UTAH NIGHTHAWKS
Utah has got itself an NHL hockey team, and there has been a lot of chatter about what the name and design of the new team should be. I love hockey and this was some pretty exciting news! How could I not give my interpretation for what I think the design should be. Some of the names and ideas that have been tossed around are: Yetis, Venom, Blizzard, and Golden Eagles. While I think that theses names are great and can lead to a wonderful identity I wanted to take things in a different direction. I decided to lean more into a military aspect as well as incorporate some subtle for nods to the rich Native American history of Utah as well.
This is my take on the project!
Service
Brand Design
Year
2024
Concept and Inspiration
After spending time looking into all the cool and interesting things around Utah, I started to generate a list of names that I thought could work. Some of these were pretty obvious like "Seagulls or Gulls" but I threw those out because I didn't find anything interesting design wise going down that line. One of the ideas that stuck out to me was the armed forces, Utah is home to the Hill Air Force Base and I thought that was really cool and could lead to names that weren't what everyone was thinking.
Looking into names of aircrafts and units and really anything to do with or around the Base, I came across the F-117 Nighthawk. This was the United States first total stealth aircraft and its design was fascinating! I loved the angular design that provided it's stealth. These angles reminded me of the mountains of Utah and when looking at the front of the aircraft I could see a silhouette of a mountain and thought it was perfect.
Nighthawks it is!
Typography and Lettering
When looking at the two most recent additions the the NHL, the Seattle Kraken and Las Vegas Golden Knights, I really liked how they incorporated the letter of the team into the logo. I wanted to do something similar and found when I looked at the letter "U" it was giving me wing vibes, which went right along with the Nighthawk name I had settled on.
Using this I created two designs based on font that I found that was bold and angular like the Nighthawk aircraft. I also wanted another accent font to compliment the bold design of UTAH and found a simple stencil font that I felt paired nicely and went with the military theme I was working with.
Using all this I was able to incorporate the main "U" letter into both of logos I created.
Colors and Design
The colors proved to be more of a challenge than I thought it would be. I looked at many images of the Utah landscape and pulled colors from them and tested various iterations of how those colors would look as part of the overall logo. Everything and nothing was quite right. I knew I wanted the Nighthawk to be black as that was the main color of the aircraft. In certain lighting however the blacks could look a bluish grey or purple and I started to lean into this. I also wanted to tie the team in with the other pro team in Utah the Utah Jazz. Past colors for the Jazz also included a light blue and purple and so it was settled. Black, Grey, Purple and Blue were the perfect colors to fit my design and when added I felt that everything was finally perfect.