This is so fun!
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🏀 Last year the Utah Jazz brand team reached out to me to add some zazz. We ended up creating a team of illustrated mascots. I dont watch too much sports but creating for the NBA was the most fun. Im very proud of this project. More info below.
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As it turns out, they initially reached out to me because 2 years prior I had taken one of their art directors out for ramen 🍜 When this project came up, he remembered me and they reached out over email while I was abroad in Seoul.
I was very excited to work with such a creative and exhilarating brand. The creative process took us a lot of directions but in the end we had a team of characters: the grizzly, the hand, the beehive, the saxophone, the mountain, and basketball, and the hoop.
Initially, the team were interested in what I would make for them so they just let me loose with a short list of needs: basketballs, Jazz references, etc. So, I tried to create something new. Here are a few of those ideas:
To make the characters appear as a team we unified their sneaker design, and added the Jazz logo to each of them. Each character had multiple poses and we included a male/female version of each. There is some lore and backstory to each but I don’t have room to write it all.
Though Im no longer under NDA and have been encouraged to share this out, I have yet to see any application of the designs 😅. Im happy with them, for more check out adameastburn.net