Design Thesis Project
The design thesis called for students to develop a brand identity for a fictitious ECHL hockey team, debuting in Las Vegas. The thesis explored every step of branding for an unestablished brand from brand research and development to logo creation and multi-platform delivery of media assets.
Phase 1: Development
During the brand development phase, the brand's voice and tone, onlyness and positioning statements, and the tagline were research, ideated and finalized.
The Las Vegas Enforcers needed to established themselves as the go-to family-friendly premier sporting event in Las Vegas by centering community outreach.
Phase 2: Brand Identity
During the brand identity phase the look and feel for the brand was research, designed and ideated before the final logo design and color palette were decided.
Logo Creation
The creation of the logo began with 30 thumbnail sketches of possible logo concepts. Sketches were based on the brand's work mark, equipment needed to play hockey and also the championship ring awarded to the winning team. After evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each design, the sketches were weened based on the strengths.
The six contenders from the original 30 sketches were fleshed out more with five variations of each sketch. The variations further explored word mark placement and visual hierarchy.
After the second phase of logo ideations, redirection was necessary, resulting in this mind map of key themes and traits of the Las Vegas Enforcers. The mind-mapping uncovers connections between the three pillars of the brand: force, homage & legacy and family. This new discovery found connections that bridged the pillar concepts such as the coat of arms worn by royal figures, a family and the ranking and medals of a soldier, which translated into the coat of arms in logo option or the connection between the enforcer hockey position and the immovable force of mountains and glaciers represented in force of the mountain lion logo option.
From the mind-mapping, it was determined that exploring a 'coat of arms' or rallying symbol would be most benefitial in communicating with the audience that the Enforcers intend to be a community-based, family-oriented organization that builds legacy and tradition.
LVE is a team that prides itself on force, dominance, and stealth maneuvering on the ice. They are also settling into a city that was once home to a top ranking ECHL team. The decision to incorporate a coat of arms pays homage to the legacy of the ECHL team that came before them, while also ushering in the new era of ECHL presence in Vegas. Las Vegas is a town that hasn’t had a big sports championship since the early 90s and the Enforcers intend to bring Vegas’ sports dominance into the 21st century. In the top four concepts, the coat of arms concept was explored. The intricacy of the first concept was too outdated to convey the message that the Enforcers are an emerging team that brings new energy to the Vegas sports’ industry. Of the four concepts idealized, the third coat of arms concept is the simplest, cleanest and has the most possibilities and potential uses.
The second logo design concept is a combining of the elements from design ideations #4 and #6 from the first set of 30 sketches. The hockey stick is a clear signifier that communicates the Enforcers are an ECHL hockey team. This inclusion also helps solidify the Enforcers among other hockey team logos.
The finalized logo design is heavily influenced by semiotics as they relate to logo design. The curvature of the hockey stick, signifies the upward climb, determination, audaciousness of the team to decide to root themselves in Las Vegas; a city that has not had any sports team bring home a championship and who has had an otherwise successful hockey team in the past. The relationship between the sign; upward climbing text combined with the prominence and immovable posture of the lion and the correlation to the team’s messaging (Walter, 2018) will effectively convey their intent to build community and solidify their position as a premiere family-friend event. The hockey stick is a clear signifier that communicates the Enforcers are an ECHL hockey team. This inclusion also helps solidify the Enforcers among other hockey team logos. In the official brand logo, the outline was removed the present a more commanding presence.
Color Palette
The brand's color palette is based on color theory and what the team represents. First, there is aero blue, which symbolizes aerodynamics occurrence in hockey. Blue also represents loyalty and trust, two characteristics the Enforcers intend to evoke in their fanbase. Blue dominates and enjoys order so much that blue can be rather controlling, which is the exact role of the enforcer in hockey. The secondary color orange stands out in a crowd and sends a message that says, “I’m not afraid to be the center of attention.” It’s a clear source of youth and enthusiasm. It is comprised of red and yellow, which create a sense of harmony and cohesion, two components of a team that works together like a force to ensure victory. The previous incarnation of the Enforcers held the highest winning percentage in ECHL history, proving that, as the color orange symbolizes, the high energy of the Enforcers is a symbol of the fanbase's enthusiasm. Orange promotes confidence and forces one to dig deeper into our intuition, and deeper the shade, the more intense the setting, an accurate description of the high-impact, continuous playing time of ECHL matchups, and the high-intensity and emotionally-charged atmosphere of the arena.
Style Guide
This style guide lays out how other designers should use the elements of the brand's identity in all designs. It explains the dos and don'ts and the importance of each element in keeping the Las Vegas Enforcers brand messaging cohesive and consistent across all digital and print media.
Brand Playbook
Design is an intricate process that requires more than just a keen sense of art or innate creative ability. It requires just as much, if not more, theory testing and constant development. The design solutions within the brand playbook were largely decided by 2021 research, which shows an imperative need for designers/design teams to design with intention. Those intentions come from studying a design project’s metrics or quantifiable goals. The framework that influenced the design solutions throughout the development of the brand playbook was the 2010 HEART framework from Google. From the brand's design problem, this framework proved to be the most effective in ensuring the brand solutions are the most appropriate for measuring the effectiveness of the design solutions for the Las Vegas Enforcers brand development. This framework is an experience-oriented framework that broadly measures the user experience. The five categories measured are happiness, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success. Though the Las Vegas Enforcers are an emerging sports brand, this framework is more effective than a business-oriented framework like the AARRR framework or Startup Pirate Metrics because sports brands need to build brand loyalty in a way that product-based businesses do not.
Phase 3: Multi-Platform Delivery
Letterhead Package
The letterhead package is sleek, offering traditional branding, while the textured, colored paper hones in on taking a tradition and building onto it to create a legacy that merges the bones of tradition with the flesh of creativity and fluidity of motion known to the game of hockey.
Logo Animation
The logo animation for the Las Vegas Enforcers pulls the viewer in with an audio-visual rendering of an in-game hockey play. The mascot glides across the ice as a puck hit with force, giving a glimpse of the action viewers get every time they attend a game at the Enforcer's hockey arena. Rhythm is one of the most important concepts when working with media design because it visually pulls the viewer into the media type and controls how the viewer engages with it. Rhythm is how individuals hold a conversation, understand sequence, and coordinate and synchronize themselves with others, so it’ was important to incorporate a rhythmic flow into the logo animation. By not having a rhythmic component to the design elements, the audience will not connect, and no emotion or action will be taken by the audience.
Social Media
Developing a sports brand is less about getting one-off ticket sales and more about building community and a loyal fanbase. The social media profiles illuminate the constant movement that fans will get when they attend a game. The posts illicit discussions surrounding the team and allow followers to engage organically by evoking call and response through visual cues.
Adult Swag Pack
The adult swag pack includes a varsity jacket, jersey-style t-shirt, and two beanie hat options. These items fit the physical climate of a hockey arena as well as their potential to help the brand achieve its ultimate goal: community involvement and being revered as the premiere family-friendly entertainment event. Hockey is a communal sport that can easily garner a cult-type following among spectators. Having apparel that spectators can customize/personalize to show their allegiance to the Las Vegas Enforcers will appeal to that desire/need.
Website
The website pages include home, about us pages, box office and kids zone. The home page is designed to illuminate the non-stop gameplay for which the ECHL league is known. With fewer stops in the game and more relaxed rules, ECHL games offer more continuous play than NHL games. Elements on the home page glide effortlessly, like the motion of the puck, and the bold typeface commands attention, like the role of the enforcer in hockey. As the site visitor navigates, they are pulled into the scene as if they are physically standing in the Enforcers' home arena.
The KIDZ ZONE page outlines a unique offering for families because the primary demographic of the Las Vegas Enforcers' audience is middle-class couples with children. It allows parents to make every home game family time with a kids-only season ticket option that allows parents to save an average of $200/per year on tickets. Although 30% of ticket sales at hockey games are for children under 14, proving hockey is growing as a contender in family entertainment, no hockey team is branding their team as the family event that will captivate the entire family, nor are they homing in on that benefit. They are not marketing to families but rather friend groups and corporate sponsorship. The Las Vegas KIDZ ZONE positions the team as the team that encourages family outings and bolsters community engagement. It will attract and retain the support of the locals, building a fanbase that will subsequently create legacy and tradition, which is another brand pillar of the Enforcers. This is a nice segue into the swag offerings in the asset package. This familial direction spills over into the swag options shown below with a KIDZ ZONE swag pack designed exclusively for members (children 4-14 years old) of The Zone. All designs include the brand’s signature three stripes, attributing to the notion that the Enforcers have earned them as Vegas' premier sporting event for the whole family. It is the binding factor for all assets in the media package.
Kidz Zone Swag Pack
The Las Vegas KIDZ ZONE positions the team as the team that encourages family outings and bolsters community engagement. It will attract and retain the support of the locals, building a fanbase that will subsequently create legacy and tradition, which is another brand pillar of the Enforcers.
