It’s not every day you get to design a prank pizzeria for an MLB all-star, so when Red Bull tasked us with just such a thing, we jumped at the opportunity. Kris Bryant, third baseman for the Chicago Cubs, has developed a reputation for being a prankster, and teamed up with Red Bull this year to play a trick on three unsuspecting fantasy baseball leagues during draft day in Mesa, AZ.
SixSpeed and Red Bull had teamed up in the past to help design a logo for Bryant and joined up with him again in Chicago for a first-of-its-kind batting practice that saw him slamming balls into the Chicago river. Red Bull reached out to us wanting to know if we could help create a phony pizza company logo for Bryant’s upcoming prank. The idea was to have Bryant show up at the draft day party disguised as a pizza delivery guy from “Kristio’s Pizza & Wings” and surprise the unwitting fantasy baseball teams. For that, Bryant’s pizzeria logo had to look legit enough to pass off as a real pizza joint, while also giving a subtle nod to his Baseball notoriety.
Fantasy baseball leagues take draft day EXTREMELY seriously. League members spend weeks (or months) researching their top picks. Draft day has its own vocabulary, its own rules, and the stakes are high. Having a top player drafted before you get to him can sometimes make or break months of planning and research.
Although Red Bull came up with the name Kristio’s Pizza and Wings (a combination of Kris and Mario), they needed a logo for the pizzeria that had a home-grown feel and wasn’t overdesigned. We know this logo would have to speak subtly to Bryant’s baseball roots without being too flashy or a dead giveaway to the participants. We wanted it to include a cheeky nod to baseball (the bat) which would make the participants look twice at the pizza box and add another layer of authenticity to the experience.
The process started with finding a font that felt energetic, yet classic and we immediately settled on a script font. Red Bull loved the idea of including a baseball-themed character and quickly decided that either a bat or a baseball would be the most feasible options. After exploring how the characters fit around the type, the bat stood out as the better looking of the two.
With the logo designed, we set about acquiring all the tools that make a good pizzeria. Hats, shirts, a magnetic logo for the delivery car, stickers and pizza boxes all had to be printed and embroidered and then overnighted to Arizona where Red Bull and Bryant would be shooting the prank. The disguise and pizzeria had to look entirely authentic for the prank to work.
Bryant’s video dropped on YouTube a few days before the 2018 MLB season-opener and garnered hundreds of thousands of views in the first couple days. Most of the participants had no idea Bryant, decked out in his Kristio’s gear, was delivering their pizzas. Not only was Kris Bryant himself stoked with how his own pizza company’s logo turned out, but its authenticity helped to provide an experience that those fantasy baseball fans will not soon forget.
Photographer Credit: Lear Miller / Red Bull Content Pool
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