The ouputs can be as simple or complex as the user wishes and export in a variety for formats to import into any software or print media. As the founders of Bolea travel the world and are constantly on the move we sat the generator itself on a sub domain which can be accessed and used on mobile allowing comm’s generation on the go.
The trusted global voice of women in padel.
Naming and branding one of the worlds largest padel platforms, built on a global community of women in padel.
A sport growing faster than its own culture.
Padel is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Thirty-five million players globally, and women make up forty percent of them. Padel culture by contrast is still in it’s infancy, the media, the vibe, the community around the game is going from strength to strength and Bolea is looking to tie it all together.
The founders saw the gap and decided to fill it for their global female padel community. Two sisters and padel players, successfully organising global events and building the worlds largest female padel community before anyone had built the modern infrastructure for it. Bolea didn’t start as a brand strategy, tt started as a simple truth, 40% of padel players around the world needed a platform that felt like theirs.
Renaming an established platform by doubling down.
Naming is arguably the hardest and most important part of the work we do for any client, making the final decision is a huge leap of faith. We explored a variety of territories tho the first question we had to answer was how prescriptive did we want to be, would words such as “female” or “women” feature in the name at all.
There are plenty of arguments either way and there are plenty of female first sports platforms that follow a prescriptive trend: Females in Motorsport. Girls on Track. Women in Games. Our founders were no different initially trading as FemPadel to gain traction in search and mindshare, but after some late nights and long workshops the decision was made to move FemPadel into a world calling on more lifestyle and editorial influences.
Padel was founded in South America and has the largest audience in Spanish speaking countries, Bolea is the Spanish word for a volley, the shot played before the ball touches the ground. It’s recognisable to anyone who plays, and completely ownable outside it. It doesn’t outwardly say female but it feels feminine, ending with an a which as a recognisable trait of female words across the Spanish language. It belongs to the game and to the women who play it.
Creating something dynamic from something rigid.
One of the most common problems facing our start up clients is the feeding the demand for unique content without having to rely on a design agency every time they what to create something. The solution we reached for Bolea was to create a unique pattern generator. Taken from the simple linear markings of a padel court, combined with a random arrangement algorithm and the Bolea brand colours the client and their team can create an infinite amount of graphics to support documents, posts and comms’.
The challenge
The brief contained a tension that most brands in this space had failed to navigate. Build something for women without making it feel like a women’s version of something else. Create a platform that is inclusive without erasing the specific audience it exists to serve and speak to a global community without losing the warmth of the one that already exists.
We used fluorescent palettes, empowering padel lead language. Confident and at ease with the authority that comes from knowing the game from the inside.
How we created feeling
The identity was built around a single creative principle “inside the glass.” The padel court’s defining feature is transparency with its four glass walls that let everything through. Most sport media covers women’s padel from the outside looking in. Bolea is positioned inside them.
Every visual decision was pulled from the game itself. The mark is la golondrina, the swallow that migrates between Mexico and Spain, the two countries connected to padel’s story, and always finds its way back. The colours come from the flora and fauna of those same two countries. The pattern system is built from the geometry of the court turned into a living graphic language through a custom-built generator the client can use. Everything grew from the court and the game itself.
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