Issue 12: Good Sports
On strength, sparkle, and the pursuit of greatness.
🏅 Are you ready for it?
As someone who grew up avoiding gym class like the plague and can name embarrassingly few professional athletes, I am one of the world’s least likely sports fans. But for a few short weeks every few years, the Olympics and Paralympics become my whole life. There are so many easy things to love about the games, from teary podium moments to smashed records to supportive teammates to the various interpretations of national fashion. But what strikes me the most every year is the window they give us into worlds we never get to see. With a few exceptions, like basketball and soccer, even the most popular Olympic sports—swimming, gymnastics, diving—fade into relative obscurity between the games, to say nothing of more niche sports like street-style skateboarding and trampoline. As my sister asked the other day, how does someone even get into speedwalking?
As someone who does a niche sport, as a brand expert, and as someone who chose an unexpected career path, nothing inspires me more than the pursuit of niche greatness. So often we follow paths by default, not because they inspire us or represent us. There are many good reasons this can happen, but frequently, it happens simply because we don’t know what options are available. Whether we’re looking toward personal success, or figuring out how to make our brand stand out in a crowded field, the best opportunities are the ones that resonate with who we are and what we represent. We’re never going to win playing someone else’s game, and when we limit ourselves to what we know, we suffocate our potential for growth. Conversely, no matter how scary it is to look beyond the options we know, the only path to the top of the podium is the one that taps into whatever makes us stand out—and that we’re empowered to pursue with everything we have.
That’s why this week we’re looking at design through sports—the Olympics and Paralympics in particular. What defines greatness? How do we carve a niche out of infinite possibilities? And which team’s uniform makes me want to move halfway across the world? Read on to find out!
I have a truly unhinged list of sports I plan to get invested in over the next month, including sport climbing, BMX, rhythmic gymnastics, skateboarding, paratriathalon, wheelchair rugby, and, of COURSE, women’s gymnastics. What are you most excited to watch? Let me know in the comments!
✨ Moodboard of the week
The Good Sports moodboard pays tribute to the Pursuit of Greatness™ from every angle—running in the snow, building calluses, celebrating with competitors, starting strong, being Simone Biles, and, for those of us whose talents lie elsewhere, supporting from home with a torch full of fries.
🔍 Question of the week
“How do you design a logo from scratch?”
Part 2: Visual Guidance
Logos are extremely difficult to design because they’re one of the rare projects that require creating something brand new with no visual context. Generally, logos are the basis of a brand’s entire identity, so by default, you are starting from zero. From one perspective, this means the possibilities are infinite. But from another, this makes it extremely hard to choose a direction. Without creative guidelines, you can only guess at what your client wants the end result to look like. And if you don’t get a very clear sense very early on, you’ll end up wasting everybody’s time with concepts that don’t even know what mark they missed. It sounds counterintuitive, but the more guidelines and restrictions you put on the creative process, the easier it is to find a perfect end result.
That’s why, before a designer creates a single thing on their own, it’s critical that they align with the client on visual direction. Here’s what this involves:
Client Inspiration
If my client has any visual inspiration in mind, I always make sure they send it over. This is not a requirement by any means, since I never want to make extra work for them, but often, clients do come into the creative process with a strong sense of what aesthetic will suit their brand, what specific pieces of design make them happy, or what their peers are doing right. Since I’m looking for my clients to stand out—and because my assumptions often lead me astray—I always make sure to ask why they find a given piece of design inspiring. That way, I can take those lessons and interpret them in a way that meets my clients’ specific needs.Research
The next step is to start building a moodboard, which means sourcing visual inspiration based on everything we talked about in the previous stage. This is probably my favorite part of the design process, both because I get to look at pretty pictures for hours, and because it brings the possibilities of the project to life for the first time (with very little mental energy on my part 😉). I do most of my research on Pinterest, Dribbble, and Behance, but I can find inspiration truly anywhere. At this point, I don’t hold back on anything, since you never know what’s going to spark the best ideas. If a photograph, piece of design, font, GIF, song, or movie trailer may bring any type of inspiration to the project, I add it to my collection to deal with later.Refinement
Once I’ve gathered an enormous collection of images or videos (usually many hundreds, often thousands), it’s time to start refining them into usable moodboards. I do this first by sorting the images into aesthetic themes and then playing around until a coherent look forms. This may be based on a well-known look (i.e. “1920s Glam”) or an original one (i.e. “Fluorescent Swimming Couture”), but the interpretation is always customized to the brand and its goals. The objective is to craft an aesthetic that not only supports a brand’s message but allows it to make a unique impression in its field.Moodboard Presentation
The final step at this stage is to see which direction resonates with the client. I usually present 3-5 moodboards, and try to make them as different from each other as possible. We talk through them in depth to get a feel for which direction feels most true to their goals. Even at this stage, I always make sure to learn why my clients like the directions they do, and, if applicable, which images in particular resonate the most with them. We make any refinements we need to make and, armed with a solid visual direction, we’re ready to create something new.
Check back next week, when we will learn how to create something from nothing. As always, please feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have as we move through the creative process!
Submit your burning design questions by sending me a message below. Questions can relate to design itself, entrepreneurship, workflow, or anything you think I may be able to answer. There are no limits.
🎧 Soundtrack of the week
This week’s soundtrack is here to get us all ready for our Olympic debuts. Various versions of this soundtrack have gotten me pumped up for hundreds of dance competitions, and can personally vouch for its performance-enhancing prowess. Think you can stop what we do? I doubt it. Click below to listen on Spotify!
✨ My Favorite Things
The Olympics are always a great time for design – both amazing and terrible (I’m looking at you, Almost Every Single Country’s Team Uniform). It’s still early days, but some of my favorite moments so far have included the Brazilian women’s gymnastics team’s qualification leotards, and the floor of the basketball court which, to put it mildly, goes hard in the paint.
But my favorite design moment by far has been the Mongolian team uniform, by Mongolian couturier Michel&Amazonka. This intricate design, based on a fusion of Mongolian traditional dress (Deel) and sporting vests, draws parallels between the Olympics and the Naadam Festival, Mongolia’s most famous athletic event, believed to be centuries old. It’s gorgeous, it’s meaningful, it represents its country (something few team kits even attempt) and it’s completely badass.
Brazilian gymnastics images sourced from Time Brazil on Instagram here and here. Basketball images sourced from USA Basketball on Instagram here and here (video still). Team Mongolia kit images sourced from Michel&Amazonka on Instagram here and here. You can read more about the Mongolian team uniform here!
🌱 Touching Grass
📖 What I’m reading: I devoured Leigh Bardugo’s dark fantasy thriller Ninth House last week, which is amazing for many reasons, not least of which is its shockingly faithful depiction of New Haven. The sequel, Hell Bent, was available on Hoopla so I scooped it up immediately and can’t wait to read it this week.
🎧 What I’m listening to: Céline Dion’s Opening Ceremony rendition of Hymn à L’Amour on repeat.
🍔 What I’m eating: Is there any better way to cheer on the incredible athletes of Team USA than by sitting on the couch eating burgers and chicken wings?
📺 What I’m watching: If you don’t know the answer at this point, I truly cannot help you.