Native Sports
Growing healthy, active, Native American Youth
Brand Identity Design ▶︎ Website Development ▶︎ Graphic Design ▶︎ Messaging Strategy
Native Sports
Background
Native Sports was an organization built on providing native youth an opportunity to develop leadership and interpersonal skills through entrepreneurship. Through an innovative partnership with Baden Sports, Native Sports provided year-round programming and student development as well as sales, marketing, and business operations training. Although the owners had experience operating native-owned businesses, Native Sports hired Trio Group in 2017 to launch the business and bring to life their vision of serving native youth across Washington State.
A rich red color and clean crisp lines make an impactful visual statement for the Native Sports brand.
Designed to be instantly recognizable on athletic wear, sports equipment, and in print, the Native Sports logo fuses Pacific Northwest Native American imagery and a bold typeface to create an exciting logo.
Brief
After learning about the vision for Native Sports, we knew right away that they needed a beautiful brand that communicated the owners’ own indigenous heritage and honor the youth Native Sports wanted to support.
Our plan included a two-phase approach starting with building a business brand and then developing an e-commerce website. Trio Group Principal Dennis Brooks and Creative Director Ricardo Ibarra worked extensively with the executives form Native Sports along with their partner Baden Sports to achieve the desired results.
We began by defining who the organization wished to serve. In our discussions uncovered the need for Native Sports to not only appeal to indigenous Washington youth, but also appeal to potential community and corporate partners who wanted to support the work.
Our audience personas helped point the way for a brand identity steeped in indigenous symbols of the Pacific Northwest with a clean, crisp appearance that would appear well when embossed on sports equipment, presented online, and in print.
Responsive Website Design
A mobile-friendly e-commerce website empowered Native Sports partners and youth to sell quality equipment from Baden anywhere, any time.
Our next step was developing an e-commerce website so that Native Sports could immediately begin selling their branded apparel and raise funds for upcoming student leadership activities. We built the site on the Shopify platform for its ease of use so that Native Sports staff could manage the site on their own.
Outcomes
When it launched, the website and Native Sports brand were met with enthusiasm and support from the participating tribal members and Bade Sports executives.