Challenge: The Vancouver Giants had just celebrated their 'Giant Decade' 10-year anniversary throughout their marketing materials in the prior year, so anything with the 10-year mark had to be recreated. In addition to the agency they were working with, many of their marketing pieces were created by designers from different print suppliers, so it was difficult to establish a strong consistency. They also needed to freshen the brand, and challenged Epic Design to show them what 'Hockey with Heart' might look like integrated into their branding. 

Solution: Since The Giants have already built equity in their colours, fonts and mark, we kept those consistent but gave the brand a facelift by using photo treatments, establishing a grid system, and used subtle ice scratches to give backgrounds and some text treatments some texture. The red treatment in the photos is meant to support the 'Hockey with Heart' concept. The idea was to choose photos with emotion whenever possible, and highlight the photo subject by close-cropping them and sitting them over the background. The red in the background represents passion, and connects back to 'Hockey with Heart'. This tagline is very fitting — these players are young, energetic and up-and-coming, and they play the game with a lot of heart — you'll often find the entire team on the bench standing to watch the game!

Results: The Giants now have a consistent look across the board, which increases brand recognition and perceived value for the product. The tagline they have lightly used on and off for years is now integrated into the brand, and we have a strong concept to build on. 

Below are some examples of the initial concept ideas – as you can see from the slideshow above, the final 'look & feel' resembles the initial design very closely.