Asheville Athletic
I missed being present for the debut season of Asheville City SC by less than a year. Instead, my journey took me back to Raleigh where I started to get more interested in the sport. Oh, what could have been…
Tim from the You’re Smarter Than Us podcast gave me a prompt for this rebrand. He wanted to see what I could make the team’s connection to the city through author Thomas Wolfe, who wrote “Look Homeward, Angel.” In the book, Asheville is called Altamont and there are several angel statues erected around town.
From that prompt we landed on an angel wing motif that uses two A’s. The design went through a couple of iterations that looked more like spaceships than wings before we landed on this final version. I think the crest also has more impact without any wording, which is something I haven’t done in this series yet. Finally, for the name I chose to go with Athletic over Angels. In a previous entry, I had received feedback to avoid religious tones in a secular city and I think a work around for this is that the nickname of the team could still be angels.
Asheville would continue playing their home games at Memorial Stadium. Hopefully the club and fans can invest in improvements and repairs in the coming years and work things out with the residents nearby.
Asheville City SC is linked with stripes in my mind, but since I’m doing a full rebrand for this club I wanted to get away from that and embrace the wing on the shoulder look. The program I use didn’t have too many options, but the concept is there.
Special thanks to Russell Varner for his help editing.
About me
First and foremost I am an amateur with no formal training. My hope is that this series will spark other creatives to make their own versions. Learn more about the series here. I was born and raised in Middlesex, North Carolina and have spent most of my adult life living in Raleigh. I am a fan of the beautiful game who wants to see it grow at the grassroots level.
