Heading into their 5th season at First Horizon Park, the Nashville Sounds - MiLB affiliate of the Texas Rangers - approached Rare Design with the aim of creating a new brand identity fitting of a major league ball club and reflective of the teams rich history and Nashville's vibrant personality.
One of the key challenges during the strategic portion of the project was identifying the narrative anchors and the visual links that would connect the club to their city. Without being too overt, the new identity had to authentically connect to Nashville and resonate with its community. Ultimately, we combined historic baseball lettering, classic scripts, wood-block typography, and musical motifs with local icons to strike a cord in tune with the team and their town.
My contribution to the rebrand was in the development of the new visual identity, and most prominently, the team’s primary ‘N’ lettermark. Just like a baseball club however, the design work is a team effort and wouldn’t have been possible without Rodney’s leadership and entire Rare team.
Rodney Richardson | CD/Principal Jeremy Nelson | Designer Cody Bass | Designer Brian Bollig | Designer Ben Barnes | Designer Marie Siegfried | Project Manager
Grounding the design process, strategic thinking done before pencil met paper aligned everyone on the projects directions & ultimate goal. For the Sounds, it was important to capture the spirit of Nashville and embrace their heritage of baseball.
To ensure our proposed solutions would meet these goals, we relied on the iconic work of Hatch Show Print, classic and decorative baseball lettering, and the sights of Nashville's music scene (Shown above) to inform our exploration and concept development (Below).
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Grounding the design process, strategic thinking done before pencil met paper aligned everyone on the projects directions & ultimate goal. For the Sounds, it was important to capture the spirit of Nashville and embrace their heritage of baseball.
To ensure our proposed solutions would meet these goals, we relied on the iconic work of Hatch Show Print, classic and decorative baseball lettering, and the sights of Nashville's music scene (Shown above) to inform our exploration and concept development (Below).
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Launching under the tagline of "Sounds Remastered" the team hit the ground running with a full suite of marks and four sets of threads.
*Video credit & rights to the Nashville Sounds*
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Through subtle, incorporating the form of a guitar's F-Hole into the diagonal stroke of the 'N' connected baseball with Music City naturally in both concept and execution.
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Through subtle, incorporating the form of a guitar's F-Hole into the diagonal stroke of the 'N' connected baseball with Music City naturally in both concept and execution.
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Another huge shout-out to Rodney and the whole Rare team! This project was a unique challenge but a pleasure through and through. Check out their great work linked in the credits.
Heading into their 5th season at First Horizon Park, the Nashville Sounds - MiLB affiliate of the Texas Rangers - approached Rare Design with the aim of creating a new brand identity fitting of a major league ball club and reflective of the teams rich history and Nashville's vibrant personality.
One of the key challenges during the strategic portion of the project was identifying the narrative anchors and the visual links that would connect the club to their city. Without being too overt, the new identity had to authentically connect to Nashville and resonate with its community. Ultimately, we combined historic baseball lettering, classic scripts, wood-block typography, and musical motifs with local icons to strike a cord in tune with the team and their town.
My contribution to the rebrand was in the development of the new visual identity, and most prominently, the team’s primary ‘N’ lettermark. Just like a baseball club however, the design work is a team effort and wouldn’t have been possible without Rodney’s leadership and entire Rare team.
Rodney Richardson | CD/Principal
Jeremy Nelson | Designer
Cody Bass | Designer
Brian Bollig | Designer
Ben Barnes | Designer
Marie Siegfried | Project Manager
Rare Design
Nashville Sounds
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Sounds Twitter
Sports Branding
Visual Identity
Logo Design