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A Brand of Our Own

Opinion Branding
Friday, Jan 31, 2025

One of the most challenging aspects of developing an identity is entertaining all the possibilities of what it could be.

The Sisyphean Task of Self-Branding

Having an outsider’s perspective can be invaluable when creating an aesthetic for a third party. It allows us to observe, ask questions, and form unbiased opinions about those we are studying. The gift of the present enables us to orchestrate thoughts about who is in front of us, here and now. From their interests to their pain points, we can extract nuanced traits of an entity through their voice, humor, and history. Only then can we begin to create for them.

However, this is the benefit of being on the outside looking in.

I may only be speaking for myself—though I doubt that’s the case—but there is something monumentally challenging about being on the inside looking in. Who am I? How do I want to be perceived? What do people see when they look at me? Am I funny? Am I mysterious? Am I boring? What am I?

All of these questions are fair when creating graphic work on your own behalf. You have unlimited edits! What could go wrong?

Evolution of Self

A 2025 Bobby is a different person than the 2015 Bobby.

Ten years ago, I was 22, living in Chicago—the only place I had lived outside of Pittsburgh. I was meeting new people, establishing friendships, and exploring the idea of who I was and what I wanted to be. Late college years are expected to be an existential dilemma on what we anticipate the rest of our lives to be. As a graphic designer, that lens was magnified by pixelated vanity.

With the rise of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Dribbble, and Behance, I wanted everything I projected to ooze with style. Yeah, I wanted to be cool. Who doesn’t? Unfortunately, these platforms also foster trends and expected aesthetics that often stifle authentic self-reflection and exploration of style.

It’s a tall order to distill all of these elements into a single mark.

It wasn’t until my first couple of years at an agency that I realized: a logo can do a lot of things, but it can’t do everything. That’s probably why I initially cycled through so many iterations of my personal logo. I had this idea that if it was cool enough, I could just slap it on anything and call it “good.”

That lightbulb moment is something I now quickly share with clients. Not only does it set expectations, but it also leads to a deeper scope of work that tends to be mutually beneficial. The logo won’t exist in a vacuum. Therefore, there are other components of the brand that will aid in telling the story, creating a voice, and achieving cohesion.

Looking back at some of my early logos is pretty fun. I had to blow the dust off old Gmail accounts to find some of the files. Naturally, they had names like “BB_final-logo_v4.ai.”

Young Bobby, there’s no such thing as a final file.

From Person to Studio

After leaving agency life—and after asking my wife hundreds of times, “Are you sure?”—I decided it was time to start my own thing. I had a conversation with a designer that I look up to about taking the leap. He asked me how old I was. I told him 30. He simply replied with:

“You’re not old, but you’re not young.”

Message received, as well as motivation to move forward.

I had to decide whether to brand myself as a solo freelancer, or establish myself as a single-person studio under a DBA. I’ve always felt that designing for a person and their name feels arbitrary, often yielding results limited to monograms and abstract marks. These can be difficult to expand as a brand grows, making it an uphill battle to create supplemental assets that continue telling the brand’s story.

That’s not to say they can’t be successful—but if I was going to build a brand for myself, that wasn’t the route I wanted to take.

20,000 Reasons

I’ll spare you the details of all the other names I explored as I exhausted GoDaddy’s WHOIS search, but I’ll tell you how I landed on LEAGUES.

The aforementioned 2015–2025 arc was full of ups and downs—a time that sculpted me into the “brand” I am today. Benchmark moments like graduating college, living alone, getting my first “real job,” getting married, leaving that job, and starting my own business have shaped me into something new. And I know with certainty, I’ll be different in another ten years.

One of the constants in that evolution was an admiration for music. Not just listening, but collecting vinyl, frequently attending shows, and forging friendships in the metalhead community.

One of my favorite things is when a stranger goes out of their way to greet me simply because of the band t-shirt I’m wearing. It happened just a few nights ago when I was wearing a Botch t-shirt at a local brewery pop-up.

On a warm summer night, I was driving over one of Pittsburgh’s hundreds of bridges, windows down, blasting Leagues Beneath—a track by one of my favorite bands, Sleep.

The song was later repressed in 2021, alongside The Clarity, in a limited 4/20 release. The packaging was clad in oceanic imagery. One pressed in salmon-colored wax, the other in azure.

I had a moment in the car where I thought to myself:

“Huh, Leagues Beneath… LEAGUES? Maybe. Yeah, that’s cool.”

LeaguesDesign.com was available, and I never looked back.

While I was contemplating starting my own studio, I gave myself every reason why I shouldn’t. Instead, I should have been giving myself every reason why I should. Playing along with the nautical theme, there are 20,000 Reasons to either do something, or to not do something. A nod to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and a reminder to think less and do more.

When creating for myself, the level of anxiety is amplified. Since I wanted to be a branding studio, I needed to have a strong brand myself. During the process, I kept asking:

“How can others trust me with their time and money if they don’t see strength in my brand?”

That thought alone pushed me to invest more time into exploring LEAGUES—what it is, what it will be, and how to get others to buy into it. Looking good is certainly part of the equation, so I spent hours perfecting vectors and creating guidelines for applying them.

I made sure to have assets plugged into the appropriate platforms, in the event someone asked about LEAGUES, those pieces were ready. From social media, to print collateral, to a website, it was all primed. Saul Bass once said:

“There’s authority in existence.”

Approving is Settling—And That’s Okay

One of the most challenging aspects of developing an identity is entertaining all the possibilities of what it could be. It’s impossible to explore every potential iteration.

All decisions, in some form, are settling. What color car you get, what you eat for lunch, which route you take to work—each choice is based on the reality that a decision must be made. Otherwise, the task at hand will never be completed.

Perfection is the enemy of progress.

When it comes to branding, the more you lean into a direction, the more it begins to feel like your own. You may never immediately love a brand or a logo, but you might like it. Obviously, loving it is ideal, but if you’re holding your breath for perfection, you might never move forward. A brand that is nurtured will grow stronger over time. With time, you’ll find love in it. True brand ownership is looking at your brand and realizing you can’t imagine it any other way.