League One Volleyball
–

Launching the next major
American sports league

League One Volleyball (LOVB, pronounced "love") didn’t just want to grow volleyball’s popularity – it wanted to reimagine the model of a professional league. Founded in 2020, LOVB set out to transform every stage in an athlete’s journey, from youth development to professional competition. Within three years, it built America’s largest volleyball club network, reaching 1,500 junior clubs across 58 locations in 26 states. Drawing in top international talent, olympians and national champions, LOVB was set to launch its professional league, LOVB Pro.

After developing the LOVB brand in-house, the team turned to Gretel with a very open brief. The goal was to craft a league-level strategy, naming, identity for the inaugural teams– along with a playbook to guide expansion as new teams are created.

While traditional pro leagues are collections of disparate teams, each with unique names, identities, mascots and shorthands – we envisioned something very different: a league where the teams are tightly meshed, interlinked, woven together.

One League, Interwoven

—

LOVB Pro stands apart from traditional sports leagues by placing community and connection above all else. Each player, team, coach, club, city, and fan forms an essential strand in an interconnected mesh. Together, they create something stronger, more flexible, more resilient, and more dynamic than any single part could achieve alone.

This vision inspired our creative platform, Interwoven. Our strategy and design language center on collectivity, binding together the league and its players. This tightly knit community is designed to grow as new markets and new teams are created, reinforcing and strengthening the whole ecosystem.

Unique but United
—

LOVB Pro's inaugural season features six teams from six cities. At the launch of the brand, only 5 cities had been announced. We worked with the LOVB team to define a naming construct, brand essence and shared design language for each of the 5 initial teams.

As we explored early concepts for team branding, we purposely avoided traditional sporting tropes of landmarks, mascots and civic heritage. We looked instead for a spirit, or essence of each city that could inform a simple, typographic abbreviation. Hustle embodies Atlanta's drive, Pulse for the crackling energy of Houston, Flow mirrors Madison's free-thinking spirit, Progress defines Omaha's ambition, and Ascend reflects Salt Lake's optimism and altitude. Taking our own brief, we explored a range of options for each team monogram.

Tightly Knit but Built to Grow

The league's design framework serves dual purposes: celebrating each city's unique energy while establishing a scalable system and cohesive guidelines for future expansion. Each team's emblem features fluid, continuous lines that echo LOVB’s interwoven ethos. These emblems can be expanded into distinctive interlocking patterns, and can be brought to life in motion, on-court, in-arena, on team kits and fan merchandise.

The LOVB team developed the 6th inaugural team, Austin (ATX) identity without Gretel– a perfect test case for our guidelines. More teams will follow in the coming seasons.