Farmington High School Athletics Identity
Challenge
Farmington High School is one of the oldest and largest schools in New Mexico, with a deep and storied history in high school athletics. Although the school had used the same mascot for decades – the scorpion – it didn’t have a consistent athletic logo or identity, despite this history. When we did an audit of the school’s athletic program materials, we were surprised to find just how varied they were. Each program (football, baseball, softball, etc.) was using different typography, numbers, scorpion logos, and colors. In the high school field house alone, where the Scorpions play their basketball games, we found 14 different scorpion logos or renderings (including a completely different scorpion on the wall pads at each end of the same basketball court!).
Solution
The first thing RBMM wanted to do was “level up” the school; we wanted to create an identity that looked a little more like an NCAA-level identity so Farmington stood out from other schools in the region. We designed a new energetic and fierce scorpion, inspired by Native American rug patterns (the tails and claws). We updated the school’s primary colors to give their players more presence on the field: gray became the menacing black of the carapace of a deadly scorpion; forest green became a vibrant and venomous electric green. For the identity, we wanted all the programs – men’s and women’s, from cheerleading to varsity football – to have the same sensibility and swagger. We created an aggressive-looking but highly legible typeface, designed to look fast and sharp both on field/court graphics and on uniforms. We created an architecture and logo versions for all the sports programs. And we created an accompanying dynamic set of numbers (important because numbers are the largest things on an athletic uniform). We also coined a rally cry and social media hashtag for fans. Now when the Scorpions take the field, they’ll look just like their mascot does: dangerous, quick, and deadly.
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