More than a logo.
If all it did was look cool but didn’t mean anything, there’d be no reason to do it.
WMMBA has been an organization in some capacity for almost 20 years and we’ve been run by incredible volunteers this whole time. Men and women who love riding and love trails so much that they spent incredible amounts of time and effort creating and maintaining our trails while asking nothing in return. They just love it. These folks were interested in focusing their time on LITERALLY building our trails.
Through their time and effort, WMMBA was established and grew as an organization. They built our trails, they organized our volunteers, and they set the path for our organization to mobilize and grow. Which we’ve been doing, thanks to those efforts.
With growth usually comes change. The pandemic reduced our board. Our events and revenue disappeared. We lost physical connection to our members and our community. Yet, despite all of that, we grew and are growing. Our sport exploded while we were rebuilding.
Enter our new brand. We say brand b/c a brand is more than a logo.
Our new logo is easier to read and recognize from any distance. It’s got a natural color so that it, and we, can have more fun. It looks like a tire rolled over the WMMBA letters. It’s got hills, not mountains, b/c let’s be honest, West Michigan. Also, it’s a wheel, duh. It has a lot of cool design elements to it, but it’s about more than that.
When we stop talking about the WHAT of the new logo and start talking about the WHY, it begins to matter.
Our new logo is modern and more professional. Not b/c that looks cool but b/c that matters in how we are perceived. We are involved with decision-makers. The people who make decisions about land. The people who approve who gets to do what on land. The people who pay for and fundraise for changes to land. These people care that any organization they work with knows what they are doing. These are the people we work with to get trails built, maintained, and improved. Our new brand conveys something to these folks and we think it conveys the right message to them. We know what we are doing. You can trust us. But yeah, it also just looks modern and cool, so that’s nice.
Our new logo is simple. Not b/c that’s trendy but b/c that matters for our awareness. Did you know that WMMBA currently has 500+ members, and growing by the day? Yeah, I didn't either.
Our members and volunteers are an army of mtn bike loving cool freaking people who aren’t really united under one flag. A united and stoked group of riders is a powerful force for good when it comes to accomplishing our goals and sharing our love of the sport. Our new brand will unite our membership b/c we will be able to create badges, stickers, shirts, signs, and a million other things for members to show a little pride in what we are all accomplishing. Sounds cliche, but our new brand should be a jump in the direction of unity and pride. But also, it’s about freakin time we put some t’s together that we are all stoked on. (Cool t’s forthcoming)
Our new logo has colors. 4 colors to be specific. Nothing wrong with a good ol black and white logo, like our old one, but it no longer communicated something that we want to communicate. Our goal of diversity. Let’s remove any personal triggers from tossing that word out. Ok. We good? We mean it though. Our sport is more diverse than ever and as an organization that represents riders in West Michigan, we don’t represent them enough. Age, race, sex, and riding style.
There are a lot of riders who don’t live in Rockford. Ha. There are communities who have no access to even begin our sport b/c there isn’t anything resembling a mtn bike trail within 30 miles. These communities have riders, or future riders, of different ages, races, sexes and styles. There are more women in the sport now than ever but they too face the challenge of finding trails close enough to ride, find community, and get into the sport. There are more kids riding but so few kids have any type of trail close enough to ride to and learn on without waiting on Mom and Dad to throw the bike on a rack and drive 30 minutes. There are riders who want to push their level beyond the features and terrain we have available now. They want progression in our trails and in their riding. These groups represent 4 key demographics of ours that we recognize need our support, and oh look, we have 4 colors in our new brand. We see you. We got you.
And for the most philosophical reason that we updated our brand, it represents change. Honestly though, not for us. For you. We’ve been changing pretty significantly over the last three years. Presidents terms being up, board members stepping down to handle life, events being canceled, all during an absolute explosion in trail use. We changed and we adapted quickly. We know what our vision and goals look like. Now though, we want you all to change. We will communicate our vision and goals and then we are issuing a call to action to all of our members. You love this sport? You love what it’s done for you? You see what we are doing and support it? Well, let’s go. The tagline on our website says “We are you.” Our job is to represent our members and their interests so we want our members to get more involved. To create change we often have to change ourselves. To build new trails, we need more people involved in local politics advocating for mtn biking. To build new trails we need money and people who can give it or fundraise it. To maintain trails we need new trail coordinators who like to get their hands dirty. To have a healthy and diverse board, we need new board members that represent our membership. In short, if you are reading this, we probably need you more involved doing whatever it is you care about in whatever increased capacity you can do it. This might be waxing a bit poetic about our new logo but dang it, it represents positive change and that’s something we care about. It represents our renewed focus on executing our vision for making West Michigan a freaking awesome place to be a mtn biker.