Sports identity designer & co-founder of Brandiose, Jason Klein

I've always loved the quote "Luck is when hard work meets opportunity." We began designing tons of logos for high schools in our hometown of San Diego. Our first summer, we sent our portfolio to 150 Minor League Baseball teams and one got back: the West Tenn Diamond Jaxx. They told us, "If we like it, we'll buy it." It was hard work earning our first team, but opportunity came.

The baseball industry is a real family style fraternity. Everyone knows everyone. No matter what service you provide, the industry is great at promoting companies they love, so most of the time the clubs find you.

When we started, we had no experience, and everyone was touting "design experience." We looked at the business world and saw all these 100-year old corporations with a ton of experience that provided terrible product and awful service. From that point we set out to deliver imaginative ideas and rockstar service, with no experience whatsoever. The ideas helped the Lehigh Valley IronPigs and Richmond Flying Squirrels become top selling merchandisers, and we built our brand on our ideas, not our experience.

There's this weird moment in every project when it's unveiled. It's no longer this club and Brandiose project - it's now the fans that own the identity. It has meaning and context, and lovers and haters. Every time I see the Cincinnati Reds on ESPN, I think of where I was when it was just a blank Illustrator file. Now it's a whole different thing.

Great question! A identity can be a celebration of a new ballpark, a new ownership group, a departure from the past, a fresh coat of paint, a relocation, or a merchandise energizer. Sometimes it's a political message that the organization doesn't want to be associated with that "other thing."

We measure brand success several ways: retail profit, how creatively empowered the staff becomes, staff productivity, attendance, loyalty to the brand, and fame and notoriety. Alex Bogusky once said, "If nobody's talking about your brand, it's dead." This plays a very important role in our process and how we measure success.

There's nothing unique to our process. We start by visiting with staff, fans and community leaders and uncovering the soul of the franchise. Then we develop a universe that captures this soul. We fill it with characters, rituals, traditions, and logos - and they all come to life on a sketchpad first. We always explore how to best tell the team's story, then dream up the graphic elements to tell this story.

Canson sketchpad, Moleskine, Canon 20D, bic ballpoint pen, Wacom stylus, Staedtler Mars plastic eraser, Staedtler 925 .03 mechanical pencil.

Our Brand Discovery visits always provide a mother-load of creative inspiration. We find ourselves in towns we've never been to, with incredible heritage, and unique stories that put their community on the map. They all come with unique colors, signage, textures and social dynamics. No two American cities are alike. The trick is to find out what makes this hometown unique and communicate it through the look and feel of the team identity.

A quality project is where we increased retail sales, tried something new to make the team famous, empowered the staff creatively, and they felt we treated them like rockstars. Popping a cold one after-hours with all our clubs' staff members is important too.

We always love telling great stories and trying things which have never been done before. Challenging the status quo is in our DNA. Collaborating with the Spokane Tribe of Indians on the first tribe-sports team identity collaboration, was groundbreaking and a real honor. We also invented the first glow-in-the-dark on-field baseball cap for the Casper Ghosts, and the first on-field Rally Cap design for the Altoona Curve.

We've always made it a point to give every club we work with a world class experience. Every day we get to work with our best friends (the staff at all our clubs). We have the best job in America. While the Reds are a Major League franchise, working with MLB was like working with another good friend. No better or more important than any other friend.

We really don't look at the process this way. We're all on the same team trying to find the best way to tell the team's story. Once we agree on the story, there's no wrong way to take the brand.

American baseball brands are more than clever cap designs. They're these captivating stories waiting to be told. Every day we come to play in these imaginative worlds where we're dreaming up new rituals, team villains, and even signature food items. Each team embodies a unique story, and poses its own challenges. So from a creative standpoint, there's endless ways to continue expanding and developing our teams' brands - and there's 160 Minor League Baseball teams! When you combine this with getting to work with passionate, creative and fun friends at each team, every day is a new adventure.

A very influential baseball executive once told us, "Nobody heard of [this team] until you guys put them on the map." It was the nicest complement we've ever received.

Strange as it is, we don't have any of our work on display. We don't want to rest on our laurels, and always want to focus on celebrating the project we're currently dreaming up.