Bringing the Journalists Together…
I worked with sports journalist Ariel Helwani to create a logo for the Mixed Martial Arts Journalist Association. The Journalist Association was a long time in the making as the sport of Mixed Martial Arts has quickly been on the rise, and it was overdue that it’s journalists come together and organize amongst themselves. The logo was to be used for their upcoming website and Twitter page.
Questions and Research
Due to the quick turnaround (roughly a month), and the fact that clients sometimes don’t know their ‘story,’ I decided to let more of my processes help drive the conversation. At the time, I simply went off of a few of the client’s short notes:
“We're looking for a fairly simple logo for the new Journalists Association we are launching. This is years in the making, so we're excited.”
“I often feel like when people are tasked to make MMA logos they think cage, blood, edgey etc. but I don't want that. Just something simple and classy, if that makes sense.”
Research and Moodboards
On top of researching other Journalists Associations, and even sports logos, I also proceeded with mood board creations, keeping in mind ‘classy’ and ‘simple.’ Since there can be different angles to classy and simple, I made sure the images were grouped appropriately…
When presenting the 2 mood boards to the client, I also added my take on the story that each board was to tell. As an extension of that, I also personified each board in a way, to further drive the imagery…
Moodboard #1 Write Up
MMAJA brings together the MMA journalists/writers and is THE platform that ensures our members receive proper, and fair reporting conditions. While rooted in our love for journalism and writing, it’s our passion and appreciation for the sport that has brought us together. More importantly, we see that there is a classiness and beauty to MMA. While seemingly primordial, we see it more as ‘human chess.’ This is a thinking man’s game. And it is MMAJA that will proudly report, and allow the public to see what we see.
Moodboard #1 Personified
If MMAJA could be personified in a way, it would be:
- a classic Mercedes
- a Martini
- Cool Jazz
- in the vein of a GQ Magazine
- have the classic form/play of Roger Federer
- a clean, simple, classy logo
- minimalist design to echo the classy approach
Moodboard #2 Write Up
MMAJA brings together the MMA journalists/writers and is THE platform that ensures our members receive proper, and fair reporting conditions. While rooted in our love for journalism and writing, it’s our passion and appreciation for the sport that has brought us together.
And while we see that there is a certain beauty to MMA, there is a certain ‘grit’ and attitude to this sport that we enjoy. Our access to fighters and other figures of MMA is unlike other sports. We see the spirit and raw emotion of MMA, and look to carry these unfiltered stories through our reporting.
Moodboard #2 Personified
If MMAJA could be personified in a way, it would be:
- a Shelby Cobra (a classic car, with a bit more ‘punch’)
- a glass of straight whiskey
- the riffing of a guitar player
- Esquire magazine (which has a bit more quirk than GQ)
- the grit or ‘nastiness’ of Nadal (or a throwback football player)
- a clean, but BOLD logo
Sketches and Logos
After the client decided on the direction and ‘story’ (they went with mood board #1), I then kept that in mind with the mood board as my guide. I went through numerous sketches (not shown), finally settling on a 3 directions. These were ultimately presented in a deck for the client, with further imagery and inspiration as an explanation.
Final Designs and Handoff
With the client selecting their preferred logo (they chose #2), I also showed other colors and other mocks where the logo could also show up. The client ultimately stuck with the original colors shown in the initial presentation.
