How We Attempted To Use Brand Design To Create A Sportswear And Lifestyle Brand For Jay Jay Okocha
This is the concluding part of the brand design series using football as a case study.
There was a video of Jay Jay Okocha humiliating Oliver Khan, one of Germany's greatest keeper of all time and that video was one of the reasons I love Jay Jay Okocha till date. Jay Jay as he is fondly called is a great influence on many Nigerians and Africans at large. His achievements is a constant reminder that we can be great at what we do and compete with the best around the world if we are focused, organised and passionate to deliver quality and value.
BACKGROUND
I have been a passionate follower of many athletes' sport brands such as Air Jordan, Roger Federer, CR7, Tiger Woods etc and I have always wondered why Nigerian superstars could not have a brand designed in their name. Most of these athletes have contracts with popular sport brands such as nike, adidas, under armour etc to create products and merchandise they could sell to make more money.
If none of the sport brands were willing to design something for our superstars, why don't we? I remember about a decade ago when I first attempted to design for Mary Onyali's Yali Yali sports brand, it was an impossible task getting the designs across to her, most of which are lost now.
WHY JAY JAY OKOCHA?
Jay Jay Okocha launched his foundation in July 2016 and the primary objective of the foundation is to use football to raise awareness on the importance of education, peace and unity for the economic growth of Nigeria. The foundation would be raising funds through sales and auctioning of football memorabilia especially those belonging to Jay-Jay Okocha for charitable causes. (sounds like a good cause)
I thought this would be a great opportunity to design a brand with the Jay Jay name that would be in the leagues of CR7, Messi, Jordan in terms of brand perception.
TASK
Design a timeless sports and lifestyle brand for the Nigerian legend to support his foundation and document his long lasting legacy.
IDEA
He is so good, they named him twice.
REFERENCE
Studying Jay Jay Okocha and his style of play, the postures below were very synonymous to him. We decided to use the shot taking posture as a reference to design the JJ10 icon because he scored some fantastic free kicks that way almost at the prime of his career.
The JJ10 artwork and his signature were inspired by the images below.
The Line Art
The Logo Options
The Logo
Colour
Typeface
The JJ10 Icon
Products & Merchandise
Web page
I hope that one day, we would have enough sport brands in Nigeria that would replace the foreign brands. Brands that would capture our essence, tell our stories and export our narratives to the world. It is not impossible, it is hard work but it is achievable.
Brand design such as this is not limited to football or sport celebrities but also music artists, actors, actresses, comedians and others.
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