Process

In the fall of 2009, I designed a brand vibe book as an assignment at CalArts. The brand vibe book defines the look and feel for a fictional baseball bat manufacturer. The company, which I named Third Deck, makes baseball bats for recreational use.

Baseball has been a lifelong passion of mine. I was still in preschool when I started playing in an organized league. But my nine-year Little League career was not very good. In fact, I was commonly the recipient of the Sportsmanship Award because I loved to play despite often being the worst player on the team.

So when given the opportunity to design for a fictional business at CalArts, I created a company that could fulfill a childhood dream. I branded a baseball bat manufacturer that makes powerful bats to help recreational baseball players effortlessly hit homeruns.

In the Third Deck vibe book, I defined the baseball bat manufacturer’s branding through four interwoven narratives: brand traits, a photographic set, brand elements and the iterations that comprised the design process. Combined, the narratives create a contemporary yet unique athletic company.

Brand Traits

To guide my visual language, I assigned Third Deck four emotionally strong brand traits that relate to the experience of using the bat:

Effortless

Requires no physical or mental exertion

Joy

A feeling of great pleasure and happiness

Ferocious

Extremely aggressive and powerful

Metamorphosis

Turn ordinary strength into supernatural ability

Wordmark

To being designing the wordmark for Third Deck, I made quick combinations of contemporary typefaces that connotated primary brand traits. Baseball's strong vernacular, built by over 100 years of team logos and baseball brands, inspired many combinations.

Among the better rough iterations, the strongest idea was to create a wordmark that contained a secondary, pictorial element: a man swinging a bat created by the capital 'T' and the lowercase 'i.' After choosing to go forward with the complex script, many decisions about letterforms still had to be made. For example, how should the player from the letter 'i' relate to the bat from the cross on the capital 'T'? Should there even be a player? What's the appropriate brush thickness and angle of italics given the brand's traits?

The final wordmark used an aligned player and bat, capitalized words, a thick brush, a smoother 'c' and a slight italics.

Symbol

In the midst of finalizing my script wordmark, I began to work on a symbol for Third Deck. Like my process for the wordmark, I started an exploration of many rough iterations. Inspired by patches on athletic uniforms, I attempted to create a self-contained form for the company.

Despite the success of a few forms, as I developed the wordmark it became clear that the symbol could help reinforce the unique pictorial element within the wordmark. So I created a simplistic and related symbol made up of only three pieces drawn with an aggressive slant to mimic the wordmark.