize my work flow as a creative, incorporate more typography in my work and put more thought into functionality rather than simply "making a pretty picture".
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THANK YOU
