one orange
in the summer of 2020…
Student-athletes from every team at Syracuse University were brought together to form a group to bring awareness to social justice, equity, and change. The group is known as the Diversity & Inclusion Student-Athlete Board (DISAB).
I was the leader of the social/branding committee and was tasked with creating a brand for DISAB. In our first meeting I asked everyone to take five minutes and write down everything they wanted our group to represent.
This was the first stepping stone in our journey to become the only brand in the country to represent a university’s student-athletes, athletic department, fans, campus, and greater community.
The one orange logo
After our initial meeting, I had the idea for the One Orange logo. After several iterations, we landed on the one you see here.
We knew we had strong imagery to represent our group. What we didn’t know was how much of an impact it would have.
in the fall of 2020…
We petitioned the athletic department to have all the student-athletes wear shirts that we designed on the sidelines of games. Once we got their backing, we needed to reach out to NIKE to get their permission to use their shirts for our design.
As a NIKE school, we found it important to have the SWOOSH on our shirts because it would help make our group look profound and match all the other gear we wear at our competitions.
Photos courtesy of Syracuse Athletics
Being recognized
The football team was the first to debut our shirts. For the entire athletic year, all the teams wore our shirts pregame and on the sidelines. We had received a few questions about the shirts from fans throughout the fall season, but it was once the basketball teams took the court that we started to get an overwhelming amount of people asking if they could buy the One Orange shirts.
We partnered with he university’s Campus Store to sell the shirts. The shirts were available in store and online. We made one thing clear in this agreement, we did not want the university to profit off our shirts. We asked that all the profits be sent to the Boys & Girls Club of Syracuse.
in the spring of 2021
With all of the success we had throughout the fall semester and beginning of the spring semester, we wanted to truly bring all the teams together as one. The result was the Black Athletes Lives Matter March.
On a cold, snowy, rainy, and windy April morning, all of the Syracuse University sports teams marched on campus to the athletic complex in solidarity with our minority teammates.
At the end of the march there was a ceremony featuring speeches and performances by student-athletes. On that day we were all truly ONE TEAM, ONE FAMILY, ONE ORANGE.
BALM March video
What one orange means to me
This entire project was an incredibly hard and rewarding journey. It gave me a perspective on how the professional world works. The hoops to jump through, people to please, and rules to follow. It taught me patience with my work and others. I believe this project is my best example of what it looks like to work with a team successfully. Just like being One Orange.
We were able to do all of this because we all worked together as one. Our goal was to use our voices as student-athletes to bring about change to our own athletic community. Together, as ONE TEAM, ONE FAMILY, ONE ORANGE, we were able to do so much more.
To learn more about DISAB and One Orange click the link below: