Branding: Unified Taekwon-Do

Create a modern, professional brand for international Taekwon-Do organization, Unified Taekwon-Do.

Objective

Create a new brand for the organization to embody it’s new direction, and reflect its history. As an evolution, the new brand had to clearly distinguish the organization from it’s previous brand and the numerous other Taekwon-Do organizations already established in the market. It also needed to embody a modern, forward-thinking vision while maintaining a visual connection to its lineage as an ITF Taekwon-Do organization.

Audience

Senior black belts, instructors and Masters.

concept

To tie into the previous brand and Korean culture, I kept the light blue background from original crest and added a rich gold and blue seen in Korean art. I also used the same font and placement from the original. In addition, I also used symbolism from Korean culture and echoed in TKD’s system such as the importance of the numbers three and nine, nine being 3x3. Nine lines are used to create the “globe” in the background of the crest which also implies the international facet of the organization.

Process

I researched Korean culture for colours and symbols symbolic of TKD’s Korean heritage for inspiration to evoke the Korean heritage. I also had numerous discussions with the Founder and the Executive Director to understand what concepts were important to preserve — incorporating the Korean characters, jun tong, which mean “legacy”, a key principle / value of the organization; depicting the global nature of the organization; and incorporating a fist or kicking figure.

DESIGN CHALLENGES

Two challenges were central to this project: overcoming the emotional attachment to the previous brand to generate buy-in and also creating something that could translate to a variety of media and applications—from the embroidered crests, 1” black belt pins, and large tournament signage.

Outcome

The outcome was a bright crest with a colour palette inspired by the previous brand and Korean culture. In addition, for differentiation from other Taekwon-Do brands, I inverted the colours in the outer ring using gold on black instead of black on white. The gold on black also alludes to the gold embroidery used on black belts to indicate rank.