The founder of The Pickleball Playground approached me before opening its doors with a plan to create more than just another sports facility. The Pickleball Playground was set to be Knoxville's largest adult and family playground, focusing on both competitive and recreation leagues, a bar for socializing and community events.

I established a strong visual identity and brand foundation that their marketing and interior design team could run with, allowing for a seamless launch and brand recognition before opening their doors. It was important to be mindful of how certain brand decisions would affect the environment and space – specifically pickleball court colors and signage.

Together we established an art direction and identified nostalgia as a key emotional driver. I leaned into this, using a vintage-inspired script and slab serif combo to inspire playfulness, and brought in a clean, modern body copy to balance it all out. This provided the marketing team with many possibilities for social graphics and wall murals. The color palette was built around the blue and green (established court colors), with bright, energizing oranges and yellows for many playful and retro-inspired graphics. A unique pattern was given to apply to pickleball rackets and other items.

The logo system is flexible and I provided many lockups and logomarks for small and large-scale spaces and merchandise.

In the end, the project was a success. They had all the assets and guidelines they needed to give to their contractors to not only look and feel established on their opening ceremony, but to continue to grow their social media and create a robust website.