Over the last few years, we have gone through many really exciting transitions with the evolution of our coaching team, a launch of our Squad programming, and an ever-increasing reach to athletes across the world.
It has been an amazing journey, with Kelli and I so proud of our team and the athletes we get to call, “our community.” We now stand on the threshold of opening the hub of it all — the new home for Purple Patch in San Francisco. In the coming weeks, we will be inviting our close friends and family to become a part of the early opening of the Purple Patch Center, with a full opening to the public starting in late April.
The center will have a large positive impact on our coaching team, as well as all of our athletes who make up the Purple Patch community, no matter where you live. With the development of all the programs, and now a real physical space, we realized that we need to refresh and clean up our look and feel to align with the Purple Patch feeling across all programs. Kelli and I felt that, with some helpful advice from a good friend, that now was the time to set a look and feel that could carry us for the coming years. A clean and simplified logo, supported with a consistent color scheme, that will flow nicely through:
- A physical space
- Digital content and a website
- Educational materials and content
- Apparel
- Your tattoo. Kelli still claims it is a year of free training to the first who gets the “P” of Purple Patch tattoo!
Kelli and I are our own harshest critics in these areas and feel we have done a C+ effort in aligning all of us — coaches and athletes — under a singular look and feel. We have flipped with colors, logo, and brand, so now was the time to align and make a firm decision on the path ahead.
Our mission was to simplify and align on colors that could appeal to all, and feel consistent with our athlete-focused and professional standards we hold ourselves to.
You may have noticed a few things changing over the last week — and much more to follow. We managed to recruit a good friend to assist in brand development (Benny Gold: lead designer at Goodby Silverstein). Imagine Benny's delight when we mentioned that our chosen colors were black with gold — his last name is Gold. There isn’t a greater design expert in ‘everything gold’ than Benny! A few notes on the new look that you will see creeping in:
- The official colors: Black and Gold, with a little subtle accent of Blue, to bring our apparel and center to life.
- Yes, there is no Purple! Our name is Purple Patch. Look up the phrase and you will realize it is a feeling and 'state of flow' more than a color. With this said, the artists among you won’t let it escape you that gold is a really nice complementary color to purple and one that is used in many royal garbs. With my own descent from the British royal family, this seemed appropriate.
- A single P. Our name is Purple Patch. Two Ps. We chose to go with a simple and single stamp of a P. The reason? We want something that is simple, recognizable, and easy to replicate across all the use cases outlined above.
- New apparel coming. We are going to make a concerted effort to dial-up our accessible apparel for you all now we have a center. We aim to have lots of fun with t-shirts, water bottles, swim caps, and much more. We will all stay with our current kit for 2020, but we will launch the 2021 version toward the end of the year. Much more fun coming here, so that we can all represent.
- It is going to permeate your Purple Patch life. Stay tuned for continued and gradual changes over the coming weeks. This bulletin, the Sunday Special, Education Hub, and many other elements will shift. We will be all in synch and live when we launch the center, with its black base and gold logos to signify the spiritual home for all of us. We will be sharing many pictures over the coming weeks.
We are really excited for the change and evolution. Here is the new logo and wording — we hope you love it:
