Centennial Toolkit

ABOUT THIS ENTRY

Great brands start with great systems. The Chicago Blackhawks built a Centennial Design Toolkit that became the visual backbone of their most important season in decades — proving that the most valuable creative investment isn't any single campaign, it's the system that makes every campaign possible.

How does this represent "Excellence in Engagement"?

A centennial season touches hundreds of executors, thousands of assets, and millions of fan interactions. Holding all of it together requires more than great creative — it requires a system.

The Centennial Design Toolkit gave every team across the organization — in-house creative, video operators, external agencies, broadcast partners — a shared visual language precise enough to honor 100 years of franchise history and flexible enough to serve every use case the season demanded. The result was a season that looked and felt like a single, unified creative vision from opening night to the final home game.

That is the benchmark this work sets for the industry. Not a campaign. Not a one-night activation. A full-season design infrastructure that made every touchpoint — social, in-arena, retail, broadcast, and print — work harder and feel more intentional. For any organization approaching a milestone moment, this toolkit demonstrates that the most important creative investment isn't any single piece of content. It's the system that makes all the content possible.

Objective

A centennial touches everything. Every social post. Every arena graphic. Every email, every scoreboard animation — executed simultaneously by in-house creative teams, external agencies, video operators, and photographers, all under the pressure of a milestone that only happens once.

Without a unified design system holding it all together, a hundred years of history becomes a hundred different visual languages. The most important season in franchise history risks looking like it was designed by committee — and fans feel that inconsistency even when they can't name it.

The objective was to build a visual framework with enough integrity to honor a century of iconic identity, enough flexibility to serve every use case, and enough structural clarity that every executor — regardless of their role — could produce something worthy of the moment. The measure of success wasn't just aesthetic. It was commercial and cultural: a design system that drove fan engagement, deepened loyalty, and made every other effort across the season perform at a higher level.

Strategy & Execution

The design philosophy started with a single guiding principle: evolution over reinvention.

The Blackhawks visual identity is one of the most recognized in professional sports. The challenge wasn't to reimagine it — it was to honor it with the precision and prestige a centennial demands. Every element of the Centennial Design Toolkit was built on that foundation.

Three core decisions shaped the visual architecture. First, a Centennial mark and gold accent palette — introducing warmth and prestige without disrupting the franchise's established red and black. Second, typography as a primary design element — bold, confident display type paired with high-impact photography creating immediate visual hierarchy across social feeds and in-arena environments. Third, a system built to scale — every element chosen to travel from a 1080x1080 social post to a full United Center scoreboard takeover without losing fidelity or intent.

Developed in-house and elevated through art direction with Recess Creative, the system extended naturally into motion — static graphics brought to life through animation that felt native to every environment.

The result was a visual language so structurally sound and universally adopted it became the creative backbone of an entire historic season.

Organizations

• This work was created in-house.

Credits

Jerry Ferguson
EVP, Brand & Marketing
Chicago Blackhawks

Trevor Bray
Director, Content & Creative
Chicago Blackhawks

Jack Gambro
Manager, Art Direction
Chicago Blackhawks

Caroline Shaw
Founder and Creative Director
Recess Creative

Javier Nevarez
Coordinator, Designer
Chicago Blackhawks

Dan Rooney
Coordinator, Designer
Chicago Blackhawks

Nicholas Gallagher
Manager, Marketing Operations
Chicago Blackhawks

Sergio Lozano
Senior Director of Scoreboard Operations
United Center

Lina Martino
Senior Creative Producer and Editor
United Center