Four new “space trash”-style collages are now up on Brandiose.com. We’ve got Syracuse, Tulsa, Clearwater, and Stockton up in the piece. Enjoy!
Category Archives: Behind The Scenes
Reading Fightins-Now Available!
In 2012 we dreamed up a fresh name and look for the Reading Fightins, Class AA Affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies. Reading is one of our favorite towns in the World and the Reading Fightins have one of the best in game experiences in baseball. That makes this brand one of our favorites!
Go HERE to get yours! Kick this weekend’s ass Clinkers!
Reading Fightins BTS Rd. 3
I wanted to try something different with this last stage of the Fightins B.T.S. I want to focus on 2 of the logos and follow them through to their final versions. Lets start with the infamous ostrich. Once we had our new marching orders (as outlined yesterday) we wrestled with positioning and style. That’s when something unusual happened. Jason sent me a sketch! Now Jason has always been a great designer and in the early days of the Company we went sketch for sketch in new identities. But in the last few years Jason has taken over other design duties and left the majority of the logo design to me and another member of the team, Skye. But every once in a the clouds part and Jason’s glowing hand reaches down and hands us his crystal clear vision. That’s what you see in concept “2″. Pretty great right? Yeah, I was impressed. So we took that to step 3. Tried with light blue highlights in “3″ and “4″. Then in step “5″ and “6″ we tried a red and blue highlight concept that I really liked. I though it gave it a unique quality and felt retro in that red and blue 3D glasses kind of way. Sample “5″ you can see a glimpse into how we build our Illustrator models. You can see the overlapping color fields and anchor-points that make up a vectored piece of artwork. Then of course we took a few steps backwards to land us on the final version, featured in “7″.
And here is a much different kind of evolution. The spontaneous, no sketching kind of evolution. Option “8″ was our original concept, it came to us in a bolt of inspiration. Step “9″ was an attempt to make it read as an “F” easier with “10″ being the final logo that simplifies and solves the read as an “F” problem.
That brings us to the “F-fist” hat below. Available tonight 9pmPST/Midnight EST in the Clink Store! (There’s even a little sneak peak of Brandiose’s new offices in the background. Still in progress, can’t wait to show it off.)
Reading Fightins BTS Rd. 2
Wow, I’m so overwhelmed by everyone’s outpouring and condolences. I’ve received so many emails, text messages, and phone calls. Thank you so much, I’m really feeling the Clink love. It means so much to all of us in the Brandiose family. Thank you!
Alright, back to the Fightins! So the solo Ostrich emerged as everyone’s favorite concept. We knew the ostrich, as a mascot, was of Minor League Baseball Grade-A Gold Star pedigree. We could feel it in our bones, know what I mean? So while we debated the merits of the Whiz Kids moniker (Fightin Phils vs. Fightins) we focused on the ostrich icon.
From the above round everyone dug the “squawk” facial expression, it’s unique to the bird/ostrich mascot and felt fun. You can see a dynamic iteration of the “R” ostrich that I think came out really cool. It was fun challenge to not only make the ostrich “dukes up” a thing that made some sense. But could we make it dynamic and interesting enough that it alone could be iconic? A good challenge for sure. You can see the bottom sketch features the dukes up integrated with into the Phillies lettering.
The Philadelphia Phillies finally gave us their blessing to explore the Fightins name completely. So we threw ourselves into it. You can see in these very early exercises some small seeds of the final lettering. Reading has such a unique blend of baseball, circus, and Pennsylvanian-iness (Not sure how else to say blue-collar, fun loving, hardworking, proud, Dutch, and no-B.S. all in one word). That’s what we wanted the script to convey. I’m not even sure if something like that is possible, but it’s always worth a try.
About this time, we were told to stop and restart from scratch. Love it! Whenever we get the call that we need to start over with a brand new direction, I’ll always let out an immediate sigh. But I’m always happy with the new direction, so that sigh doesn’t last very long. Even if the early stuff is scraped, it always informs the new design direction, making it even better. With this new direction we were told we had lost some of the ostrich-ness that makes the bird so iconic. So we added that back in. We also were told to go more retro, adding a little fictional age to the mix.
Tomorrow, we’ll show you the sketches that led to the final designs, the final designs in color, and we’ll preview the hat that will be available tomorrow night. Thanks again Clinkers!!!
Reading Fightins BTS Rd. 1
Are you ready for some Fightins!!?? I am. Are you ready for some trolls in the comments? I think I am. Yes, it’s time to do a behind-the-scenes for what seems like our most controversial project, the renaming and rebranding of the Reading Fightins. Why the Reading Fightins? Besides being a great Minor League Baseball name, it has a great heritage to it. The Philadelphia Phillies, parent club to the Reading Fightins, nickname is the Fightin’ Phils. The town of Reading is a scrappy Pennsylvania town who has taken some lumps in recently, but is fightin’ it’s way back to its dissevered glory (Reading is one of our favorite towns in the U.S.). There’s a sports tradition of using fightin’ as a prefix. The team was one of the last of the holdouts that uses it’s parent club’s team name. Very rare nowadays and for good reason, it can be very confusing.
Let me back up a little. The team came to us over a year ago about going deeper into the R-Phils brand, and ways to celebrate everything in the R-Phils universe. They were also looking for ways honor more of the Phillies heritage, while appealing to the entire Reading community, including Mets fans.
While changing the name was never the goal, it did enter the conversation. There was a consensus that a name change would only be considered, if the right name surfaced. Plus, the name would have to meet the aforementioned goals. We don’t take any rename lightly, but renaming the Reading Phillies, a classic name in Minor League Baseball history, is a big responsibility. But once the Philadelphia Phillies legendary Whiz Kids name “The Fightins” was proposed, it clicked with everyone on heritage and creative levels.
So we hit the sketch pad with our usual mission of defining what should the Fightin’s look like? We started with very rough sketches. One of our first ideas was to use the Phillie Phanatic as a jump off point. What if we could do a Huey, Dewey, and Louie thing with the Phanatic being the Donald Duck in the family. We liked the idea of tying the club back to Philly with boxing/Rocky references.
We also knew that the Crazy Hotdog vendor, the Ostrich riding hotdog throwing mascot has emerged in the last few years as a fan favorite, especially for kids. So we focused an early round on concepts that depicted the ostrich and the crazy hotdog vendor.
Here are some different “F” options, very crude but you can see the influence of the big Phils logos on the design. With a lot more “Reading circus” thrown into the mix.
Here are some script options. Again, a lot of big Phils inspiration.
Tomorrow, more sketches! Thursday night one of the hat designs will be available in the Clink Room store!