Elevating every moment.
This is the foundational DNA of Alleyoop Group: the standards, visual elements and guidance for how they come together on every deck, drop, activation and post.
You’ll find our logo system, typography, color palette, imagery, motion behaviors, iconography and voice. Got questions? Reach the team at hi@alleyoopgroup.com.
01
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
Our logo is the finishing touch on every play. The ALLEYOOP wordmark is wide, heavy and set just off-level, like a ball leaving a hand at the top of the lob. It signs every deck, drop and activation we put into the world.
Our primary logo pairs the ALLEYOOP wordmark with GROUP, set in MADE Outer Sans and centered beneath it. The wordmark is custom-drawn, so never retype it. There are four color variants: Black on Cloud, White on Black, White on Sky and Black on White. Always choose the variant with the strongest contrast against its background.
GROUP
Black on Cloud
GROUP
White on Black
GROUP
White on Sky
GROUP
Black on White
The A. is the most compact form of the brand. The dot is the finish: the ball through the net. Use it for avatars, highlight covers, favicons and merch, or anywhere the name is already present. The wordmark without GROUP is reserved for tight spaces like slide headers and footers.
Symbol: Black on Haze
Symbol: White on Sky
Wordmark: small-space use
The background decides the logo color. On Cloud, White and Haze, use the black logo. On Sky Blue, Deep Sky, Black and photography, use the white logo. If you’re unsure, match your background to the closest swatch below.
Black logo
Black logo
Black logo
White logo
White logo
White logo
The logo moves the way the play does. It rises into place from below like the lob, holds for a beat, then lands. Nothing spins, bounces or glows. All logo motion runs at 12 frames per second for a stepped, hand-made feel. Scroll past each tile to replay it.
Intro: the wordmark rises into frame to open a video.
Outro: the A. drops in and lands to close a video.
Idle: a slow float for longer holds and screens.
Clear space keeps the logo readable and gives it room to land. For the wordmark, the minimum clear space on every side equals X, the cap height of the A. For the symbol, X is twice the diameter of the dot. Never let type, image edges or other logos cross into it.
Wordmark: X equals the cap height of the A.
Symbol: X equals twice the diameter of the dot (d).
Construction: the proportions of the A. symbol.
Wordmark minimum size
Symbol minimum size
Alleyoop Group is the parent brand. Programs, events and series (The Tip Off, The Playbook, The Standard) are named in type, never drawn as new logos. Lead with the program name in display type, then sign off with the Alleyoop wordmark so ownership is always clear.
Event: The Tip Off. Program name in type, wordmark sign-off.
Series: The Standard, No. 001. A named series, not a new logo.
Name programs and events in type, then sign off with the wordmark.
Don’t create new logos, symbols or lockups for programs.
When Alleyoop partners with a client, lock the wordmark up with the partner’s logo in monochrome, separated by a × or a thin rule. Stack the lockup vertically or run it horizontally, whichever suits the space. Match the optical height of both logos, keep X clear space around the full lockup, and let the partner lead on their own channels.
Vertical
×
Partner logo
Horizontal
Partner logo
Lockups: vertical or horizontal. Wordmark, ×, partner logo. Both monochrome, matched in optical height.
Alleyoop × Wet Hydration: the horizontal lockup in practice.
Do not alter the logo. Avoid the following treatments.
Don’t rotate or tilt the logo.
Don’t retype the wordmark in another typeface.
Don’t use low-contrast color pairings.
Don’t add blurs, glows or shadows.
Don’t place the logo on busy imagery.
Don’t combine the symbol and wordmark into a new lockup.
The rules above bend for campaign art. On social, merch and event creative, the A. and the wordmark can be cropped, scaled past the frame or floated in the sky. Expression wins over restraint, as long as the drawing itself is never altered.
The A. floating in open sky.
Wordmark and tagline over clouds.
02
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
Two typefaces, two jobs. MADE Outer Sans brings the volume and labels the play; Inter does the talking. Together they read as confident, direct and built for the big moment.
Two typefaces do all the work. MADE Outer Sans is our display and label face: wide, heavy and made for the big moment. Inter is our workhorse for web headlines, body copy, decks and UI.
Display & Labels
Aa
Headlines, event titles, statement lines, eyebrows and the GROUP in our logo. Extended, heavy and built for volume. Set labels in caps, tracked +8%.
Bold 700
Text
Aa
Web headlines, body copy, decks and interface. Tight tracking, confident weights.
Medium 500 · Semibold 600
MADE Outer Sans Bold
For decks, the website and anything that needs to inform, Inter leads. Pair a MADE Outer Sans eyebrow with an Inter Semibold headline and Inter Medium body copy. Keep hierarchy sharp, copy short and numbers big.
Who we are
With 20+ years of experience building brands at the highest level, we accelerate growth, drive awareness and connect every marketing detail to real results.
100M+
Impressions
80+
Influencer mentions
8%+
Average engagement
For events, social and campaign moments, type becomes the image. Set MADE Outer Sans huge, stack it tight, crop it against the frame and let the sky show through. Ask yourself: does the type feel like the main event? Things to play with:
Scale
Stacking
Mixed case
Cropping
Contrast
Sky knockouts
The Tip Off · Oct 7
Built in type: MADE Outer Sans at display scale and as labels.
Social: condensed display type knocked out over open sky.
Good typesetting takes a discerning eye. These starting points keep our type consistent across the site, decks and social. Large headlines run tight; body copy gets room to breathe.
MADE Outer Sans Bold
64–160 px
90–100%
−1% to 0%
Inter Semibold
32–148 px
92–110%
−6%
MADE Outer Sans Bold, caps
11–14 px
120%
+8%
Inter Medium
14–22 px
120–150%
−2% to −4%
Leading can open up to 100% on display type to keep ascenders and descenders from colliding.
Aim for high contrast between levels. The bigger the jump between sizes, the clearer the story. Our web scale uses the same text styles you’ll find throughout alleyoopgroup.com.
Elevate.
We help brands break through, scale faster and win.
No two brands are the same, so no two strategies should be either. Together we co-create a custom playbook so you’re not just showing up in the market, you’re owning it.
Experiential · Retail · Talent
Our type system leaves plenty of room for expression, but a few rules keep it consistent. Avoid the following.
We come from the brand side, so we know what it takes to build, scale and win, because we’ve done it.
Don’t set long copy in MADE Outer Sans.
Elevate
Don’t track out headlines.
Elevate every moment
Don’t swap in script or novelty faces.
03
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
Our palette starts with the sky. Sky Blue sets the mood, Black and White do the heavy lifting, and Haze and Deep Sky add range when a moment needs to feel lighter or louder.
Sky Blue is our signature. It comes straight from the open-sky photography that runs through everything we make. The color and the image are one idea. Use it as the dominant field on social and event creative, and as a focused accent on the web.
Primary
HEX
#6A98CE
RGB
106 / 152 / 206
CMYK
49 / 26 / 0 / 19
Black and White bring structure and contrast, and Cloud is our everyday canvas. Haze softens a composition; Deep Sky turns up the energy for nights, launches and big announcements. Use Haze and Deep Sky as accents, and never use both as full floods in the same piece.
HEX
#0A0A0A
RGB
10 / 10 / 10
CMYK
0 / 0 / 0 / 96
Type, logo, contrast
HEX
#FFFFFF
RGB
255 / 255 / 255
CMYK
0 / 0 / 0 / 0
Type on dark, space
HEX
#F5F5F5
RGB
245 / 245 / 245
CMYK
0 / 0 / 0 / 4
Page backgrounds
HEX
#AED9EC
RGB
174 / 217 / 236
CMYK
26 / 8 / 0 / 7
Soft accent, covers
HEX
#2662B8
RGB
38 / 98 / 184
CMYK
79 / 47 / 0 / 28
Energy, nights, launches
CMYK values are conversions for reference. For print, proof against the HEX values and adjust on press.
Black, Cloud and White carry most of the load. Sky Blue is the signature that makes it ours; Haze and Deep Sky are seasoning. This balance keeps work bold without ever feeling loud for the sake of it.
Black
34%
Cloud
28%
Our gradients move through the sky, from light to deep and day to night. Keep them bright and clean, and stay inside the blue family so they never turn gray or muddy in the middle.
Sky gradient
Haze → Sky Blue → Deep Sky. For flyers, covers and daytime events.
Night gradient
Deep Sky → Black. For evening events and launch moments.
Legible text starts with contrast. We follow WCAG and aim for AAA (7:1) on body copy wherever we can, and never go below AA (4.5:1). White on Sky Blue only reaches 3:1, so reserve it for large display type and the logo.
Aa
Black on Cloud
18.2 : 1
AAA
Aa
White on Black
19.8 : 1
AAA
Aa
Black on Haze
13.1 : 1
AAA
Aa
Black on Sky Blue
6.6 : 1
AA
Aa
White on Deep Sky
6.0 : 1
AA
Aa
White on Sky Blue
3.0 : 1
Large only
Small shifts in color add up fast. Avoid the following.
Don’t introduce colors outside the palette.
Don’t make muddy gradients.
Strategy & positioning from the billion-dollar playbook.
Don’t set small white text on light blues.
04
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
Open sky and real moments. Our imagery lives between the two: wide, airy clouds that give the brand room to breathe, and close, electric photography from the events, athletes and creators we work with.
Open sky is our signature backdrop: true-blue skies, soft scattered clouds and plenty of air. Source or shoot it bright and clean, and crop wide so type and logos have room to land.
Bright, true-blue skies with soft, scattered clouds.
Avoid overcast, gray or sunset-orange skies.
Avoid heavy filters, fake flares and obvious stock clichés.
Our photography puts you in the room. Shoot close and candid at activations, courtside and backstage: product in hand, people mid-moment, energy over polish. If it looks staged, keep shooting.
Get near the action. Real reactions beat posed smiles.
Show the brand being used, poured, worn and shared.
Motion blur and grain are fine. Flat and lifeless isn’t.
Film grain, concrete, grunge walls and printed paper add grit to our cleanest layouts. Use texture as a layer, behind type or over photography, and never as the subject.
Film grain layered over open sky. The grain sits on top; the sky stays the subject.
Highlight cover: grunge wall texture under Haze.
On social and in print, keep one big idea per frame. Service names, event titles and the A. carry the composition; everything else supports it.
Instagram highlight covers: service names in bold extended type over Haze.
05
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
Motion follows the play: the pass, the lift and the finish. Everything moves with intent. Punchy on the way up, precise on the landing, never floaty or indecisive.
Our motion system is built on three behaviors borrowed from the court. Each one has a job: move the story along, build anticipation, or land the point. Everything plays at 12 frames per second.
Slides, swipes, marquees and carousels. Moves the viewer between ideas and keeps a story flowing.
Rises, scales and reveals. Builds anticipation and brings the hero moment into frame.
Landings, snaps and locks. Punctuates a stat, a logo or a call to action, then holds.
Motion is always in service of the message, never decoration. Three principles keep everything we animate feeling like Alleyoop.
01
Ramp in hard, ease out long. Motion should feel like a quick first step, never a slow drift.
02
Everything lands exactly where it belongs. No wobble, no rubber-banding, no bounce for its own sake.
03
Anchored in real-world physics: the arc of a lob, the snap of a pass, the hang time before the finish.
Type is a major part of our motion. Headlines rise, statements build word by word and hero lines resolve letter by letter out of a soft blur. Every move is stepped at 12 frames per second, so it feels drawn rather than digital. Scroll past each tile to replay it.
Lines slide up into place.
Words land one after another.
Letters rise out of a soft blur.
Use these curves and durations as defaults across the site, social and video. Play everything back at 12 frames per second: hold each frame, don’t tween between them.
cubic-bezier(0.56, 0.22, 0.05, 0.99)
1.2–2.1 s
Hero reveals, logo intro
cubic-bezier(0.96, −0.02, 0.38, 1.01)
0.4 s, 0.09 s stagger
Letter-by-letter type
Spring, bounce 0.2
0.4 s
Hovers, UI, page transitions
Ease in-out, mirrored
2.2 s loop
Idle logos and ambient loops
Stepped playback, no in-betweens
12 fps
All brand motion
06
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
Icons are the quiet assist. They label, guide and punctuate, but never compete. We draw them by hand and pair them with the bold typography that carries the brand.
Our four service marks, Events, Talent, Work and Merch, anchor our social highlights, decks and merch. They’re set in MADE Outer Sans, white, centered on Haze. They’re type, not icons, so never redraw them as pictograms.
Our icons are drawn by hand with a rough marker brush, the same way we sketch plays, whistles and checklists in our decks. Keep them in Black or White, one weight, no fills, and always pair them with a text label.
Style: hand-drawn marker
Weight: one brush, no fills
Grid: 100 × 100
Color: Black or White
The Playbook uses a set of geometric glyphs as bullets, markers and checkmarks, all pulled from our receipt graphic. Use them to list services and steps, one glyph per item, always in Black or White.
Our Playbook
ART DIRECTION
●
BRAND STRATEGY
◆
EVENT PRODUCTION
✕
EXPERIENTIAL DESIGN
▲
INFLUENCER SEEDING
✱
TALENT PARTNERSHIPS
✚
07
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
We sound like a teammate who has already run the play. Direct, confident and a little competitive. We come from the brand side, so we talk like people who build, not people who pitch.
Our voice stays the same wherever we show up. Three principles keep it sounding like Alleyoop, no matter who’s writing.
01
Lead with the point. We never bury the lead or waste anyone’s time. Short sentences, strong verbs, clear next steps.
We are
Direct
Focused
Confident
We aren’t
Vague
Wordy
Timid
02
We come from the brand side, so we talk like people who’ve been in your shoes. Human to human, with no jargon and no agency-speak.
We are
Warm
Candid
Scrappy
We aren’t
Corporate
Salesy
Distant
03
Good is the floor; we’re hired for the ceiling. We’re ambitious and a little competitive, and we back every claim with proof.
We are
Ambitious
Bold
Proven
We aren’t
Arrogant
Hype-y
Empty
These lines carry the brand. Use them as written. Don’t paraphrase them into something softer.
Tagline: sign-offs, covers, business cards
Manifesto: The Standard
Manifesto: The Standard
Our voice never changes, but our tone flexes with the moment. Before you write, ask: what should this do, where will it live and who’s reading it?
First impression
Social posts, invites, launch creative, merch.
Sounds like
“Make some noise.”
The pitch
Decks, proposals, the website, case studies.
Sounds like
“20+ years of building and scaling brands at the highest level.”
The partnership
Client emails, recaps, reports and check-ins.
Sounds like
“Here’s what worked, what didn’t and the next play.”
The name comes from the most satisfying play in basketball, and our language nods to it. One court reference per piece is plenty. Let it land, and don’t stack the puns.
Say
Instead of
The assist
Support, services
The playbook
Methodology, framework
Run the play
Execute the deliverables
Tip off
Kickoff
The next play
Next steps
One court reference per piece, used with intent.
Don’t stack sports puns or force a metaphor where plain words work.
The small rules that keep every piece consistent.
Write “Alleyoop” or “Alleyoop Group” in running copy. Never “Alley-oop”, “AlleyOop” or all caps; caps belong to the logo.
End headlines with a period. It lands the point: “Let’s work.” “Elevate every moment.”
In display type, mixed case can add punch (“LET’S work.”), but keep it to one emphasis per line.
Use numerals and plus signs for proof points: 100M+ impressions, 20+ years, 8% engagement.
Write as “we” and speak to “you”. We’re a team talking to a teammate.
hi@alleyoopgroup.com for general notes, partnerships@alleyoopgroup.com for new business.
08
Alleyoop Brand Guidelines
Everything you need to put the brand to work. Logo files, colors and type are listed below. Reach out to the team for source files, templates and anything that isn’t here yet.
Wordmark: Black
SVG
Wordmark: White
SVG
Symbol: Black
SVG
Symbol: White
SVG
Wordmark: Black
PNG
Wordmark: White
PNG
Symbol: Black
PNG
Symbol: White
PNG
Brand board
JPG
Open sky photo
JPG
Display & Labels
MADE Outer Sans
Text
Inter
Social icons
Social icons
Social icons are white glyphs in black rounded squares, as on our business cards. On dark or sky backgrounds, flip them to black glyphs in white squares. Keep them the same size and evenly spaced in a single row.