The Anti-Sports League is the vision of designer and entrepreneur, Glen Liberman. Glen sought to create a “league” of fictitious teams whose fans feel that “it’s okay to not like sports.” The goal is to unite these individuals who may not have (or want) a sports team to call their own.
On the design side, Glen collaborated with me to design the ASL logo, custom typeface, and team jerseys/shirts. Utilizing the bold graphic application that can be found on professional sports team apparel today, Glen and I created the visual aesthetic that represents the Anti-Sports League.
Logo thought process
Glen wanted me to create a memorable marque that would essentially sum up ‘anti-sports’. The finished marque has several meanings to it. Firstly, the hexagon is non aero-dymanic — unlike a spehere or ball, a hexagon won’t roll easily and is the very opposite to an aero-dynamic shape commonly used in sports. The second meaning is a diagonal line used to symbolise ‘anti’ and lastly, the initials A, S and L from ‘Anti-Sports League’ make up the final marque.
You can purchase the t-shirts from Anti-Sports League.
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Comments
I love the idea of this :D
In the wake of this, can they start opening anti-sports pubs where we all collectively sit there quietly talking instead of intermittently loudly shouting out ‘get in there!’ and such like :P
Nice neat little icon for it as well.
This is brilliant and the concept is genius.
Extremely well designed and interesting!
This is great. I love the typeface, reminds me a lot of Lutz and Alpha Headline. Will you make it commercially available?
This is great work – the letterform rationale is amusing, however. The nature of the mark lends itself to (nearly) every letter in the alphabet… and the “a” is awkward at best. Very nice nevertheless.
OK, perhaps it’s just me that doesn’t really get it.
I think it’s absolutely fine to not like sports, but I don’t get the idea of mimicking the behaviour of those who do in this way (I would expect something more openly ‘jokey’), or why it would need to be ‘anti’ anything.
As far as the design goes, I like the execution of the logo a lot. It perhaps could have been a little more playful with regard to the concept (which I’ve already admitted I don’t really understand), but it looks good. I like how it looks on the t-shirts, too.
Hi everyone,
Thank you so much for the feedback thus far. I hope everyone enjoys the ASL t-shirts as much as Mark and I enjoyed creating them :)
– Glen
I’m with Richard on this one – I don’t get it – and what makes it worse is that not only do I not get it BUT I hate sport as well. I surely must be the target audience? I love t-shirts (I wear them every day at work) and have a nice collection of them, from whacky to cool but I wouldn’t want to put one of these on. Why? The sad thing is it’s because it looks TOO sporty. Kind of like the tongue in cheek sports tops you see Uni sports teams wearing for their nights out. Drinking tops for drunk students.
Then there’s the logo/brand. I always think that if a mark is to stand on it’s own it’s got to have a grain of truth in it. A sense of itself. Kind of like some sort of DNA pointing to some slightly obscured truth buried in its familial past. This logo doesn’t say NO or ANTI or SPORT or anything that hints at its meaning. It’s an isometric box, an origami illustration, part of an illustration for a circuit board, it could be a number of things but it’s not “we hate sport”. No. It’s not that. It might be once you spend 10 minutes explaining it to people, but on its own it’s a shape without meaning.
Combining the two, the sporty t-shirt look with the cool looking modern brand that means nothing further isolates this from the world I inhabit, the land of a sports-hating designer who likes t-shirts.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’m sure this would be a wildly popular t-shirt in TopShop, Next or SuperDry. Boys in their teens and men in their 20s would buy these by the bucket load. Even older farts like me in their 30s would buy them (holding onto their youth by the slimmest of margins) but they wouldn’t notice the message, they wouldn’t remember the brand and they’d probably like sport. Own goal?
As a person who thinks that sports are a waste of the human spirit; I think I love ASL.
have a look at the headline image for the next post along from this one on the home page – see if you can spot an alarmingly similar logo on their brainstorming sheet… discuss.
First of all I have to say I don’t get it, I love sport! The Euros at the moment have been great.
Back to business, as Gareth has spotted, interesting that the thought process when branding an anti sports league and a software consultancy could produce a very, very similar logo idea. I wonder how many other times a pretty generic shape like this has cropped up on the sketch pad? Essentially it’s a hexagon with a cross through it. The A,S,L in the marque looks to me like an afterthought, and in my opinion is not a great fit. If you saw that as a separate typeface you wouldn’t be jumping around for joy waving your Anti sports flags and wooden clackers.
Hey everyone,
I think you guys might be missing the point on this one. Maybe the vision is not intended to be as serious as the name may imply. If you visit the Anti-Sports League website, there’s a blog post that talks about the concept. It’s supposed to be a bit ironic and of course, playful. Just read the team descriptions :)
Hey Michael, I think we understand what they are trying to do. I think the problem is that it’s just too confusing a concept.
It’s kind of like walking into a gallery and seeing the artwork in front of you and really not liking it and then have the artist come up to you and say…”hey, man, look let me explain this piece to you, I know it’s not what you like to look at but what behind it, the concept, the heart and soul of it, well that’s right up your street.”
Having the artist explain it might help change your mind on it but if you don’t like the look of it you’re still not going to want to hang it on your wall…. ” You don’t like sport? Try some of our in-joke, ironic shirts on – oh, you don’t like all the baggage that goes along with sport including the clothes, oh. er, can I interest you in a witty anti sport hot dog?”
In response to Michael – I get what they’re trying to do, I just don’t get why. Also, as I said above, if it’s supposed to be playful, I would have expected the branding to embrace that playfulness. I don’t think it does.
I like Gareth’s art analogy. Without trying to sound like a pompous arse, I don’t think good work should need to be explained – it should be self-explanatory.
Back to sports, however: I don’t like American Football, so I wouldn’t buy a t-shirt that looks like something an American Football fan would wear, but is actually designed to show people I’m not an American Football fan, then wear it to show that I don’t like American Football. It’s all too confusing and, in my opinion, pointless. I’d just spend my money on a t-shirt I liked without trying to be ironic.
Hence, although I think the execution of the design is fine and dandy, I just can’t see the point of the ‘vision’.
Sorry…
I see sport as the training ground for everything that is wrong with the world, the plague of hate, egotism, the mindless & pointless obsession with domination and competition. Forcing this garbage on to all children through school is the ultimate source of most of the evil and stupidity destroying the planet & real civilisation in my opinion.
But I’m not sure to be “anti-sport” is the answer, being “anti” might still be competitive, domineering, egotistical. It’s a hard one but I think promoting & practicing caring, sharing and humility, even towards the reptiles who play sport, may be the only way “fight” sport without becoming just like the enemy/disease.
Still I really like the anti-sport t-shirts & idea might get one yet, they are really just a bit of fun, playful, tongue-in-cheek after all.
Is it just me, or does the actual ideology behind the logo mark contradict itself on some level? If you take the cross meaning “anti” and apply it to the hexagon which in this case is meant to symbolize something “not used in sports”, you get a double negative. You are saying you are against something not used in sports. In other words you are FOR sports. If you wanted to say you were against baseball, you would apply the cross to a baseball. You wouldn’t apply it to a honeycomb.
Maybe go a little smaller on some graphics? Some many be anti-sport league, but may not want to scream it.
Where can I get one? The website doesn’t seem to be active?
Hi everyone,
My name is Glen Liberman and I’m the creator of the ASL. While I’m currently not selling the t-shirts through antisportsleague.com, I would like to take the time to respond to the comments posted. I will do my best to provide a bit of an “overview” in regards to the thought process behind the concept + design of my Anti-Sports League.
At the heart of the matter, the ASL is a fun and playful poke at mainstream culture on a whole. My intention may have been seen as malicious or negative to some. However, it is simply not the case.
Here are two articles that may help explain things further. Please read these if you’d like to learn more about some of things I was thinking about while working on the project.
1 – http://www.interestingideas.com/ii/sports.htm
2 – http://www.care2.com/causes/are-sports-just-a-distraction.html
If there are any comments, thoughts, or questions, please feel free to email me.
Thank you for your time,
– Glen Liberman
P.S. If you’re still looking to purchase one of the ASL t-shirts, I have a few left.
Get in touch and I may be able to assist.
Hi Glen, Connie replied to me asking for a shirt. I’ll forward you her email.
Link to anti pro sport song.
https://youtu.be/th4JCi0dzUs
I love 💕 the idea of this association. Throughout my youth I was tormented by jocks who hated academia. It’s nice to see I am not alone in my dislike of sports.