American Quizbowl League - Identity

Joseph Feldman, president of the American Quizbowl League, was looking for a clean, modern visual identity to usher his brand into a new era. Originally the Long Island Quiz Bowl Alliance, the business rebranded into the American Quizbowl League after being forced to cancel contests due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Due to the pandemic, the company moved the cancelled contests online, a novel step for quizbowl hosts at the time.

Now America’s number one name in online quizbowl, with dozens of major innovations to their name, the company needed a visual identity to complement the brand.

I designed a custom typeface for the lettermark, using the principles of sans serif typographic styles, but with added serif extensions to bring the design together and harken back to the rich legacy of almost 70 years of quizbowl tournaments.

To go with this perfect blend of modern and traditional aesthetic, I created an elegant and timeless symbol, inspired by traditional elements commonly associated with quizbowls, such as stadiums, question marks, lightbulbs, and magnifying glasses.

This symbol not only serves as the letter Q in the lettermark, but also works beautifully as a standalone icon to be used on websites, social media profile pictures, app icons, business cards, and so on. The logomark can also be used as a beautiful seamless pattern with interesting negative spaces to adorn the edges of stationery, clothing, and so forth.

The color blue was selected for its ability to invoke feelings of tranquility and trust, as well as its potential to increase productivity. Aside from being a fun and energetic color, this particular shade was chosen beacuse it reminded the viewer of the color of the American flag, a symbol of freedom and independence across the globe.

For the wordmark, Oswald, a bold, modern, Alternate Gothic, sans serif typeface created by the legendary Vernon Adams was selected, with a semi-bold weight chosen to represent the business.

Both black and white versions of the logo were created, alongside  colored variants. All colors used were pantone compatible, as the logo was to be used not only on digital media, but also on printed media such as T-shirts, noteboooks, notepads, and so on.

Your design is excellent! We want to use it!

The logo was delivered in multiple resolutions, in both color and black and white variants, in transparent, vector and print ready formats along with a brand style guide containing instructions on using the color, the typeface and the different variants.