It has been fifteen years since a Carleton student athlete wore a Ravens football jersey. Since then, the identity of the Ravens football program has changed dramatically, with a new logo as part of a wider rebranding of the team.
Now the Ravens have completed the final step in their effort to usher in a new brand identity for the program with the design of four new jerseys that will see the Ravens wear an assortment of black, red, white, and grey uniforms during the upcoming season.
Starting the process
Portland-based design firm Downstream was enlisted to consult on the project as part of its rebranding contract with the university, Downstream senior designer Colin Fowler said.
According to head coach Steve Sumarah, the Ravens chose Downstream because they had the chance to create a unique set of jerseys that would emphasize the team’s bold and innovative direction to both fans and potential recruits.
As for Downstream, they were excited by the opportunity to create an exciting line of jerseys for the Ravens that would encourage fans and donors to reinvest in a program that had previously failed to maintain widespread support, the company’s design principal, Tim Lawson said.
“I think that the primary goal was to sort of create an image and level of excitement that hadn’t existed with the program before.”
“We wanted this to be inspirational, not just for fans, but for donors and those connected with the program,” Lawson said.
Brand consistency
When the Ravens began working with Downstream on the development of the new jerseys, Sumarah said they were careful to avoid making any adjustments that would stray from the team’s brand identity. Lawson said the group at Downstream worked tirelessly to ensure that the team’s brand presence was consistent across a number of platforms.
“I think for our entire exercise, it wasn’t just about the logo itself but what would the extension of that logo be? So obviously the uniforms are a big part of it for football, that’s the primary connection point that the fans will have to the logo mark beyond some of the merchandise,” Lawson said.
Settling on a final design
With so many stakeholders involved in the project, settling on a final design should have been a difficult proposition. Lawson said Downstream had to not only meet the demands of Sumarah and his coaching staff, they also had to create a concept that appealed to the board and the team’s football operations committee as well.
In order to accommodate such a variety of opinions, Lawson said Downstream interviewed several stakeholders in order to gauge their input on what they wanted in a football jersey. By taking part in this process, he said Downstream was able to accurately capture what the Ravens envisioned for the new jerseys.
Sumarah said they wanted a classic jersey to represent the team.
“The new logo kind of brings a whole wow factor to the program, but the jersey itself, we wanted it to be clean-looking, for lack of a better word, and once we got to that point, I think everybody agreed [that the final designs] fit what we were doing,” Sumarah said.
But the challenges did not stop there.
Sumarah said the Ravens also had to ensure any adjustments made to the jerseys could be handled sufficiently by Nike, who was in charge of manufacturing the final products. In order to do that, he said the team had to fine-tune the look of each jersey, even agonizing over the type of font used on the back of each jersey, to ensure the team’s design fell within Nike’s capabilities.
Lawson said the entire exercise of designing the jerseys took Downstream between six and eight months to develop and execute. Nevertheless, he said he thinks the four jerseys will now give Carleton a level of distinction that is unrivalled in Canadian Interuniversity Sport.
“I think the thing we’re most proud of is the fact that you can look at what’s being done here and there’s a level of sophistication and a level of branding that really puts Carleton on a different stage,” Lawson said.
With the project now at a close, Lawson and senior designer Fowler said they are eager to see the response to the final designs from Ravens fans.
“We’re excited to see it come out,” Lawson said. “I know [the jerseys] have only been previewed a little bit and I know that it’s been positive from that standpoint. I think for us, when we follow social media feeds and twitter and all that sort of thing we’re just anxious to sort of see the response from fans.”
