CREATING THE NEW BRAND WAS LABOR OF LOVE
5/15/2019 3:31:00 PM | General
‘Seeing it Come to Life Just Confirmed We Made the Right Choices’
By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider
When NIKE made its first campus visit 18 months ago, starting a rebranding process that culminated with last month's launch and unveiling at McLane Stadium, it's safe to say that Baylor Athletics' uniforms were all over the map.
Jeff Barlow, Assistant AD for Equipment Services, said he knew "we were kind of off-kilter a little bit." But, when he laid out every uniform option for all 19 intercollegiate sports – which included five different greens and three gold variations – it hit him that we are "way, way too far gone. We need to reel this in."
That moment was shocking as well for Baylor VP and Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades, who "knew we needed some consistency."
"But, when you see it on paper, and you see the inventory of all the different uniforms, all the different BUs in our facilities, we kind of looked at each other and said, 'You know, we're a little bit of a mess. We need to clean it up and make it consistent among all 19 of our sports programs,''' Rhoades said.
That initial visit, when NIKE met with Baylor's historical committee, key decision-makers, a brand identity group, student-athletes and donors, started a process to "reel it in" and give Baylor Athletics and the University a signature look.
"It's unbelievable. Seeing where we are today makes you appreciate the process even more, seeing the direction that we're going," said Senior Associate AD for External Relations Jovan Overshown, who headed up the project on Baylor's end.
"Especially with the unification of the institution itself, it's just so much stronger that way. The strength, the unity, is representative of the Baylor that we know, that we're proud of. And we're able, with one identifying mark, to showcase that locally and across the country."
For Overshown and Barlow, and really everyone involved in the process, this was a labor of love.
"We knew that if we did this process right, it would probably take a couple of years," Overshown said. "There's just a lot involved – the research; understanding; building essentially a story with what you're crafting. And then, the reality that you are literally creating a new identify for each sport. Some schools have done some tweaks and revisions and been pretty minimal. It's not like we were just tweaking A color or just tweaking A mark. This was a holistic brand change. So, to do it in a year half is pretty efficient."
From the start, there was the sense that NIKE "gets us." After meeting with the various groups on campus, their creative team identified the five core elements that best define Baylor as tradition, family, strength, passion and spiritual growth.
It's not just a coincidence that they align almost perfectly with Mack Rhoades' four pillars of Preparing Champions for Life: academic achievement, athletic success, social responsibility and spiritual growth.
"I really feel like for us – for Mack, for Doug (McNamee), for those of us that were on that committee – that was in essence them passing the very first critical test for us," Overshown said. "That was reassuring to us, for them to identify those attributes, those key personality traits of our existing brand, we knew they would then carry those elements forward throughout this entire process. We had confidence that we were going to stay on course with this."
Even while trying to get outside the box and come up with more of a modern mark, the interlocking BU was non-negotiable. The updated mark includes some subtle changes with rounded edges, angled interior corners and a sharp interior chisel fashioned to replicate the tip of a bear claw.
"That was the one stipulation we gave NIKE, you can come up with some other primary marks, you can try to push us out of the box a little. But, we do not see there being anything that could drive us away from wanting that to be our primary mark," Overshown said. "We wanted to use that as a visual identifier for the unity that we're trying to portray across all of our sports, the school and beyond. For us specifically, it's been around for more than 50 years. For the university, far more than that. And it's our identifier."
Beyond the primary mark of the interlocking BU, most of the discussions centered on the color options.
The obvious choices were the traditional green and gold, but which specific shade or variation of those two colors?
Those colors can be traced back to the spring of 1897, when a group of Baylor students were traveling by train to Bryan, Texas, for a debate tournament. As legend has it, Sara Rose Kendall spotted a rolling field of dandelions from her train window and thought it made a "lovely combination." Shortly thereafter, green and gold made their historic debut as the school colors at a Baylor Glee Club concern on March 25.
"For me, where we landed the colors we're using, we're aligned with the university," Barlow said. "In 1897, you looked out on that field and saw those colors. I mean, how can you argue with that?"
Overshown said NIKE spent a lot of time researching and pulling fabric and swatches "and sending those to us to see how they pair and the different mediums that they would be used on. So, we had a great deal of conversations around color."
In talking through what combinations looked best together, the gold that football has used in the past tended to look more beige or washed-out, while the University Gold (from NIKE's palette) pops more.
There were several options in green, including the fir green used by football, baseball and softball and the apple or kelly green with track and field. But, the final choice was the gorge green that's been used primarily with basketball uniforms.
"Fir is a very muted green. It's dark, but it's very muted," Barlow said. "Once you put the gorge with the university gold, it just really popped. Gorge is a little bit brighter. It's dark, but it's brighter."
On the first visit to the NIKE campus in Eugene, Ore., in February 2018, their creative team presented about three different variations of primary marks and three or four different bear head options, Overshown said, "and the first generation was not at all where we landed."
"We had given them pretty loose parameters – maintain the interlocking BU, but move us forward – so there was a lot of expectation, anticipation," she said. "That was our first opportunity to get a glimpse into the creativity and the minds of Nike. Everything they did, there was a purpose and a reason behind it. They, actually, visually told a story. They walked us through the design inspiration.
"That was relatively simple that day, because we knew we would go back home, they'd make some tweaks, send us a new deck, and then we would digest it here on campus with some others involved."
When NIKE sent sample jerseys with new marks and the color combinations, Jovan remembers standing in a room with Rhoades and staring at the different green options on the wall, "and no one else would probably see the distinction."
"Even with the gold we landed on, the different variations and shades of that. You're asking people to come in and take a peek, and they're going, 'I don't even see what you're talking about,''' she said. "It was a very careful process, even looking at it in different lighting. There was a lot of conversation beyond that trip at Nike that was just on colors alone. We knew the direction we wanted to go, but it was still what variation of that do we go with?"
In May 2018, NIKE met specifically with football and brought in several different variations and color pairings, "just so you could see it on an actual model," Jovan said. "So, that helped bring some things to life."
After that, it was meeting with each of the team's coaches and sport administrators to go over the uniform options and walk them through the process of how the selections were made.
"Change is hard," Jovan said. "But when you actually care to take the time to walk someone through the process of the whys and you can help tell that same story that NIKE helped shape and define for us, it helps. . . . The coaches have been part of the process from the very beginning, because we certainly wanted their buy-in. I think our coaches had a strong appreciation for what we were trying to do and why."
One of the secondary marks is the new bear head, which was a collaborative effort with the NIKE designers and our very own Joe Gonzales, director of digital media.
"You probably don't realize how many bear mascots there are out there," Jovan said. "That is a difficult mascot to create your own distinctive image for. NIKE pulled the history of the various iterations of Baylor's mascots, and then proposed some initial variations for us and talked about the whys.
"There were a few options they presented that we liked bits and pieces of it. We narrowed our scope to about two. And then Joe Gonzales actually tweaked and manipulated and merged bits and pieces of the two. We sent that back to NIKE, and then they were able to take that and kind of in their NIKE way refine it to make the mark that we have."
After a final review trip to the NIKE campus on March 26, the official launch and unveiling was on April 13, just prior to the Baylor football spring game.
"That's where I think I'm a little bit different," Jovan said of the launch day. "I think people expected me to be a ball of nerves. But, having been through the entire process, I know the care that went into it and I know the intent and the investment of everybody that was a part of this. I knew that it was so well-intended, and I knew that this could really propel us into a positive direction."
While the football spring game was moved to the Allison Indoor Facility, not even the lightning or monsoon could put a damper on the Baylor United unveiling.
As Baylor President Dr. Linda Livingstone said, "I'm thinking this rain and thunder is God really clapping for the Baylor Bears today."
For Barlow, even more than the launch day, the defining moment was seeing the uniforms NIKE presented on March 26.
"I think we got to see seven or eight of the sports uniforms," Barlow said. "Just seeing that, everybody in the room was smiling and happy with what they saw coming to life. It's really just the fruits of your labor coming to fruition. I've told several people in our team this, but when it comes in front of us like that in real life, it just confirmed to me that we made the right choices."
Baylor Bear Insider
When NIKE made its first campus visit 18 months ago, starting a rebranding process that culminated with last month's launch and unveiling at McLane Stadium, it's safe to say that Baylor Athletics' uniforms were all over the map.
Jeff Barlow, Assistant AD for Equipment Services, said he knew "we were kind of off-kilter a little bit." But, when he laid out every uniform option for all 19 intercollegiate sports – which included five different greens and three gold variations – it hit him that we are "way, way too far gone. We need to reel this in."
That moment was shocking as well for Baylor VP and Director of Athletics Mack Rhoades, who "knew we needed some consistency."
"But, when you see it on paper, and you see the inventory of all the different uniforms, all the different BUs in our facilities, we kind of looked at each other and said, 'You know, we're a little bit of a mess. We need to clean it up and make it consistent among all 19 of our sports programs,''' Rhoades said.
That initial visit, when NIKE met with Baylor's historical committee, key decision-makers, a brand identity group, student-athletes and donors, started a process to "reel it in" and give Baylor Athletics and the University a signature look.
"It's unbelievable. Seeing where we are today makes you appreciate the process even more, seeing the direction that we're going," said Senior Associate AD for External Relations Jovan Overshown, who headed up the project on Baylor's end.
"Especially with the unification of the institution itself, it's just so much stronger that way. The strength, the unity, is representative of the Baylor that we know, that we're proud of. And we're able, with one identifying mark, to showcase that locally and across the country."
For Overshown and Barlow, and really everyone involved in the process, this was a labor of love.
"We knew that if we did this process right, it would probably take a couple of years," Overshown said. "There's just a lot involved – the research; understanding; building essentially a story with what you're crafting. And then, the reality that you are literally creating a new identify for each sport. Some schools have done some tweaks and revisions and been pretty minimal. It's not like we were just tweaking A color or just tweaking A mark. This was a holistic brand change. So, to do it in a year half is pretty efficient."
From the start, there was the sense that NIKE "gets us." After meeting with the various groups on campus, their creative team identified the five core elements that best define Baylor as tradition, family, strength, passion and spiritual growth.
It's not just a coincidence that they align almost perfectly with Mack Rhoades' four pillars of Preparing Champions for Life: academic achievement, athletic success, social responsibility and spiritual growth.
"I really feel like for us – for Mack, for Doug (McNamee), for those of us that were on that committee – that was in essence them passing the very first critical test for us," Overshown said. "That was reassuring to us, for them to identify those attributes, those key personality traits of our existing brand, we knew they would then carry those elements forward throughout this entire process. We had confidence that we were going to stay on course with this."
Even while trying to get outside the box and come up with more of a modern mark, the interlocking BU was non-negotiable. The updated mark includes some subtle changes with rounded edges, angled interior corners and a sharp interior chisel fashioned to replicate the tip of a bear claw.
"That was the one stipulation we gave NIKE, you can come up with some other primary marks, you can try to push us out of the box a little. But, we do not see there being anything that could drive us away from wanting that to be our primary mark," Overshown said. "We wanted to use that as a visual identifier for the unity that we're trying to portray across all of our sports, the school and beyond. For us specifically, it's been around for more than 50 years. For the university, far more than that. And it's our identifier."
Beyond the primary mark of the interlocking BU, most of the discussions centered on the color options.
The obvious choices were the traditional green and gold, but which specific shade or variation of those two colors?
Those colors can be traced back to the spring of 1897, when a group of Baylor students were traveling by train to Bryan, Texas, for a debate tournament. As legend has it, Sara Rose Kendall spotted a rolling field of dandelions from her train window and thought it made a "lovely combination." Shortly thereafter, green and gold made their historic debut as the school colors at a Baylor Glee Club concern on March 25.
"For me, where we landed the colors we're using, we're aligned with the university," Barlow said. "In 1897, you looked out on that field and saw those colors. I mean, how can you argue with that?"
Overshown said NIKE spent a lot of time researching and pulling fabric and swatches "and sending those to us to see how they pair and the different mediums that they would be used on. So, we had a great deal of conversations around color."
In talking through what combinations looked best together, the gold that football has used in the past tended to look more beige or washed-out, while the University Gold (from NIKE's palette) pops more.
There were several options in green, including the fir green used by football, baseball and softball and the apple or kelly green with track and field. But, the final choice was the gorge green that's been used primarily with basketball uniforms.
"Fir is a very muted green. It's dark, but it's very muted," Barlow said. "Once you put the gorge with the university gold, it just really popped. Gorge is a little bit brighter. It's dark, but it's brighter."
On the first visit to the NIKE campus in Eugene, Ore., in February 2018, their creative team presented about three different variations of primary marks and three or four different bear head options, Overshown said, "and the first generation was not at all where we landed."
"We had given them pretty loose parameters – maintain the interlocking BU, but move us forward – so there was a lot of expectation, anticipation," she said. "That was our first opportunity to get a glimpse into the creativity and the minds of Nike. Everything they did, there was a purpose and a reason behind it. They, actually, visually told a story. They walked us through the design inspiration.
"That was relatively simple that day, because we knew we would go back home, they'd make some tweaks, send us a new deck, and then we would digest it here on campus with some others involved."
When NIKE sent sample jerseys with new marks and the color combinations, Jovan remembers standing in a room with Rhoades and staring at the different green options on the wall, "and no one else would probably see the distinction."
"Even with the gold we landed on, the different variations and shades of that. You're asking people to come in and take a peek, and they're going, 'I don't even see what you're talking about,''' she said. "It was a very careful process, even looking at it in different lighting. There was a lot of conversation beyond that trip at Nike that was just on colors alone. We knew the direction we wanted to go, but it was still what variation of that do we go with?"
In May 2018, NIKE met specifically with football and brought in several different variations and color pairings, "just so you could see it on an actual model," Jovan said. "So, that helped bring some things to life."
After that, it was meeting with each of the team's coaches and sport administrators to go over the uniform options and walk them through the process of how the selections were made.
"Change is hard," Jovan said. "But when you actually care to take the time to walk someone through the process of the whys and you can help tell that same story that NIKE helped shape and define for us, it helps. . . . The coaches have been part of the process from the very beginning, because we certainly wanted their buy-in. I think our coaches had a strong appreciation for what we were trying to do and why."
One of the secondary marks is the new bear head, which was a collaborative effort with the NIKE designers and our very own Joe Gonzales, director of digital media.
"You probably don't realize how many bear mascots there are out there," Jovan said. "That is a difficult mascot to create your own distinctive image for. NIKE pulled the history of the various iterations of Baylor's mascots, and then proposed some initial variations for us and talked about the whys.
"There were a few options they presented that we liked bits and pieces of it. We narrowed our scope to about two. And then Joe Gonzales actually tweaked and manipulated and merged bits and pieces of the two. We sent that back to NIKE, and then they were able to take that and kind of in their NIKE way refine it to make the mark that we have."
After a final review trip to the NIKE campus on March 26, the official launch and unveiling was on April 13, just prior to the Baylor football spring game.
"That's where I think I'm a little bit different," Jovan said of the launch day. "I think people expected me to be a ball of nerves. But, having been through the entire process, I know the care that went into it and I know the intent and the investment of everybody that was a part of this. I knew that it was so well-intended, and I knew that this could really propel us into a positive direction."
While the football spring game was moved to the Allison Indoor Facility, not even the lightning or monsoon could put a damper on the Baylor United unveiling.
As Baylor President Dr. Linda Livingstone said, "I'm thinking this rain and thunder is God really clapping for the Baylor Bears today."
For Barlow, even more than the launch day, the defining moment was seeing the uniforms NIKE presented on March 26.
"I think we got to see seven or eight of the sports uniforms," Barlow said. "Just seeing that, everybody in the room was smiling and happy with what they saw coming to life. It's really just the fruits of your labor coming to fruition. I've told several people in our team this, but when it comes in front of us like that in real life, it just confirmed to me that we made the right choices."
Baylor Football: Weekly Press Conference with Dave Aranda | November 17, 2025
Monday, November 17
Baylor Basketball (W): Darriana Littlepage-Buggs (26 PTS) vs. Le Moyne | November 16, 2025
Sunday, November 16
Baylor Basketball (W): Bella Fontleroy (21 PTS) vs. Le Moyne | November 16, 2025
Sunday, November 16
Baylor Basketball (W): Taliah Scott (22 PTS) vs. Le Moyne | November 16, 2025
Sunday, November 16
