Year

Role

Discipline

Credits

2020

Creative Director / Brand Design Lead

Brand Identity · Art Direction · Video

Miles Vidreiro

Background

For nearly 15 years, Aceing Autism has worked to become the preeminent thought leader on how sport, and specifically tennis, helps to develop individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Their tennis camps use custom tailored fitness programming and social connection to serve each individual's needs. 

The Challenge

During the pandemic, families who had come to rely on Aceing's tennis programs as an outlet and development opportunity for their children suddenly had nowhere to go. In partnership with their ASD Program Director, Miles Vidreiro, I was tasked with establishing a strategy for bringing Aceing Autism to affected families. We would also use this "down-time" in in-person tennis camps to refresh the brand's look and feel, providing updated program materials for when sessions began in the future.

The Execution

Our solution for bringing Aceing programming home was to utilize the brand's social channels, a space which had typically been reserved for program updates. This would have the added potential benefit of program growth through social algorithms during a time when social media usage was at an all-time high.

Armed with an iPhone, a tripod, and zero audio equipment, Miles and I set out to create weekly training sessions for the families stuck at home. Each lesson would include multiple warmups and skills challenges at varying degrees of difficulty, as well as sections solely devoted to interaction and inclusion where Miles directly addresses the audience. After all full training sessions were published, idividual exercises could then be cut down for stories or cut and reordered for new, customized lessons.

The team also decided to use this time away from in-person clinics as an opportunity to refresh the visual identity without a staggered rollout of materials. Our two major focuses were modernizing the logo, keeping legibility in mind, as the original logo suffered greatly in that department, and updating the Visual Schedule illustrations, as it was an integral component and point of focus to every clinic.

Taking notes from brands associated with sensory art and crafts, I leaned into a diverse color palette reminiscent of play-doh, crayons, or construction paper, and an illustration style that is meant to mimic cut paper crafts. The final logotype and monogram continued to use the unique "A" form created by the throat of a tennis racquet, but did so in a more streamlined, legible way.