Context & Challenge
Ice Realm, LLC operates three distinct hockey programs in Southern California: the San Diego Sabers (USPHL Premier), Ontario Jr. Reign (NCDC), and St. John Bosco Prep Hockey. Together, these programs provide a development pathway for players ranging from high school to junior hockey.
With the organization's primary focus on on-ice development, much of its creative and marketing work is handled by seasonal interns. While this model provides valuable opportunities for young creatives, frequent turnover creates challenges in maintaining consistent branding, organized assets, and continuity between intern classes.
Project Objectives
The goal of this project was twofold: to establish a foundational visual identity framework that would help incoming designers maintain consistent, recognizable branding across channels, and to develop practical systems, tools, and documentation that would preserve continuity between intern classes.
Given the organization's limited creative budget and reliance on seasonal interns, the project prioritized lightweight, accessible solutions that could be implemented and maintained without significant additional resources.
Visual Identity and Creative Direction
A key consideration was balancing consistency across Ice Realm's three programs with the need for each to maintain its own identity. I selected a shared typeface for the Ontario Jr. Reign and San Diego Sabers, building on the typography already used by St. John Bosco to establish a subtle visual connection across all three brands.
In discussions with Ice Realm's President of Hockey Operations, we established distinct creative directions reflecting each program's role in the player development pathway. As the organization's highest level of competition, the Jr. Reign's identity emphasizes professionalism and competitive intensity through clean, bold design. The Sabers, meanwhile, take a more vibrant and energetic approach, emphasizing the program as a fun, exciting environment for players to develop and advance their careers.
Creative Operations & Workflow Systems
Beyond visual identity, the project aimed to establish practical systems that would simplify day-to-day creative operations, improve collaboration, and preserve continuity between intern classes. Three resources were developed to address content planning, production consistency, and media organization.
Content Calendar & Workload Management
I developed a centralized content planning system designed to coordinate production across all three programs, multiple platforms, and a rotating team of designers and content creators.
The spreadsheet includes several interconnected features:
Content Dashboard: A high-level overview of content production progress, with breakdowns by team and social platform.
Workload Tracker: A consolidated snapshot of each designer's assigned work and progress, making it easier to identify outstanding deliverables and manage workloads.
Master Content Calendar: A central location for scheduling posts, assigning responsibilities, and tracking content through the production process.
Filtered Views: Individual tabs for each team and creator, automatically displaying their relevant upcoming content without requiring users to sort through the entire calendar.
Together, these features were designed to improve visibility, simplify coordination, and reduce the administrative burden of managing content across multiple brands.
Media Storage & Organization
I developed a recommended Google Drive folder structure to address the challenges of organizing and retrieving creative assets across three teams and multiple seasons.
The proposed system separates brand resources, editable templates, content planning documents, and media libraries into clearly defined categories. Media is organized by team, season, and event, with dedicated locations for photo galleries, social selects, raw video, finished exports, and evergreen content.
To complement the folder structure, I established standardized naming conventions that embed searchable information directly into media filenames.
Files are labeled using identifiers such as team, date, opponent, player or subject, and content type. Notable video highlights also receive descriptive play-type labels, allowing future creators to locate specific moments without manually reviewing entire games of footage.
Built around the organization's existing Google Drive environment, the structure was designed to make assets easier to locate, reuse, and transfer between successive intern classes without requiring additional software.
Built around the organization's existing Google Drive environment, the structure was designed to make assets easier to locate, reuse, and transfer between successive intern classes without requiring additional software.
Closing Thoughts
Beyond establishing consistent branding or improving individual workflows, this project was about creating a foundation for Ice Realm's creative operations that could be maintained and expanded as new interns joined the organization. Working within a limited budget, I prioritized accessible, repeatable solutions that addressed immediate needs while accounting for the challenges of a rotating creative team. Together, these deliverables provided a framework for greater consistency and continuity across all three programs.
