Grassroots Sports Logo

[Davidson]

Hey guys,

I have just finished quite a fun little job for a sportswear company and I thought some of you may like to see the process as well as the final logos.

Grassroots Sports Case Study

Grassroots Sports are a Florida manufacturer of athletic equipment for a range of sports, principally Football, Baseball & Lacrosse.

I was approached to design a set of logos for the group that would unify the Grassroots brand, but project an individual look for each of their three focal sports. The brand should also allow for expansion into new areas.

Initial Concepts and Ideas

Here are my Initial sketch ideas for the brand, playing with ideas of field marking, team badges and heraldry. I also tried out some concepts using literal grassroots.

Initial Concept Brand 1

Initially the best of the three concepts I worked into a full brand identity. Each individual sport is denoted by a key shape taken from the respective sport. The ball, the extended diamon and the racket head.

Initial Concept Brand 2

Again, here I used more litteral images to denote the sport, but this time I played with the idea of sprayed field markings.

[Davidson]

Initial Concept Brand 3

Thirdly, using only a 'G' logo, I attempted to distress each of these heraldic concepts with a texture that hinted at the respective sports. Baseball used the pinstripe motif, Lacrosse and Football used spatter and scratched textures to hint at speed and impact.

Additional Concept

The client, selecte a couple of the initial designs, but wanted to feature the GS (Grassroots Sports) monogram in the finished logo. Here is a rough initial concept using this idea.

[Davidson]

Final Selection Brand 1

Here I combined the ideas of two of the earlier concepts. The client liked the idea of using the stencilled field markings look, however in order not to compromise the definition of the logo, the spatter was only added to the unique sport icons. The stencil was also italicised.

[Davidson]

Final Selection Brand 2

I pushed the clients new idea further and attempted to get more distinction to the GS monogram. I thickened the letters up and made sure the stroke width was varied to give them a more dynamic feel. Again, I applied the textures to each of the individual sport brands.

[Davidson]

Final Logos

Having selected the heraldic option, I applied the clients final tweaks to the look and supplied the following renders.

[TopCat]

Amazing work. God damn.

[raysox]

Really impressive. I liked how you had the idea to do a logo for each sport, but keeping the same basic idea. I'll be looking out for this brand.

[Davidson]

Really impressive. I liked how you had the idea to do a logo for each sport, but keeping the same basic idea. I'll be looking out for this brand.

Cheers, but that was part of the brief.

[JayJaxon]

It looks great. I'm glad you shared this with us.

[GFB]

Looks amazing as always Fraser.

I always like asking designers, if you alone had sole responsibility on the project (ie. your company), how do you think the brand would have turned out differently? Do you have an affection towards one of the early marks that was never used?

[pointblankgraphics]

Thanks for sharing...Very impressive!

[Mings]

Fraser, I got to nitpick here. In the final the GS doesn't read as well as it did when the triangle at the right corner was a different color from the rest. I'm sure that was a client decision though. Besides that it looks really good.

[elsephen]

^My thoughts exactly. I really loved the 2nd to last with the green corner. Looking through all the variations I thought 'ah, FD may let me down here...' because the blockier GS looked like BS or else it would have been my favorite of the beginning, but then they were just kind of...eh... but then you came out with the logo with the corner on it- very nice.

I like the final one too, but the S stands out more than the G and by nature I just think brand before affiliation.

Thanks for putting this together though. Always love to see case studies of those that are doing bigger things.

[SDX]

Great work once again, right style was chosen in the end, liked the idea of the spray marks but didn't quite look right.

[andrewharrington]

I like the final one too, but the S stands out more than the G and by nature I just think brand before affiliation.

This is where I'm at. I think the G should be the primary read, but if you gave them what they want, there's not much you can do about that. Nice case study.

[enotsdesign]

I always like asking designers, if you alone had sole responsibility on the project (ie. your company), how do you think the brand would have turned out differently? Do you have an affection towards one of the early marks that was never used?

this is a great question.

i think they might have missed the mark by not going with "final brand 1"

[tvko]

Saw this logo at the Konica Minolta Face-Off Classic. nice work.

[Vicious]

great stuff. thank you for sharing. I love case studies!

[jake22]

Like everyone else, I really liked the subtle green triangle in the corner in the second to last concept and was disappointed to see more green added in the final design. I assume the client wanted more green though so it was most likely out of your control. I seem to be appreciating subtlety more and more in designs as of recently. The green triangle draft was far superior to the rest in my humble opinion. I liked it especially when the name of the sport was also in a green box, it was more green but not overkill like the final version.

The other thing I noticed was that the symbol for lacrosse didn?t scream "LACROSSE" like the other two shapes did for their respective sports. But, again, that isn't really your fault because lacrosse doesn?t have an iconic symbol like some other two sports do. I mean the ball is round just like a baseball, that?s not iconic. A whole lacrosse stick would be too big to use in the format you were using. So with that said I think you did just about as good a job as anyone could have done given the format you were using and the constraints of lacrosse.

Lastly, thank you so much for posting this, I enjoy your work very much each and every time I see it and this was no exception. I am currently going into college with my major choice being undeclared at the moment. Graphic design has always been a passion of mine though. I seem to always tell myself that I will struggle financially if I choose to go into graphic design, but while that may have a little bit of truth to it I feel like that is mostly based on an inaccurate stereotype. Getting to the point though, when I see things like this I get overwhelmed with thoughts of how much I would enjoy graphic design if I chose to do it as a profession.

[Davidson]

Cool, thanks for the response. Just with regard to your last point, it's true that when you start out in design, there is a certain amount if dues paying to do. I made about £15k for a good couple of years (I get that $23,000 may not sound all that horrendous in the USA, but the cost of living in London is astonomical). I didnt really have much money after rent so I just worked constantly on other projects. Long story short, the senior positions in companies often compare favourably to other sectors (in big desig markets) and once you are strong enough to survive freelance, you can make a ton of cash working good hours. I now make more than the two highest paid staff at my old job put together. My point is design first necessarily lead to a life of austerity. If you are good and smart about it youcan live very well.