London company LoveGunn has collaborated with Oxford United on its new identification, designed to achieve past soccer into new cultural and business fields (no pun meant) to assist maintain the membership’s on-pitch success.
The studio’s founder, Chris Gunn, was first launched to Oxford United’s chief business & advertising officer, Adam Benson, by a mutual contact. One proposal later – alongside different companies – Benson invited Gunn to a match in opposition to Bolton Wanderers to see the membership’s ambitions in motion. “Experiencing the ambiance firsthand, we discovered a pure alignment between Oxford’s targets and our fan-led strategy, setting the stage for a dynamic artistic partnership,” says Gunn.
As with every rebrand, reaching and fascinating with new audiences was a part of the transient. Nonetheless, Oxford United additionally clarified that it didn’t need to alienate present followers and conventional supporters.
Established as Headington FC in 1893, Oxford United modified their identify in 1960. Extra just lately, and underneath new possession, the membership shocked everybody final season by successful the League One Play-Offs and shifting as much as the Championship for the primary time in 25 years within the 24/25 season.
Regardless of current successes, Gunn explains that the membership understands “the place they sit throughout the soccer pyramid” and accepts the truth of working as a newly promoted Championship membership.
“Whereas they might not all the time compete on the highest ranges on the pitch, the strategic imaginative and prescient is about leveraging this understanding to seek out new, modern methods to have interaction with audiences and increase the fan base to maintain their success,” he provides.
Equally, LoveGunn did not have the identical assets as a Premier League membership, however that did not cease them from aiming for a stage of branding worthy of top-tier ambitions, in keeping with artistic director Tom Love. He says: “Our aim was to mirror Oxford United’s forward-thinking outlook and appeal to new business alternatives with out dropping sight of what makes a soccer membership distinctive.
“The world of soccer is intense, tribal, and fiercely loyal, and that sense of custom and belief is paramount. We approached this venture with the respect it deserves, guaranteeing each choice – irrespective of how progressive – honoured the membership’s wealthy heritage and the deep cultural bond it shares with its supporters.”
A part of LoveGunn’s design philosophy is constructing manufacturers from the within out, and for this venture, that meant placing the followers’ ardour and views on the core. The ambition concerned Oxford United past its conventional soccer heritage and rising right into a progressive life-style and leisure model whereas concurrently celebrating the membership’s cultural and group roots.
To realize this, the company needed to push some boundaries, however chatting with loyal supporters and broader audiences helped them keep on monitor. Nonetheless, LoveGun wished to keep away from large-scale fan boards, as they consider that they’ll typically result in conflicting viewpoints, in the end diluting a membership’s core identification and defeating the aim of the model refresh.
“As a substitute, we adopted a extra targeted and natural strategy to partaking supporters – conserving our ears open to fan sentiment by on a regular basis interactions, membership workers (lots of whom are followers themselves), and native fan-led media,” says Gunn. “By drawing on these extra focused insights, we gained a deep understanding of what issues most to Oxford United followers, which allowed us to craft a refresh that really displays the membership’s DNA with out dropping sight of the heritage that has made Oxford United particular to so many individuals.”
As an company deeply rooted in soccer tradition, LoveGunn has seen firsthand how vital it’s for any rebrand to stay true to a membership’s heritage by collaborations with golf equipment and associations, from grassroots to top-flight organisations. By means of this, they’ve observed that the rebrands that resonate most powerfully with followers are those who hold the membership’s spirit entrance and centre. Utilizing these insights as a place to begin, LoveGunn centred its strategy for Oxford United round honouring its proud legacy whereas presenting a recent, future-facing identification.
Love explains how, for Oxford United, that meant guaranteeing the refresh reaffirmed the membership’s distinctive identification. “We have listened intently to followers, native companions, and the broader Oxford group, ensuring the brand new look nonetheless looks like ‘their’ membership—happy with its heritage, but prepared for the longer term,” he says. “By grounding ourselves within the metropolis’s historical past and the supporters’ ardour, we consider we have struck a stability that not solely respects the previous but in addition excites everybody about what’s to return.”
The result’s a method that comes immediately from the brand new Oxford United imaginative and prescient of ‘Dream. Encourage.’, which goals to carry individuals nearer to the membership and create a extra private connection. The brand new visible toolkit encompasses new palettes, fonts, artwork route kinds and tone of voice, all per a uncooked, genuine feel and appear, grounded not simply within the membership’s historical past however within the metropolis of Oxford.
Oxford United’s graphic belongings have all been refreshed and reconsidered as a holistic toolkit, with every ingredient informing the opposite. For instance, the OX imagery has been repurposed and become three core membership icons designed for various audiences, from the normal membership badge reflecting all issues soccer all the way down to the newly simplified OX silhouette. The latter might be used to sign-post the membership’s breadth of cultural initiatives, from style ranges to festivals and collaborations with cultural establishments.
Retaining authenticity concerned creating belongings unmistakably Oxford, so LoveGunn drew on components like the town’s iconic skyline, finding out each nuance of its historic spires, that are symbols of Oxford’s famend legacy as a world centre of studying and discovery.
Love says: “We distilled these varieties right into a daring, trendy motif that flexes throughout our visible identification – from the delicate detailing on this season’s house equipment to the dynamic patterns woven into our model belongings.
“It is a highly effective assertion that anchors our new look within the metropolis’s proud heritage whereas driving the membership ahead.”
With the color palette, LoveGunn has introduced recent vitality into Oxford United’s traditional yellow and blue, making the hues brighter and bolder with out dropping their historic significance. Different heritage colors, like gold and black, impressed by the membership’s roots, have been additionally launched, honouring the unique Headington FC equipment and bridging the previous with the longer term.
After all, a key purpose of this identification is to assist Oxford United transcend purely footballing traditions and open it as much as wider group and cultural arenas. So, the company developed a secondary palette made up of colors like Inexperienced Spire, Graffiti Pink, Oxford Stone, and Educational Blue. “Every shade speaks to a unique side of Oxford’s character,” says Love.
“Inexperienced Spire displays the town’s copper spires which have aged right into a vivid inexperienced; Graffiti Pink repurposes an notorious second of vandalism on the stadium’s Ox statue, reworking an act of insurrection into a robust assertion about artwork and expression.” The flexibility of this secondary palette means the membership can keep visually related in each context, showcasing Oxford’s tradition of innovation, heritage, and creativity, each on and off the pitch.
The town’s storied heritage and up to date future are additionally prevalent within the new typeface, which takes cues from the town’s skyline with spire-like varieties into sure characters and chiselled particulars harking back to conventional stone masonry. Gunn says: “This strategy provides a chic, genuine contact that stands aside from the daring, condensed kinds dominating as we speak’s sports activities panorama.
“Our aim was a refined aesthetic that each pays tribute to Oxford’s roots and positions the membership on the forefront of innovation.”
LoveGunn’s imaginative and prescient for the membership’s new artwork route is all about bringing followers nearer to the center of the motion. In accordance with Love, the company got down to seize soccer’s “uncooked, unfiltered feelings, every thing from the pure exhilaration of a aim celebration to that remaining, exhausted push on the finish of a match”.
He explains how lighting and depth are key to this story-driven strategy, “guaranteeing every shot feels each genuine and visually putting”. With the unpredictability of stay motion in thoughts, LoveGunn additionally developed customized modifying processes and automation that improve each body so that every picture might inform its personal story.
“In the end, it is about immersing supporters within the highs, lows, and sheer ardour that outline Oxford United,” Love provides.
Oxford United has a brand new look, however how does it communicate to its followers? LoveGunn felt that the membership wanted a unified, assured voice that might attraction to lifelong supporters and a brand new technology.
“Guided by ‘Dream. Encourage.’, we got down to harness soccer’s acquainted vernacular and reimagine it as a rallying cry for private ambition, which led us to a daring, two-word strategy rooted in motivational instruction,” says Gunn. Phrases like ‘Push Ahead’, ‘Rise Once more’, and ‘Chase Glory’ pop up throughout the identification to encourage followers by a fusion of authenticity and aspiration.
The followers’ reactions might be an enormous consider measuring the success of the rebrand, and in keeping with LoveGunn, they’ve been extremely optimistic to this point. It is also clear that Oxford United needs to open themselves as much as new business and cultural alternatives, although. They’ve already seen “a major shift in who the membership can join with and the sorts of initiatives they’re in a position to assist,” says Love.
Gunn provides: “2025 is shaping as much as be a pivotal yr of transformation, and we’re excited to see how we will construct on this momentum to maintain Oxford United pushing ahead in recent and sudden methods.”
