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Higher Ground Design Studio
This is a follow-up post. To know more about Higher Ground and how this project started, you can check out the first Higher Ground project page here.
Below, I will briefly touch on the various projects I did for Higher Ground as their new Creative Director. There's just too much to cover to go into detail--but if you're interested to know more or would like to ask questions, feel free to send me a message.
There are so many things associated with the words "Higher Ground", due in large part to the many businesses with the same name.
Through our packaging, we want to reclaim the words "Higher Ground" and form our own associations with it, moving it away from themes like coffee and religion and towards something better suited for the brand: elevation & flight.
Packaging
Elevation & flight in the context of sports goes hand in hand with leveling up: improving performance, raising the bar, workking towards lofty goals and dreams.
We used design often associated with flight to form a metaphorical link with the brand: luggage tags in packaging, boarding passes as shirt tags, and decorative stickers peppering our plain cardboard packaging.
I created a total of 3 collections with limited pieces for the brand. The first was a basic, branded merch line that they can sell to their regulars.
The graphics above were used as the key visual for the very first Higher Ground shirt design. This is because the original intent was for this graphic to be the design for the facility's court mural. This was meant to be sold on the day the new court mural was to be revealed, but was released as an individual item when the mural project was put on hold.
This collection was designed to be the brand's basic line, hence the subtle graphics on these shorts.
First Collection: Higher Ground Daily
Second Collection: Greatness in Progress
Collection number two was a tribute to one of the GOATs of the game: Kobe Bryant. There is no shortage of tribute collecions to Kobe Bryant when you look around the basketball/sportwear industry, due in large part to the impact he has had on the game, as well as his untimely passing in 2020. We created one inspired by his famous quote after game 2 of the 2009 NBA finals that we felt perfectly captures the work ethic that helped make him one of the greats.
We wanted to do our own take on basketball graphics, opting for a more cartoon style illustration paired with vintage fonts to contrast the hard-shadowed, vector comic book style found in a lot of basketball merch brands in the Philippines.
Despite being fierce competitors, Jordan and Kobe has a great relationship off the court. Perhaps it was exactly this cutthroat competitiveness that bonded them together. We created a textile pattern that combined elements from both of them, making use of a snake pattern created to mimic the pattern of MJ's barcelona outfit during his olympic run with the dream team.
If you haven't yet, check out the precursor to this post: my rebrand of Higher Ground Sports & lifestyle. If you find this project interesting & have a similar one you need help with, you can click the contact button below.