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½ûÂþÌìÌà McGuire Bettes

McGuire is a graphic designer based in southeastern Massachusetts, graduating with her degree in Graphic Design, a minor in business administration and as an Honors College scholar at ½ûÂþÌìÌÃ. For the past eight years, McGuire has been working diligently to become a designer and improve and hone her design skills in a wide array of areas. McGuire is passionate about creative problem solving and creating beautiful and visually interesting designs.

Statement  

Mother Rucker is a brand identity meant to empower women and female athletes to do what they love. Female athletes have traditionally been represented as fitting into the mode of traditional femininity. When looking at athletic brands that had women as a core demographic, they focused on these qualities. Most of the language I observed on the sites with women’s athletic wear featured keywords such as “zen” and “breath” focusing on the athleisure nature of the apparel. When going on the same brands website to view men’s athletic wear, there was a strong shift in language and the design to focus more on strength and power. With this branding, I wanted to create a brand that flipped that narrative. I focused on rugby apparel as I love the sport and with its rapid growing nature in the US, there is a demand but not many businesses to fully satisfy.  

For the brand identity, I wanted to focus on the aspect of swearing and censorship. Female athletes were traditionally “censored” in a way to fit the classy image society wanted from them. In rugby, a ruck is a term given to a formation that keeps the ball in your team’s possession since, unlike in American Football, the play does not stop when someone gets tackled, and the game keeps going. It was very quickly that the name Mother Rucker was born. For colors, I initially wanted to stay away from pastels and pinks as those are traditionally associated with being “feminine”. For my final color palette, I settled on a dark purple as a primary color as it is not as closely associated with being feminine but would still appeal to a female audience. For secondary colors, I chose shades of orange, green, blue, and pink. I opted to include a bright pink despite my initial intentions as the shade that I chose is very bold and I wanted to show how female athletes are strong and powerful but can still also be feminine and that those ideas are not mutually exclusive. 

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McGuire Bettes

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