Irox
A platform that runs sports facilities — members, court bookings, lessons, courses. One mark that has to work for every sport on it.
The problem
One mark, every sport
Irox runs the boring half of a sports facility: who is a member, which court is free on Thursday, who signed up for the lesson, who has paid. A tennis club, a football pitch and a basketball hall all run the same software, and they all put the same mark on the door.
Which rules out most of what a sports mark usually is. A racket belongs to one sport. A net belongs to two. A ball belongs to whichever ball you draw. Anything specific would have excluded the rest of the platform on the day it signed them.
A court, and whatever ball is on it
Every court, one platform.
The mark is a court seen from above, with the ball at its centre. Which ball is left open on purpose: a tennis ball, a football, a basketball. The rectangle is any court; the dot is whatever gets played on it.
The wordmark carries the same idea rather than repeating it. The O of IROX is that ball, in the same green, at the same weight — so the name has the mark inside it and the two never need to appear together to be understood.
Construction
A rectangle, a dot, and nothing else
The proportions are fixed, not judged by eye. Measured on the production artwork, they come out identical in the horizontal and the vertical lockup, to the second decimal.
- Court
- 1 : 1.348
- Line weight
- 13.04% of the width
- Ball
- 26.67% of the width
- Position
- Centred on both axes, exactly
The court is not drawn to any real ratio — a tennis court is 1:2.17, a five-a-side pitch nearer 1:2. It is a court, not that court, which is the whole point of a mark that has to cover every sport on the platform.
Color
Two colors, and only one of them can talk
Navy
#0F2D42
The lines, the wordmark, every piece of text.
Green
#00C27A
The ball, and the O. Nothing else.
The green measures 6.10:1 on the navy and reads. On white it measures 2.33:1 — under even the 3:1 that WCAG asks of graphics, let alone the 4.5:1 it asks of text. So it is not a text color, and the system never asks it to be one: on a light ground the navy does all the talking and the green stays the ball.
Typography
One family, and a round O
IROX
ABCDEFGHIJKLM
abcdefghijklm
1234567890
A geometric sans, chosen for one letter. The wordmark only works if the O can stop being a letter and become a ball without anyone noticing the swap: that needs an O that is already a circle, at a weight heavy enough to hold the green.
The system
Where it has to work
A facility puts this on a door, a shirt, a receipt and a scoreboard. Two lockups, two orientations, and a single-color version for everything printed by whoever is printing that week.
Outcome
What was delivered
- Logo system — horizontal and vertical lockups, with and without the payoff
- Negative and single-color versions of each
- Two-color palette, with the rule on which one may carry type
- Montserrat across the system
Next project
Self-initiated concept · Brand identity, packaging