Studio Dumbar bring Club Brugge into the digital world with a crisp motion-first identity system

Rotterdam-based design agency Studio Dumbar have applied their motion-first approach to the brand of Club Brugge – one of Belgium’s oldest and most successful football clubs. Founded in 1891, Club Brugge have been crowned Belgian league champions 16 times (as of 2020), and remain the country’s only team to have reached the final of the European Cup (forerunner to the UEFA Champions League League).

With Club Brugge’s historic crest deemed off-limits at the start of the project due to its tendency to appear as a tattoo on the limbs of fans, Studio Dumbar had to find their own way to bring the club’s tradition into the digital world. Unlike the successful rebrands of Juventus and Manchester City, which are characterised by their reimagined crest designs, Studio Dumbar’s work focuses on bold typography, fluid animation and no-nonsense copywriting.

Canvas-filling chevrons make up the core of the graphic system; hinting towards motion even when applied statically to billboards, posters, booklets and more. In addition, they act as a unifying motif across the various teams in the Club Brugge family, including their women’s team CLUB YLA and youth academy CLUB NXT.

Colours seamlessly transition between solids and gradients, resulting in a contemporary spin on the club’s traditional black and blue. Applied in an intentionally straightforward manner, the condensed sans serif typography is fitting with the optimistic tone of voice; allowing crisp photography of Club Brugge’s players to take centre stage. The star of the show, without doubt, is Studio Dumbar’s introduction of dynamic animations; distinguished by their positivity-inducing sharp and snappy transitions.

Studio Dumbar