2017 Miami Dolphins Creative

[BrandMooreArt]

i never know where to put these things, mods feel free to move if necessary, but thought y’all might like looking back at some of the stuff the Dolphins did over the past year. personally, i feel like we got the whole Miami/elegance/football approach about 90% right, but am certainly proud of what we accomplished last season

 

https://www.behance.net/gallery/61681783/2017-Miami-Dolphins-Creative

 

 

[goforbroke]

Amazing,

You work for Dolphins or is it a 3rd party creative firm?

[BrandMooreArt]

7 minutes ago, goforbroke said:

Amazing,

You work for Dolphins or is it a 3rd party creative firm?

 

im part of the internal creative team and almost everything we do is "in house", but we do reach out to other artists from time to time. for instance, last year we worked with Jon Contino on some faux-back assets for our throwbck games. 

[bowld]

Word is the Dolphins are tweaking one of their colors. Can you elaborate on this for us?

[BrandMooreArt]

6 hours ago, bowld said:

Word is the Dolphins are tweaking one of their colors. Can you elaborate on this for us?

 

sorry, but no.

 

 

patience.

[lbj273]

1 hour ago, bowld said:

Word is the Dolphins are tweaking one of their colors. Can you elaborate on this for us?

Hopefully it's using the darker aqua the throwbacks use!

[The_Admiral]

You're gonna bite my head off for this, but I think the retro stuff gets Miami right more than the modern stuff does, both in uniforms and creative. I hate the Dolphins' uniforms. I think the team on the field looks terrible. It's easy to overlook them because they're in the Roll Over For The Patriots Division but for all but two games a year they look terrible. So it's a testament to your abilities as a designer that you can do such good product around a team that looks as bad as the Dolphins do.

 

All the social media art with Steelfish or a typeface that looks like Steelfish is very sleek and modern and clean, the execution is perfect, but it's missing some Dolphins je ne sais quoi. They're the oldest sports team in Florida and I like when aesthetics reflect that as international and modern as Miami has become, the Dolphins remain a product of a point in time. I also like South Florida's crummy pastel houses and dated strip malls, so maybe that's just a problem I have. Frankly, I blame the 1972 team for my belief that the team should be preserved in kitschy amber.

[melsereno]

As a life long Dolphins fan, it was great seeing all that stuff during the season.  Keep up the great work!!

[kimball]

Who else here just Googled  je ne sais quoi?

[Brave-Bird 08]

Best in the league. Classy.

[BrandMooreArt]

3 hours ago, the admiral said:

You're gonna bite my head off for this, but I think the retro stuff gets Miami right more than the modern stuff does, both in uniforms and creative. I hate the Dolphins' uniforms. I think the team on the field looks terrible. It's easy to overlook them because they're in the Roll Over For The Patriots Division but for all but two games a year they look terrible. So it's a testament to your abilities as a designer that you can do such good product around a team that looks as bad as the Dolphins do.

 

All the social media art with Steelfish or a typeface that looks like Steelfish is very sleek and modern and clean, the execution is perfect, but it's missing some Dolphins je ne sais quoi. They're the oldest sports team in Florida and I like when aesthetics reflect that as international and modern as Miami has become, the Dolphins remain a product of a point in time. I also like South Florida's crummy pastel houses and dated strip malls, so maybe that's just a problem I have. Frankly, I blame the 1972 team for my belief that the team should be preserved in kitschy amber.

 

completely understand where you're coming from. and i agree 100% on the uniforms; i dont like the current ones at all either, or the logos. i don't even disagree that the throwback unis/logos represent the Dolphins history better. 

 

but, the team's past is only one piece of the brand puzzle we try to represent. i dont believe the point in time you mention really allows the brand to grow for the future— at some point, you have to move beyond the Perfect Season and Marino, which our own fans get tired of hearing about. (the '72 team, not so much Marino). "old florida" is cool yes, but when you pull influence from that stuff, you're pulling from such a small part of Miami and a by-gone era that is more of a tourist trap than a representative of the local culture. and when your stadiums luxury seats were "designed to make it feel like you're on a yacht" and your team has the highest average ticket price in the league, "old florida" doesn't really represent "luxury experience", "innovation", or "modern Miami".

 

its an odd point in time for this team because we're kind of "stuck in the present"; meaning the best days are long behind us, but we're trying to build for the future. the team right now is kind of boring, and while a lot of things might not feel right today, if we do things well (and especially if the team starts winning) 10 years from now we can look back and say the Dolphins found a way to outgrow the 70s/80s; found a way to represent something even more than football.

 

our creative team had a great discussion with our CEO recently about what Miami is today, how we want to represent that, and how we can help the team grow into a stronger brand. i put together this moodboard that i think sets the tone well and captures the right energy we want to have in all our communication. theres no art deco buildings or neon lights, but personally, i feel pretty strongly this represents the city accurately and how ever it makes you feel or where it takes your imagination, i hope in 10 years, the Dolphins logo can have the same effect.

 

[The_Admiral]

That's a good collage. I love Miami architecture of all schools.

 

1 hour ago, BrandMooreArt said:

"old florida" is cool yes, but when you pull influence from that stuff, you're pulling from such a small part of Miami and a by-gone era that is more of a tourist trap than a representative of the local culture.

I would think it's more the opposite: that the shabby little pastel stucco ranches and tacky strip malls of bygone Miami/South Florida have more to do with the everyday than the glamorous stuff downtown. Of course, that is something better to aspire to when tickets cost as much as you say they do, but for as modern and forward-facing as Miami is, there are still so many time capsules of various periods, and a lot of the distinctly Floridian vernacular of the 1970s is still very much alive. I don't think it's impossible to keep doing progressive design work around the team and selling hookers and blow in the luxury boxes while the team on the field has stripey socks and sleeves, block numbers, and a drawing of a dolphin wearing a football helmet and leaping through the sun.

 

1 hour ago, BrandMooreArt said:

its an odd point in time for this team because we're kind of "stuck in the present"; meaning the best days are long behind us, but we're trying to build for the future. the team right now is kind of boring, and while a lot of things might not feel right today, if we do things well (and especially if the team starts winning) 10 years from now we can look back and say the Dolphins found a way to outgrow the 70s/80s; found a way to represent something even more than football.

I sympathize with this because what with the Bears, I think I know a thing or two about a football team living in a past it can never surpass. But how are the Dolphins ever supposed to represent anything more than football? They're just a football team! What could they ever be that the various Don Shula teams weren't? What do, say, the Packers or Steelers represent beyond "a very good sports team from a specific place"? To be sure, the L.A. Raiders transcended football, but not in any way the league has ever wanted to risk replicating.

[BrandMooreArt]

1 hour ago, the admiral said:

But how are the Dolphins ever supposed to represent anything more than football? They're just a football team! What could they ever be that the various Don Shula teams weren't? What do, say, the Packers or Steelers represent beyond "a very good sports team from a specific place"? To be sure, the L.A. Raiders transcended football, but not in any way the league has ever wanted to risk replicating.

 

now thats a great question! 

 

the Packers and Steelers dont have to be anything more than a consistently good team right now. currently, they're always Super Bowl threats, but what happens when that goes away? like Chicago and SF, teams that were dominant at one point (or more) in their history, kind of fade away and it shows in their attendance according to Pro Football Reference. i know, a lot of factors play into that, but much of their success depends on their team's record.

 

so, why is it that the Cowboys could be a completely irrelevant team for 20 years, yet still be the biggest brand of the NFL? probably because they represent themselves as the very best, they stay relevant in culture by having their own tv show for cheerleaders or having one of their legends on Dancing With The Stars. . theres so many instances where they present themselves to an audience outside of football and they do it with a lot of pride. they make people either feel good about being a fan, or they imply that you should be, better than most. what SHOULD have happened to them was New England overtaking them as "America's Team" in the Cowboys span of mediocrity, but i believe it didn't happen because the Cowboys brand isn't dependent on their win/loss record. 

 

shifting to Miami, we try to build the brand to represent more than football on a similar philosophy. i think most of what we do is about innovation. we want to provide the best stadium experience in the league, and thats for everyone from the sidelines to the top of the 300 level. Hard Rock Stadium has the world's largest indoor collection of street art, local food vendors instead of chains (mostly) and we're continuing to work on travel and parking. our cheer team has undergone a tremendous "re-brand" of its own and are evolving well beyond being just "pretty girls, dancing". Dolphins Cancer Challenge (happening tomorrow) is the largest fundraiser in the NFL and gets bigger every year. certainly from a creative standpoint, our photography and video are areas we always try to show people something new in, and the "tone" in our identity certainly doesn't say "sporty football team". and community is huge for us; obviously, thats nothing new as plenty of teams/players make positive impacts on their cities, but we're just starting to kick ideas around on how to take it to the next level; i mean, if Jerry jones had invested $1B into poor neighborhoods in Texas instead of building a "football town", what could he have done? what real difference would that have made? thats something we aspire to answer and do, not for ticket sales but because we have the opportunity to. in turn, i think that might be a brand people want to be a part of. even if the team sucks.  

 

[IceCap]

1 hour ago, BrandMooreArt said:

the Packers and Steelers dont have to be anything more than a consistently good team right now. currently, they're always Super Bowl threats, but what happens when that goes away? 

Then they’ll be mediocre or bad football teams that used to have success. Much like the Dolphins are today. 

 

The Dolphins will never be anything more than a football team from Miami that once went undefeated and once had Dan Marino. 

 

I don’t mean to denegrate the Dolphins, because there’s no shame in being that. When/if they start winning? The Dolphins will become what you described the Steelers and Packers as. A really good football team. 

 

I appreciate that the Dolphins want to emphasize luxury on game day, but that will never transcend the football team. The Dolphins will always “just” be that, and that’s fine. The New York Yankees aren’t suffering as “just” a baseball team, after all. 

[oddball]

Great work there BMA. I find it interesting that Dolphin fans want to distance themselves from the Marino-Shula era, yet that was their most successful era. They had solid teams year in and year out, and the uniforms represented that. I guess you could say, the current uniforms represent the mediocre state the franchise has been in since the mid 90's. The uniforms and current look of the Dolphins has the feel of people without football knowledge trying to come up with something cool and innovative and what will sell in Macy's or Nordstrom than look good on the field. They look like cheap Chinese knockoffs.

[Mac the Knife]

I understand where BMA and his colleagues are coming from - while there's a lot of mileage that can be traveled with the Dolphins early years, Shula, Griese, Marino, Csonka, etc., there are Dolphins fans I know who consider that history irrelevant; what's relevant is what the team is doing right now.  This same sentiment exists in Cleveland:  "That's great, but the team hasn't done :censored: in years."

 

Consequently the overall branding strategy has to be more than history.  Especially with NFL fans and the XFL on the way, the Dolphins brand needs to look more toward the future than the past.  Nonetheless it has to mix a lot of old in with the new, which makes the process a challenge to be sure.

 

As for the uniforms, I agree with most here that the Dolphins should go back to the 1970's with their look - without a single deviation, in fact.  At least one team in Florida should look really good on the field, and at least one should present itself with a consistent, good look that spans generations.  The Buccaneers took a bad identity (Bucco Bruce) and made it retro, then took an excellent, modern look and screwed it up.  The Jaguars have save their original uniform set always looked horrible.

 

But given the team's current performance and overall identity program, BMA and his colleagues are doing good work here.  Very good.

[El Scorcho]

Great stuff here, I love the insight and I love the work you and your team do.

 

Personally I follow all the Dolphins social media and I am consistently impressed by what you guys churn out. It's slick, it has that summery Miami feel, and it's always well executed. The content is terrific. When you switch to throwback mode the nostalgia hit is absolutely perfect. The off-field stuff is fresh and relevant. I really get that feel from the content that you're actively avoiding harking back to '72 or any sort of past glory and I think that's a terrific decision.

 

Obviously the creative team can't control the onfield product, but we're incredibly well placed to take full advantage of any upswing in support from a successful season. The branding is perfect.

 

I think the only real weak point from a visual perspective is the uniforms, and look, they aren't really even that weak. They were a strong upgrade on the previous set. They're just lacking a bit of character I guess.

[BrandMooreArt]

2 hours ago, El Scorcho said:

Great stuff here, I love the insight and I love the work you and your team do.

 

Personally I follow all the Dolphins social media and I am consistently impressed by what you guys churn out. It's slick, it has that summery Miami feel, and it's always well executed. The content is terrific. When you switch to throwback mode the nostalgia hit is absolutely perfect. The off-field stuff is fresh and relevant. I really get that feel from the content that you're actively avoiding harking back to '72 or any sort of past glory and I think that's a terrific decision.

 

Obviously the creative team can't control the onfield product, but we're incredibly well placed to take full advantage of any upswing in support from a successful season. The branding is perfect.

 

I think the only real weak point from a visual perspective is the uniforms, and look, they aren't really even that weak. They were a strong upgrade on the previous set. They're just lacking a bit of character I guess.

 

i can speak for everyone when i say we all really appreciate that, and its good to hear we're hitting the marks we're aiming for.  

[CS85]

Whoever handles the photography deserves a raise.  The design stuff is certainly great quality, but without the dramatic and well lit/edited photos, it wouldn’t t have the same impact. 

[BrandMooreArt]

56 minutes ago, CS85 said:

Whoever handles the photography deserves a raise.  The design stuff is certainly great quality, but without the dramatic and well lit/edited photos, it wouldn’t t have the same impact. 

 

i can take a little credit, i'm one of the photo editors  but you're absolutely right, our photo team (Jon Willey, Jeff Nguyen, Pete McMahon) and freelancers are the absolute best there is. no, don't even @ me with "what about. . .?" NO! these guys are the best. and it makes our approach to graphic design so much easier.