Branding a running crew

Designing and applying a brand for Flames Barcelona, a running crew that I co-founded

Since I co-founded Flames Barcelona back in 2018 I've been able to experiment and play with digital assets (social media content, animated gifs, mailings, websites), audiovisual assets (video and photography) and physical assets (casual clothing, racing clothing, stickers, badges, magnets, keychains, flags) to establish a brand.

I crafted campaings and activations to build experiences for our runners, at events and for seasonal occasions.

Brand

The first thing we had to set up were, obviously, naming and marks.

• It had to reflect our values and who we are: urban-born, somewhat underdogs and misfits, totally amateurs, not too serious about training and very fond of the beer after, yet aggressively competitives in our own range, community-driven, family
• It should differentiate from the usual terms that a running club or an athletics team use
• We only wante to be a group of friends with a name

• We had a clear idea that "Barcelona" should be part of the naming because its international recongnition would help our placement wit the international running crew community
• The initial exploration between the 3 founders started from the concepts "running" and "crew", with their intersection and around Barcelona
• "Flames Barcelona" wasn't even a possibility on the firsts brainstorms, and for a while we were planning to go forwards with another name (that didn't feel right when presented to the whole community)

Once the brand was settled, the first application that we needed was the race singlet. The uniform.

Based on the male / female race kits we procured, I tested different designs until settling on a candidate and then explored different color variations:

First-edition race singlets

Physical

Since we were established the Flames Barcelona brand has seen many physical applications. Some of them have been produced by professionals, and some of them have been home-made.

I've developed thins like:

• All kinds of stickers (rectangular, circular, with glossy and holographic finish...)
• Keychains
• Fridge magnets
• Patches
• Buttons
• Flags
• Race shirts
• Casual t-shirts
• Sweatshirts

Race kits in the making, plus some swag

Shirts for singular races

Designs ready to print

Digital

Most of the daily interaction with our runners and with the global running community happens in the form of digital content on social networks, primarily Instagram. That includes building anticipation, clearly communicating information, sharing content and debriefing on results.

For example, I designed digital content for events such as:

During Barcelona's Half Marathon we hosted a weekend event for 450+ people, from 39 crews and 18 countries. At the intersection between running culture, lifestyle, music, art and creativity these events happen around the globe for crews to come together to meet, run, create and party together.

• Announcement of the event, prices, sign-up of international crews, deadlines and reminders
• Detailed instructions during the weekend for all activities
• Success stories afterwards

On Internation Women's Day, we supported 4 of our women who designed a special social session for 100 women joining the #WomenInCities campaign. A symbolic action to raise awareness on gender equality issues and the place of women in cities by highlighting the small amount of streets named for them.

• Filling our profile with female runners
• Motivation and awareness, co-creation of part of the event, sign-ups to get to 100 participants
• Real-time sharing of the event

On March 2020, much like the rest of the world, we went into lockdown. For a 2-month period we tried to have fun and played with the concept of "streaming training sessions", playing with content platforms like Netflix, studios like Disney, franchises and properties like Marvel or Mission Impossible.

• I developed alternate branding for Flames emulating brands and title cards
• I crafted short funny stories with alternate subtitles for trailers and clips

Our weekly zoom trainings were branded as "Stranger Trainings":

To establish a more permanent and traditional presence, I developed a website (flamesbarcelona.com) with Gatsby and Netlify CMS were we could explain what is Flames Barcelona and publish blog posts about our journey:

flamesbarcelona.com