Oakland Roots

When one of the hottest soccer clubs in US soccer brings you on board to help with a project, there is some cause for some serious excitement. Shortly after joining the USL and announcing a major partnership with PUMA, the Oakland Roots team tapped us to help them shoot the creative for their 2021 inaugural USL PUMA kit. 

We had been following the Roots for awhile and were already big fans of the club. Their purposeful focus on using soccer to bring positive impact to the communities of Oakland was inspirational and something we knew we wanted to align to. 

Puma and the Roots had worked closely on a kit design that was directly inspired by the club’s logo and ethos - smashing barriers, expectations and above all advocating for justice first, always. After seeing the design mock ups and listening to the Roots team on what inspired the kit, we came back to them with an idea - what if we shot the kit in the mosaic and shattered glass that inspired it? They loved it! 

It seemed like a pretty straightforward idea in theory, but in execution it provided quite a challenge. After sketching out the idea and testing a couple concepts, we landed on a structure that we were happy with. The set we built was used to shoot athlete and model imagery as well as product imagery. We carried the same creative theme of reflecting or shattered glass through the remainder of the men’s and women’s creative to maintain a cohesive look, even with shots we captured outside the studio.

Although our deliverables for this project were primarily focused on imagery capture, it also included some simple video assets that showcased the jersey across all looks - mens, womens, and kids. See video below.

Collaborating on this project with the Oakland Roots was truly a pleasure. From the moment we began working on this project we felt as though we were welcomed into a family. That family is full of talented, resourceful and hard working people. They are so invested in and have such a great pulse on their community. Oakland Roots deserves all the attention and credit coming their way. Rogue FC was proud to be invited into the family and are happy to play even a small part in that story.