I played in London with one of the guys on the Pretenders and he hit me up a few months ago about taking on a re-brand with them. He let me have full creative control on ideas and everything was on the table.
The Oslo Pretenders are at the top of the Norwegian League but lacked a true individual identity and no official mascot. After having a few ideas presented and rejected, I did some deeper research and found that trolls are a main fixture in folklore in Norway. There are several very famous statues and representations of them all over the country. Hairy, large, creepy eyes - seemed ripe for character exploration.
And it was a hit! I had several versions with different swings (Bellinger, Bryce Harper, Griffey) but where I ended up seemed to be the most appropriate for the mascot. Clubbing a deep gapper in the power alley with a knotty tree branch. Slovenly hair and bearded, he is MAGNUS THE PRETENDER! A master of tricks and possessing deceptive speed. Is it dark magic? A diet that has virtually no parameters? We may never know…
For the Home hat, I wanted to keep it simple but definitely bring together a well considered concept with regional references. A classic framework of a blackletter capital P but featuring references to waves crashing being that Oslo is a well-known port city. Vikings founded it around 1040! It is also known as the “Tiger City” so I used the Detroit Tigers capital D as inspiration for the P mark. This will help them carve out an identity to move further and maybe we’ll get some new uniforms to go with it in the near future! These are among my favorite projects to work on as you can tell.