THE POWER OF BRAND STORY
Texas Smoke - Creating a Pro Sports Brand
Austin, Texas is known as the Live Music Capital of the World®, but sports is arguably as important to the city. The Texas Longhorns have long been front and center in local sports, but the success of the Major League Soccer team, Austin FC has shown that there is an appetite for professional sports in the city.
When former MLB All-star, Brandon Phillips and his partner, professional wrestling superstar, Jade Cargill (both pictured here) founded a Women's Professional Fastpitch softball team in the capital city, they (and their amazing PR team, The Community Factory) needed a brand for their new enterprise.
The name was to be "Smoke" and the direction was "timeless, and not 'typical minor league.'"
Brandon and Jade trusted me to take that light guidance and create a memorable and meaningful logo for the team. Several designers tried and failed to create a logo for The Smoke, but good design needs more than "cool graphics." I took over the project and leaned heavily into the fact that what was really needed was a brand story.
I had to come up with something that made sense not just for the name "Smoke" but for the community in which this new team was about to become intwined. Austin is known for its live music and the University of Texas, but there is one other huge component to the city that I realized we could leverage... its position as the capital of the state.
An idea emerges
I remembered from Texas History class (way back in middle school) the story of the Archive War in the 1840s where Houston and Austin fought over which would be the capital of the Republic of Texas (we were a country at the time before statehood). One particular moment stood out from that period in history: a local tavern owner, Angelina Eberly noticed forces from the Houston faction loading up the government archives into wagons in the middle of the night. There were going to take the archives back to Houston, effectively taking Austin's status as the capital away as well.
Angelina took it upon herself to fire a cannon towards the Houstonians and roused the sleeping Austinites and the chase was on.
Several miles north of downtown, the usurpers were captured, and the archives recovered. Austin would remain the capital and still is to this day. All this thanks to a bold woman who acted quickly and powerfully to defend the city's position.
So I had a concept that made sense of the name, was directly tied to the city — plus it echoed the take-no-crap attitude of the women in the community.
Perfect for a women's sports club.
Now I just needed to translate that concept into a logo and graphic system that stayed true to the historical concept, worked for the sport, looked cool, and reflected the personalities of the amazing owners of the team, Jade and Brandon.
Bringing the idea to life
"Timeless. Classic. Clean. Specific."
That was the driving credo of the development of the logo from concept to graphic. It was now time to do the magic of graphic design. Elevating an illustration of an object to be depicted (a cannon) into something meaningful, unique and memorable was the next great challenge. Tying in specific requests from Brandon and Jade to make sure their personalities were a part of the logo in a subtle way, was also a requirement.
Jade's signature color in her wrestling career is bright green. Brandon was associated with the color red and the number four during the majority of his playing career. As a nod to both of them, I stylized the "smoke" wafting from the cannon into an "S" with four bands, incorporating the colors requested. Not only did Jade and Brandon get their DNA added to the logo, it allowed the tough-to-expand-upon grayscale brand (the bane of many a design and marketing team) to have some accent colors as well.
The cannon was made more graphically bold and the wheel was aligned with the "O" in smoke to create a nice centralized effect.
Working in a home plate and and a lone start completed the look.
Extending the brand
A logo does not a brand make.
Like any business, a team's brand can't start and end with a logo, no matter how well thought out or clever it might be. One could argue that in sports the need to grow well beyond the foundation of the logo is even greater than in the corporate world.
Jerseys, hats, merchandise, in-stadium and on-field graphics, TV, and other graphic needs have to be met — not to mention all the typical items a brand traditionally needs (website, business cards, paper systems, social, and on and on).
I couldn't leave the team and its graphic designers with a bare cupboard to do all their future work. So I had to extend the brand.
From social hashtags like #DefendThe512 to ideas for tiny LEGO® cannons as giveaways, to the normal graphic extensions of secondary logos and support graphics, font and color sets, I blew out the brand for The Smoke. A full line of branded merchandise (and a virtual store to carry and sell the merch) plus a couple of the jersey graphics the team now uses came from these efforts.
Launching the legend
To help their team have a go-to document to base all their future work on, I created a simple, yet full brand style guide that lays the groundwork for future designs... without being so limiting that they don't have the freedom to do their magic (nobody likes a brand Nazi).
With the brand established, and guidance in hand, the internal Smoke design team had all they needed to build out the rest of the components, including team website, social presences, uniforms, and more.
A bunch of digital files is fine and all, but when a concept becomes physical, then it's really alive. On June 15, 2023, the Texas Smoke played their first regular season game, and the brand story became a living, breathing entity.
Powerful women performing at the peak of their profession, inspiring young kids, all working towards becoming an important thread in the fabric of the community. I'm proud that all that amazingness is wrapped up in a professional, meaningful, and extendable brand that I helped create.
Welcome to da Smoke Show!
Download the Texas Smoke Brand Identity Playbook (Style Guide PDF).
