NBAPES - Case Study
Role: Creative Director, Graphic Designer, Co-Founder, Artist
What: NBAPES Club Inc. is a family built and run NFT project inspired by NBA and basketball culture.
Responsibilities: Conceptualized and created a complete working brand identity, strategy, and direction. Designed deliverables including but not limited to; logo, icons, brand elements, type system, Twitter ads, posters, banners, animated videos, website, and mock-ups. Hand drew over 4000 NFTs. Numerous meetings with founders planning creative direction and marketing.
THE NBAPES LOGO STORY
NBAPES is a play on words. It combines the NBA and the now widespread ape NFT category. It is pronounced N - B - APES, which is extremely clever but proves tricky to pronounce. The word mark breaks up the name to aid with pronunciation and memorability.
NBAPES is obsessed with basketball, so the logo had to be distinctive to its own culture. The goal was to combine the characters of the name NBAPES with the shape and feel of a basketball.
Geometric shapes will always be fashionable. The heavy weight of the characters allows them to feel inflated like a basketball.
The word mark extends its typeface to popular NFT slang for fun community content.
The infamous “silhouette ape” has quickly become a huge part of the brand as one of its most recognizable graphics, and it has since been adopted as the pictorial mark of NBAPES.
NBAPES uses Helvetica as its primary typeface. This complements the logo type and aids in creating its bold but mature brand personality.
Videos showcasing NBAPES promotional information feature MC Random music and intend to hype up followers of the club. These videos have produced some of NBAPES' most successful and widest reaching tweets.
Each NBAPES NFT was hand drawn and created to be unique. The goal was to finish every drawing with the thought that someone somewhere would genuinely appreciate this artwork. There is an NBAPES NFT for everyone.
Results
NBAPES hit over 10,000 Twitter followers, 45,000 likes, 2.5 million impressions, and sold out the entire collection of 2,023 NFTs in one day. Since sellout, over 500 NBAPES NFTs have been sold on secondary market and NBAPES has reached a floor price of 5x the average sale price.
Client Testimonial
“Josiah Bishop was employed as a creative director at NBAPES Club Inc. from 2022 - 2023. His main role was to lead the overall design and execution for the brand identity and the creative aspect of marketing initiatives. Josiah was responsible for creating a cohesive image that embodies our company's brand identity, which ranged from logos to website design, layouts and traditional marketing materials. He also was in charge of the creation and customization of our NFT artwork, consisting of 2,023 individual pieces. His time management of collaborating, conceiving and implementing concepts to completion were followed through with excellence. Josiah fulfilled his employment responsibilities, while greatly succeeding our expectations.” - NBAPES Founders
