Designer who created concept for a Kansas City NBA team blown away by viral reaction
Graphic designer Robbie Poulain was hired in early 2021 by the Kansas City Royals, who lured him away from the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder.
After four years in Oklahoma, Poulain was thrilled to return to Kansas City, where he has lived most of his life. But he missed having an NBA team in town (there hasn’t been one since the Kings moved to Sacramento in 1985), so Poulain decided to create a concept for a Kansas City professional basketball franchise.
After years of brainstorming and many weeks of design work, the result is a stunning vision of a team called the Kansas City Reign, which he shared online.
The name, which came after polling more than 500 people, had a “common denominator” with the Royals, Kings and Monarchs, Poulain wrote.
Poulain chose these colors: black, reign yellow and reign silver for the team. He wrote on Twitter that yellow was chosen because the Chiefs, Royals, Mizzou and KU all have it in their color scheme. He created four logos and four uniform looks.
There also is a court design, and visions for how the T-Mobile Center could look inside and outside.
More than 5,000 people have liked his tweet and there have been hundreds of responses as it’s gone viral. Nearly 10,000 people have viewed the project’s web page.
“The reaction has been incredible,” Poulain wrote in a Twitter message. “I never expected it to take off the way it did. I expected more criticism when it came to the colors (ha). The outpouring of support and enthusiasm was amazing.”
The T-Mobile Center opened in 2007 and the prevailing thought was an NBA or NHL team would be an anchor tenant. That hasn’t happened, although Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has made multiple overtures to teams.
During his time with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Poulain’s love of the NBA blossomed, and he has no doubt a team could thrive in Kansas City.
“It would mean the world to have an NBA team here again,” he wrote. “Power and Light (District) is lively enough without a team there for 41 home games a year. I can’t imagine how lively it would be with one. The fact that we have so much rich college basketball passion around here shows me that KC would support an NBA team.”
This story was originally published June 7, 2022 at 1:41 PM.
