ISOP Italian Championship

Brand Identity Design

It’s unfair to say that I’m a Poker player, I`m not even a Poker fan, but when I received an order from this guys, I was thrilled. I’m talking about ISOP, which actually means Italian Series of Poker, a group of enthusiastic guys from Milan, Italy, lead by an extraordinary man, Gianroberto. But why was I so thrilled? First of all, they take Poker as a sport, as a competition, and not solely as a money making, gambling game, and that is something I like as an ex-casino employee who saw lives and careers go down the drain by first hand. Sure, you compete for substantial money prices at their tournaments too, who would play for peanuts after all, but the core business of the company is and remains a sane competition. Nonetheless their official company colors are blue, or better, azure, like all of the Italian national sports teams and that says a lot. The second reason was that ISOP was the biggest client in my short history of graphic designs and it brought me an experience I dreamed about for about 2 years – to design an official logo, an official tournament poster and a complete tournament identity design. The tournament in question was the Italian Championship 2020 event, Campionati Italiani 2020 in Italian, which takes place once a year. Here I would like to emphasize the poster – I’m a huge fan of historical posters, especially from WWII, F1 and car scene, so it was the journey of my life! ….and it was tough as it should be! Gianroberto, the Company’s boss, is an immensely cool guy with a huge bag of experience from all kinds of entertaining scenes and he always know what he wants. He has such an ability to guide you through work that, at moments at least, you feel you have become his hand, his tool, his manufacturing machine. But don’t get me wrong, I’m a similar guy, I can’t be easily carried away, I always try to make thing better even when they appear already done and I’m a stubborn guy too. Yes, on paper Gianroberto and I could never coexist, but when you get it that it’s better to learn one from each other, things become clearer and the final product a, or almost a masterpiece. Countless corrections of the design where never banal, hours spent polishing the product became a road to knowledge and I will be always grateful to Gianroberto for that. So, in the end, I hope to retake this creative journey again as soon as it is possible, it’s so rewarding! Cheers!

P.s.: Feel free to visit ISOP’s site too.