OPENING DAY
EVENT IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT
MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
Christmas? We recognize the allure of waking up to find piles of presents under a fir tree in your own living room. July 4th? Grilled meat, cold beer and fireworks certainly make for about as good of a national holiday as it gets. Thanksgiving? Sure, we love loosening our belts a notch and watching football as much as the next guy.
But when we’re talking about a packed ballyard trimmed with red, white and blue bunting, an immaculately-manicured, green-striped lawn stretched out wide before our eyes, under spectacular blue skies, and the man behind home plate yelling “Play Ball!” before the start of the very first game of a brand new baseball season, now that’s a day!
For all of us who are baseball fans, this long-awaited day is indeed a highly-anticipated event, but here at Studio Simon it has also provided a welcome design challenge. One where we’re asked to, in effect, “Make ‘em the same, but make ‘em different,” using the same basic set of elements reflecting the national pastime and patriotic pageantry, and making it fresh each time.
And then do that again the next season. And then the one after that. Multiply that times 12, which is how many official Opening Day logos Studio Simon has developed for Minor League Baseball.
In time, this project grew from a single logo to an Opening Day, Night and Week trio of marks.
From there, the deliverables expanded to include Playoff and League Champion variations that could be customized to include the logos and colors of those clubs participating in the postseason.
In addition to their use on a wide range of materials by the league itself, these logos are distributed to each of the 160 affiliated Minor League Baseball clubs for on-field and in-stadium applications, as well as for any and all of their merchandise and marketing needs. Millions of fans see them, so they have to be special—every bit as special as the day itself!