Frontier League Uniform Challenge — Brian Begley’s inspiring call to action// L’appel à l’action inspiré de Brian Begley
By: Frontier League Journal
Tags: Uniforms, Frontier League, Baseball, Logos

HIS Challenge

On March 31st, Brian Begley, Sports Designer, Illustrator and Graphic Designer, started his Frontier League Design Challenge. The idea? Take all 16 teams of this independent league and make new logos / uniforms! What prompted this idea?

“I actually live 15 minutes from the Sussex County Miners’ stadium. Since I moved here a year and a half ago, I’ve sent many designs their way and never heard back. I then decided to take all 16 teams and really challenge myself and see what happens. I want to see what the reaction is, but I don’t know how big the fan base is. I learned quite a few things about all the teams. I also want to bring some attention to the Frontier League. Not every baseball fan knows about it, so why not bring some attention to it.”

His passion for sports logos dates way back and, being pretty much the same age as I am, I can relate to what logo first made him look at them in a different way.

“The first one that really captivated me was the Charlotte Hornets’ logo. That was all I drew. I remember I was in elementary school and I bartered with my friends for some snacks in exchange for drawing them team logos like the San Jose Sharks, Vancouver Grizzlies and the Hornets. So while my mom was not keeping certain types of foods in the house, I could get them at school from my friends that way.”

His job is a tough one for two reasons in particular. First, there are a lot of people doing what he does, so the competition is fierce. He prides himself on being a hard worker and also making up these challenges that catch people’s attention and further advance his career forward.

He first got noticed when he designed 160 different uniforms for NBA teams, 5 each; 160 hours of work and not being paid for it! That was in 2017, it went viral and he hasn’t looked back since. This article about his work is also proof that it works to do those cool projects even if a team has not yet signed and ordered from him.

The second reason is job can be tricky is that people don’t respect the copyrights and openly use his work without him getting fair compensation. That happened when a company in China was selling jerseys using his designs from the NBA challenge. Just imagine how frustrating that must be. He has learned to live with that reality and to just continue pushing forward.

He is a better man than I am.

As he wrote on his website, his “work has been widely recognized for his uncanny ability to blend historical and contextual elements with a clean, simple, and street-influenced style.” This is something you find in his overall body of work and especially in the Frontier League Challenge.

Below, you will find the 16 designs he created out of thin air, but also MY challenge. Just before we get to this, there’s a bonus.

You know that team “Province of Quebec” team that still needs a name and logo? Well, Brian has a “love story” with the province’s capital and he even invented and drew a logo based on his story:

“After hearing great things about Quebec City from her boss, my girlfriend booked us a trip up there a few months in advance. When we got there, it was so magical with all the lights and the snow, so I was like ‘what I’m doing, why don’t I just propose to her right here?’. So that’s what happened. Now, while we were there, we passed a pastry shop that was opened and they invited us in for some Beaver Tails. That was day one. Well, every day we were in Quebec we went to eat that amazing new treat.”

That gave birth to this beauty: