What sets Vixory apart from their competition is the anonymity they provide for their athletes. The goal with Vixory was to create a brand that resonated with both Athletes in their teens to early 20’s and coaches between the ages of 30 and 60.
Due to the generational gap between the two target audiences and the nature of the platform, we focused on the commonality between the two groups: sports. Using this as a base, we looked at several of the top brands in sports today with a goal of evoking the same emotions that these brands evoke.
One of Vixory’s big selling points is that they keep the athletes information hidden from coaches at the current school they attend allowing them to seek out transfer opportunities with complete anonymity. Conveying this through the logo and brand was crucial.
I wanted to keep the end result simple and straightforward while still making sure the logo communicated Vixory’s values.
Vixory’s target audience of athletes from ages 14 – 24 and coaches ages 30 – 60+ presented a unique challenge in developing a brand that resonates with all walks of life. I put a heavy emphasis on creating a brand that could connect with the younger audience while still resonating with the potentially older coaching audience.
Vixory proudly presents themselves as a platform where the worlds best athletes and coaches can connect. When creating the brand, we wanted to make sure we were conveying a sense of luxury through the marks, the colors and the branding.
After I had a solid understanding of who we were wanting to communicate with visually, I began with rough and quick thumbnails. My initial idea was to have the “x” and “o” in Vixory play off of one another much like “x’s” and “o’s” do when coaches are developing plays. However, that direction quickly turned out to be a dead end. I then decided to pursue portraying victory in a literal sense.
Once I had received feedback on my initial concept, I knew I needed to take a much more aggressive approach. I analyzed and studied brands such as Nike, Saucony, Adidas and Mizuno and found several similarities between the brands. They all used an logomark that was more abstract yet contained a strong sense of symbolism that was paired with strong and aggressive typography. I once again began sketching, this time attempting to communicate speed, strength and agility through an abstract cheetah. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful in this iteration. Then, all it took was a single triangle to spark an idea that would eventually evolve into the final logo for Vixory.
Since Vixory allows college athletes to talk with other schools/coaches about transferring, the negative space that forms the shield represents the protection of anonymity that Vixory provides while giving the athlete endless opportunites to advance and grow with other programs, which is represented by the 3 arrows pointing in all directions. The symbolism of 3 separate arrows forming an object (in this case, the shield) represents how a combination of strength, agility and speed all come together to form a great athlete. Lastly, it all comes together to make a V shape.
Using a strong and modern sans-serif font as a base, we began by removing the rounded edges to add strength to the font.
Next we created custom hooked serifs and strategically placed them on each letter to give a sense of agility and speed.
We modified the leg of the “R” to extend at an angle below the baseline, carefully matching the descent of the V, which we used to create a unique letter that can stand on it’s own, without the other letters.
Lastly, we skewed the type at a slight 10 degree angle to further add movement to the overall wordmark.
After much trial and error and several logo mark and word mark iterations, I landed on a concept that combined an abstract looking logo mark with a strong and aggressive word mark that played perfectly together. Each mark could stand on their own strongly, or be used in conjunction with one another. After the main mark was created, sub-marks were developed along with a full branding guide to maintain brand integrity and recognition.
After much trial and error and several logo mark and word mark iterations, I landed on a concept that combined an abstract looking logo mark with a strong and aggressive word mark that played perfectly together. Each mark could stand on their own strongly, or be used in conjunction with one another. After the main mark was created, sub-marks were developed along with a full branding guide to maintain brand integrity and recognition.
