Howdy y'all, every month is pride month.

Many of you have probably seen You Belong., the pride branding and theme concept I created last year to celebrate Pride, give the SHL something truly unique among the affiliate sim league universe, and to have something distinct but aligned with campaigns seen in non-sim sports such as the NHL's Hockey Is For Everyone with a spin that highlighted the unique social experience we have here and the discord communities of our then 34 teams. It was even bigger of a hit than I expected, showing up across the SHL in many forum signatures, on the boards of rink designs, and as stickers and magnets on the merch store.

To celebrate this year, to account for three new brandings in the SMJHL, and with the charity drive looming, I decided I needed to revisit this campaign. There were small elements I wasn't happy with as I looked over the files, so I rebuilt the design from the ground up to improve the typeface and clean up a lot of pixels. The addition of two new teams also gave me a chance to revisit color combinations, providing better balance and giving an additional brown and black stripe.

Additionally, as we kick off the charity drive, I wanted to do something else unique. I am having two prints made (one to keep), and one of these prints will be available for bidding when the charity drive kicks off (physically signed for CONUS, digitally signed, or unsigned, winner's choice).






Key updates include:
Cleaning up the angle of the diagonal to 45 degrees (it was a fraction off)
Slight size and color changes to go from 34 to 36 teams
Addition of alternate options for nicknames, states, or cities:

(Ottawa as an example, if you want a specific one for your team have your GM reach out to me)

IMGUR ALBUM FOR FORUM SIGNATURE VERSIONS
(linking them back to this thread would be bonus points, ty)

MERCH STORE UPDATE COMING SOON
(I haven't talked to the merch team about this yet)

BID ON THE 18x24" PRINT FOR CHARITY HERE