MACCABI GAMES

Creative Direction | Identity | Project Management | Digital | Print

The JCC Maccabi Games are an international athletic competition for Jewish teens. Much like The Olympics, athletes compete against other Jewish teens from all over the United States as well as delegations from Israel, Great Britain, Mexico, Canada, and more. The games also focus on sportsmanship, making friendships, building connections to Judaism, community involvement and teamwork. The Games are one of the largest Jewish teen events in the world; each summer over 3,000 Jewish teens participate. Over 100,000 teens have benefited from the JCC Maccabi Games since 1982. In 2027, Austin, Texas is set to host the JCC Maccabi Games! Each host city has a unique brand that is prominent throughout the event and used as a way to create connections with the delegation and those who are visiting.

Phase 1

In the early stages of this project, and as it was announced Austin would be hosting, a small group of board members and some members from the Marketing Team were called in to discuss a host logo. I was assigned to create the host logo and work with the board members to come to a final decision. We also had a tight turnaround of 1 month! (eek) due to a public announcement needing to go out to JCC communities. We set regularly scheduled meetings and created a marketing timeline which had planned review periods and a deliverable date. A creative brief was sent out to the board members to capture their thoughts. With this information, I created moodboards, color palettes and sketches to present some ideas in our first meeting.

MOODBOARDS

SKETCHES

PHASE 2

In the next meeting, I presented some digital drafts to the team. I shared 5 approaches, all stemming from the sketches that were highlighted by the team.

PHASE 3

In the third meeting, I presented 3 different versions based on the groups feedback.

PHASE 4

In the fourth meeting, we had narrowed the design to one approach and explored some different color variants.

Final Product

After many iterations and ideas, we landed on the true ‘Texas Shape’ and theme, dropping the sun/cowboy hat. This branding will be the face of Team Austin in 2027 with many marketing, print and digital assets. The final logo serves as an anchor to the brand while having elements we can pull from for other branding aspects.