Utah Jazz — Brand in motion – bringing a new identity to life through animation and socials
Since moving from New Orleans to Salt Lake City in the 1970s, Utah Jazz has become one of the NBA’s most enduring franchises. Following the success of our work on their play-offs campaign at the end of the 21–22 season, Studio Dumbar/DEPT® worked as part of a larger creative team on a more comprehensive rebranding project. Our task: to create an extensive motion design language ranging from social media templates, typographic animations, custom patterns, and 3D visuals.
Strategy
Developed by their in-house team in collaboration with The New Company, the refreshed identity was set to launch ahead of the 22–23 NBA season. It was important for our work to support the spirit of the new look, using our unique skills to bring the brand to life in motion. The client sought to express the creative energy of both jazz and basketball and, in doing so, buck the trends associated with mainstream sports branding. The proposition: Utah Jazz is a different breed of franchise – just as jazz is intrepid, innovative, and contrary. Rivals, take note.
Design
We delivered a vast number of assets for use and re-use across a variety of applications, throughout the entire season. Inspired by the rhythms of jazz, our typographic system (using a customised version of Plaak by 205ft) includes a variant angled at 25° – echoing the team’s iconic musical note symbol. We also created a library of custom patterns: bold geometric designs that can be scaled, cropped, stacked and combined in different ways across all touchpoints – from a small press lanyard, all the way up to motion spots for the arena’s JumboTron screens. Social media templates allow the new identity to shine through in every post: from everyday news and player profiles, to real-time updates during the games. The key was a set of well-defined yet versatile assets, with a consistently strong look and feel devised to keep fans engaged throughout the long NBA season.
Results
Dynamic and flexible, our work on the Utah Jazz rebrand strikes the right chord with their values and history, whilst signalling the start of a new era. Visit their home arena on game day, or check out the latest social posts, and you can see that our contribution to the project was significant, and above all, impactful.
