BonesBall - Identity Design Process

Founded by Barry Orms, former professional basketball player, BonesBall’s an online platform that provides an educated perspective to sports issues and topics. Their objective is to show how sports can be a metaphor for life. I was asked to redesign their identity for the recent launch of the site.

This isn’t a personal logo that reflects neutrality, so I wanted to add a little more personality to it. I decided to focus more on color and structure.

↑ I chose orange to reflect passion, activity, and movement that represent “sport.” The ball would be a major branding icon for the company. And to have it jump out more while creating motion to the static font type, I made “O”, in BonesBall, the icon and offset it from the context for immediate recognition.

After playing with the ball and type face for a good dozen approaches, I ended up with the following:

↑ No extra lines. No fancy curves. Just a straight forward type logo with the iconic ball.

Various applications:

Aside from the logo, I was also asked to come up with a t-shirt design:

I chose the hand sketch style to appeal more towards the college audience.
Since Bonesball’s about the hero/idea/knowledge/science behind sports,I drew out a couple different kinds of sports and have asterisk signs on their heads, emphasizing the mind set.
People can then refer down to the bottom of the design – “BonesBall.”