How adidas Became the Unofficial Sponsor of the MLB All-Star Game
The MLB All-Star Game is an annual mid-season match between two teams of all-stars, representing each of the MLB's two leagues. Fans get to vote on some of the players and it's generally a fun occasion to see the MLB's best go up against one another. For the 2023 season, despite the event usually being dominated by one of its competitors, adidas wanted to make the event a home run for its baseball brand, adidas Dugout.
Working with creative agency Wolfgang LA and Brazilian design studio Black Madre, adidas (unofficially) sponsored some of the event's key players - J.D. Martinez, Luis Robert Jr., Julio Rodriguez and Corey Seager - and created a series of music festival-inspired posters that honour the musical heritage of the game's host city, Seattle.
Black Madre's head of art, Icaro Yuji, discusses the project with LBB's Ben Conway.
For the 'adidas Summer Bash' - a fictional event that avoids mention of the official All-Star Game - Black Madre's artists and animators designed a set of stylish, cartoon posters and a host of vibrant, cutesie social assets for fans to share and celebrate their team's All-Star selections. Inspired by Seattle's rich musical heritage, the designs are also infused with a classic music festival vibe and highlight the skills and characteristics of both the baseball stars and their respective teams, including the LA Dodgers, Texas Rangers, Seattle Mariners and Chicago White Sox.
"The biggest challenge was that, as it was a very fast and dynamic project, it was necessary to work with several contributing artists at the same time," says Icaro, "so it was necessary to have a specific direction and to monitor these works very closely so that in the end they came out with the identity that characterised them as being from the same project."
"It was also challenging to represent the elements of each player's teams and their cities, without mentioning the team itself," he says. "Adidas was not an official sponsor, so it was necessary to hint at them in some way, but without actually mentioning them - with colour palettes and elements that represent the teams and cities."
The assets were shared across adidas Dugout's social accounts, as well as being made available as stickers for fans of the players and even to use online. The project has also been an awards show success for Black Madre, now having won two Bronzes in the design category at the Clio Sports Awards - one for Posters and one for Fan Engagement.
Discussing how the artwork was brought to life, Icaro explains that the Black Madre team primarily employed digital illustration, using a digital tablet to draw the designs before they underwent a vectoring process. "Vectorisation is important because it lets us manipulate and adapt the images later on, so that they all look like they come from the same collection," he says. "It also makes it easier to turn these posters into animations."
This process of finalising a coherent series of posters and sticker designs was particularly satisfying for Icaro. "My favourite part of the project was when we received all the posters from the contributing artists," he adds. "It was unifying them all to turn them into a cohesive identity, where they reinforced each other that made it a bigger project than just the individual illustrations."
See the full campaign visuals here.
