Borussia Dortmund

Background

Borussia Dortmund, known by fans across the world as BVB, is one of Germany’s most successful and popular football clubs, finishing second in Germany’s top tier league–the Bundesliga–in 2023. Idolised for their attacking style of play, passionate supporters, and success on both domestic and international stages, they hold a special place in the hearts of football fans everywhere.

Challenge

Since their founding in 1909, BVB have grown from the underdogs to the challengers. Where football was once about tradition and local community – reflected by BVB’s promise ‘Echte Liebe, or ‘Real Love’ – it’s now also about performance and international success.

Our challenge was to bring the old and new worlds of football together to evolve the BVB brand to become more current, attractive and relevant to existing and new fans.

Brand strategy

Our strategy positions BVB as ‘The Black and Yellow community, together we go all in’. It symbolises the iconic roots and identity, the united force and collective power of their team and their fans whose colourful and vibrant support is unrivalled, and powerfully expresses their attitude which always gives 100% and never gives up. Echte Liebe remains the singular reason BVB exists, reinvigorating and uniting the club around their ultimate devotion that cannot be bought.

Brand expression

The visual system is based on one of BVB’s most iconic assets – the Die Gelbe Wand or Yellow Wall – which reinforces the collective power and sense of community that is so deeply embedded in this club's roots.The 34º angle of the standing terrace at Signal Iduna Park becomes our angle of attack throughout the system, from logo to motion, and captures BVB’s intensity and fighting spirit.

Collaborating with Blaze Type, we created a custom typeface suite featuring the 34º angle of attack, which also forms the base for the new Borussia Dortmund word mark. The system represents the fighting spirit of BVB with a headline typeface featuring distinctive ‘Intensity Characters' balanced against a more functional body type. Our number system is inspired by the horizontals and diagonals of the graphic device to retain visual consistency.

The primary palette retains the iconic black and yellow that BVB are so famous for, but introduces an extended palette featuring neons and greys that are inspired by the colours of the stadium, vintage BVB shirts and the city. The industrial landscape of Dortmund also inspires a new suite of textures. Meanwhile, art direction across all images - from action shots to player portraits - work across three levels to capture everyday events, times of intensity and passion, and expressive refraction through the angle of the BVB device to capture the historic moments.