A new audience
League owners, media teams and sponsors, not wedding studios.
Case study · Sports media · Sub-brand of FotoOwl · 2026
Dugout
Designing where human insight meets machine imagination, from Mumbai.
A brand built for game day.
Dugout is FotoOwl’s platform for sports media. I designed its identity from the first sketch to the Play Store, the web app, the launch and the expo stand.
All projects
- Role
- Graphic & UI/UX Designer
- Brand
- Dugout, by FotoOwl · Pune, India
- Year · Team
- 2026 · with Marketing and Product
- Tools
- Illustrator, Figma, Canva, Higgsfield + AI tools
01 · Overview
One platform. Every moment.
Dugout is the operating system for modern sports leagues. Photographers shoot, every photo beams to the cloud, and AI tags the players and sponsors in it, so teams and fans get their moment in under 30 seconds.
CameraThe photographer shoots the match.
CloudBeam uploads it; AI finds every face and sponsor.
FansTeams, players and fans get it on their phones.
Dugout runs on FotoOwl’s face-recognition AI, made for sport: leagues, matches, teams, players and sponsors in one media library. Leagues like IGPL, T20 Mumbai and the World Padel League already use it.
I joined as the Graphic and UI/UX Designer to give this new sub-brand its own look, voice and launch.
What I did
- ALogo, from first sketches to the final mark
- BIdentity: colour, type, grid and key visuals
- CEight Play Store screens
- DThe web app’s media library
- ELaunch film, flyers and six rollups
- FStationery, merch and the expo stand
02 · The challenge
Photo tech that had to feel like sport.
FotoOwl speaks warm yellow to wedding photographers. Sports leagues are a different crowd: loud, fast, built for stadiums.
My goal: a brand that stands on its own on match day, still carries FotoOwl’s trust, and explains a whole platform in one glance.
Six features, a few seconds
Beam, face scan, sponsor tagging, FanCam, secure sharing, player galleries: all to be understood in passing.
Every sport, one mark
Cricket, football, padel, basketball. The brand couldn’t belong to just one.
03 · Research
Following one photo through match day.
With the FotoOwl team, I mapped everyone who touches a photo between the shot and the share, and studied how leagues post on match day.
Who I designed for
The league’s media team
Thousands of photos a match. Needs them sorted, branded and out fast.
The player
Wants every photo they’re in, without asking anyone.
The sponsor and the fan
Sponsors want to be seen. Fans want proof they were there.
What I learned
Seconds matter
A goal photo is old news in an hour, so speed had to be in the design itself: italics, forward lean, motion.
Sponsors pay the bills
Sponsor visibility became a feature to show off, not hide.
Players share what they’re in
Personal galleries turn every player into a channel for the league.
04 · Inspiration
Sportswear, scoreboards and the seam of a ball.
I looked at performance sportswear and streetwear drops: clean fabric, one loud colour, type that leans forward. And at stadium scoreboards, where everything reads from the last row.
The idea: the curved seam that every ball shares. Cricket, tennis, football, basketball. One line, every sport.
05 · Logo
From a club badge to a speed mark.
Round 1 · Badges
A badge for every sport
Navy crests, one per ball. Friendly, but it looked like a kids’ club.
Round 2 · Symbols
Shoes, trophies, crests
Each told part of the story. None told all of it.
Round 3 · Wordmark
The ball becomes the O
Closer. But still tied to one sport, and too soft.
Final · The mark
D + the ball
A forward-leaning D next to a ball with one seam. Every sport, one shape.
Rounds 1–3 from my Figma logo board, in the first FotoOwl-style palette.
- It leans forwardItalic, cut corners: the mark is already running.
- One seam, any ballThe curve reads as cricket, tennis or football.
- Halftone dotsA nod to printed sports pages and stadium screens.
- A white keylineStays readable on top of any match photo, like a sticker.
06 · Identity
Red for game day.
FotoOwl owns yellow, so Dugout took red: the colour of a whistle, a card, a scoreboard. Black lets match photos glow.
Colour
Dugout Red#FF320C · energy, the whistle
Flame#F6662E · action, UI
Night Match#181818 · let photos glow
Paper#F8F8F8
Pitch Grid#FDF3EE + lines
Typography
Headlines
Wide, squared, leaning
Reads like a scoreboard. Two or three words fill a phone screen.
Uppercase only · store screens, rollupsSupporting lineAaPoppins Italic
Create secure galleries and control who can see them.
Light 300 · ExtraBold 800 in red for the words that matterThe gridA pitch on paper
A soft red grid behind every store screen, like field markings.
Light backgrounds · store, flyers
07 · Brand in use
From a business card to the team kit.
A brand for leagues has to work where leagues are: at the gate, in the stands, on the staff. So the identity went onto cards, passes and wristbands.
Then onto clothes people would actually wear off the pitch: raglan tees, caps and training wear in red, black and white.
Scroll · the merch drop
01 / 07
08 · Play Store
Eight screens, eight features.
An app is judged on its store page in a few swipes. So each screen sells one feature in two or three words.
The system: the logo top left, a wide headline, one Poppins line with the key words in red, the real app on a real phone, and an athlete breaking out of the frame.
Scroll · the store listing
01 / 08
09 · Web app
A media library for a whole league.
For media teams I designed the desktop library: every photo and video of a season, filtered in a click and shared in two.
Built around how leagues think.
- 01Filters follow the league’s own order: league, match, team, player, sponsor.
- 02File name, size and resolution on every card, because press teams ask.
- 03A Beam switch at the top for live uploads on match day.
- 04One orange button per screen: Share View.
- 05A dark interface, so the photos are the brightest thing on screen.
10 · Launch & expo
From a teaser to the expo floor.
The teaser
“This is not just sports.” A 15-second vertical film for launch week: real match energy, the features in quick beats, and the logo lighting up like floodlights. Made with Higgsfield.
Build leaguesInstant sharingControl accessPower your events
Flyers
Two flyers, two buyers.
One for league owners (“your entire sports media library, organized”), one for everyone else (“one platform, every moment”), with the six features as icons.
Rollups
Six rollups, one story, read left to right.
Each banner is one chapter of the pitch, readable from five metres. Stand in front of the stall and the story walks you from “Introducing Dugout” to “One platform”.
11 · Toolkit
The right tool for each job.
Vectors when a shape has to be perfect, Figma when people will tap it, Canva when it has to ship today, and AI when I need many directions fast.
AI widens the search; I make the call. Every concept was chosen, corrected and finished by hand.
How a piece moves through my tools
- 01
Research
How leagues post, what rivals say, before I draw.
- 02
Ideas
Many key visuals and mockups, fast.
- 03
Craft
The logo, the screens and the web app, by hand.
- 04
Scale
Flyers, resizes and variations, on brand.
- 05
Motion
The launch teaser comes alive.
Adobe Illustrator
Brand craftWhy: a logo has to be perfect from a wristband to a six-foot rollup, so I draw it in vectors.
Here: the D + ball mark, the wordmark, and print-ready rollups, flyers and cards.
Figma
Interface & explorationWhy: one board the whole team can see and comment on, from logo rounds to screens.
Here: the logo exploration board, the eight store screens and the web app.
Canva
Content at speedWhy: launch week doesn’t wait. Brand templates let me ship variations without breaking the system.
Here: flyer layouts, quick resizes and social versions of the launch visuals.
Higgsfield
AI motion & imagesWhy: it turns a still idea into motion or a photo-real mockup in minutes, no shoot needed.
Here: the launch teaser, plus the cap, raglan, lanyard and wristband mockups.
ChatGPT
Key visuals & mockupsWhy: to try many directions quickly, then correct and finish the best one myself.
Here: key visuals, the billboard, business cards and the on-pitch brand photo.
And the rest of my AI kit
Used where they help most- GeminiThe training-tee mockups for the merch range.
- ClaudeResearch synthesis and short, punchy copy.
- PerplexitySports-media competitor scans, with sources.
GrokWhat sports fans are talking about right now.
LovartQuick poster and layout explorations.
LovableClickable prototypes to share with the team.
12 · Outcome & impact
A sub-brand that walks onto the field on its own.
Its own identity
Red, fast and sporty, clearly Dugout, still “by FotoOwl”.
30+ pieces, one family
Store, web app, film, flyers, rollups, stationery and merch.
Pitch-ready on the floor
The rollups did the explaining at stall A-31, so the team could focus on conversations.
A store page that sells
Eight features, eight screens, each one readable in a swipe.
A library a season can live in
Filters and collections built around how leagues actually work.
Fast, with AI in the loop
AI mockups and motion cut days from concept to launch.
The product this brand speaks for
0sCamera to fans, under
0Core features
0+Leagues on board
0+Designs I delivered
Product figures from fotoowl.ai/dugout (IGPL, T20 Mumbai, World Padel League), October 2026.
13 · Reflection
What this project taught me.
Borrow the trust, not the colours
A sub-brand earns attention by looking like its own audience.
Let the first logo go
The badges were liked. They just weren’t sport. Saying so early saved the brand.
Five metres and five inches
The same story had to work on a rollup across the hall and on a phone in a hand.
Next project · 03 / 06
MediVerse