The Rustbelts project began as digital character trading card illustrations for the team, which evolved into the project's second phase: creating an actual logo and brand identity. The preliminary pencil and marker sketches revealed above reflect this evolution, playing out the visual possibilities of a belt wrapped around a basketball to symbolize the team across various decades: 60s, 70s ABA to NBA, and 80s. Pages reflect on the belt wrapped shape, buckle elements, wordmark location, and the visual elements of wrapping the belt around a jersey. The logo and wordmark are pushed through many iterations, refined into lightning bolt type, tested with both "PITT" and "Pittsburgh" logo lockups, until the wrapped belt mark reads clean at a glance. Character illustrations serve as a starting piece, but the project is much more extensive going forward into team logo design, complete branding system, jerseys, and merch. The project is still in progress, and the logo and wordmark are still being locked down.

First vectored file: initial concept drawn up for the direction I wanted to take the logo. A belt wrapping into a “rustbelt” even though a rustbelt is not a real thing, more a region of the United States where industry is widespread.