With a few lower league badges under his belt, Richard Miller of Calyx Design has quickly become a highly admired engineer of soccer design. We continue our series of Business Spotlights by asking him where he started and to see if there is a limit on what Calyx can do - spoilers… I’m not sure there is.

When did you launch Calyx as a business and where does the name come from?

I started Calyx Design back in 1997, after about seven years as designer/art director for a small San Francisco design shop. I’d reached the point in my professional development that it was probably well past time to strike out on my own. My employer caught wind of my plans to do just that, and fired me on the spot. It was exactly the push I needed, and I’ve never looked back.

The business name is a Latin term for the outer part of a flower, the usually-green whorl just outside the petals. In some flowers (such the clematis featured in my logo), though, it’s the part that puts on the brightly colored show. I do love gardening and growing things, but the real reason I picked the name was that I loved the word.

Crests designed by Calyx are more than cut & paste shields or roundels, each one tells a regional or club-specific narrative.

Looking at your website, Calyx has done an amazing job on projects for all sorts of businesses, when did your interest in soccer and design begin to intersect?

I fell in love with soccer shortly after moving to Portland, Oregon in 2008. I was convinced by a good friend to become a season ticket holder for the Timbers’ inaugural MLS season (2011), and have stood in the North End in the Timbers Army for nearly every home match since.

Early on I became involved with a small tifo crew (PTFC Moderates), and began pouring my spare time into matchday banners and 2-sticks. It wasn’t long before that work led to being noticed by folks in the regional soccer world, and to being recognized as a professional who could help with real-world soccer projects.

Do you have favorite projects - if so, which ones did you get really excited to be working on?

Soccer-wise, I’ve honestly fallen in love with every club I’ve worked with, and become personally invested in their success. It may seem like a cliche, but it’s a fact. I’m certain that my ability to identify with clients is a large part of the secret of my success.

From window treatments to book covers, menu and table cards to gigantic vehicle advertisements, Calyx can take your idea and not only help you create an identity, but help you apply it professionally in ways you might not have thought possible.

We've seen your work with grassroots soccer clubs Alta California Sol, AC Chehalem Valley, PDX FC, and Santa Maria Synergy. While some clubs in soccer have nice logos, yours are a little extra special - what's your process like? What makes your work so unique and attractive?

Crest development (any logo work, really) is all about listening. I believe that the most successful crests elicit strong emotion in their bearers, and I want the clubs I work with to fall in love with theirs. Listening closely and reflecting the club back at itself is the only reliable way to make that happen.

I listen to the club and its stakeholders. I learn what makes it special, what its values are, and how it connects to the community. And lest this seem too ethereal, working through this process plants both conceptual and visual ideas in me, evokes symbols, determines font choices, color palettes and all sorts of the minuscule details that add up to make a crest special..

And of course the process has to be collaborative.. After the learning phase, I come back to the club with a set of 3–5 tight sketches – often more since I can’t help myself. We go over these, identify which elements resonate and which aren’t clicking as well, and then I come back with revisions. We continue this process of sculpting until we’ve arrived at something we’ve all fallen in love with..

Are there any clubs we missed and are there teams out there you really wish would reach out to you, if not for the money, but simply to make something beautiful? Willing to say which ones you wish would call you?

I love working with lower league clubs. My ideal client is one with aspirations to elevating their club above the competition, while creating a real sense of local connection and community.

I’ve also worked with The Portland Timbers u23s and with the American Outlaws (US National Team supporters group) to develop scarves, patches, and other merch.

Scarves, patches, animated gifs; working with Calyx can help you elevate the aesthetic of your organization and make it look top-level.

But you don't stop at making a nice crest do you? What other renderings and files can you make that really add a ton of value to your work with clubs?

Along with the crest, even my most basic branding offering includes social media cover and profile graphics, secondary logos and wordmarks, branded textures/patterns, and a book of brand standards listing color codes, crest usage guidelines, fonts, and a guide to the set of online/print-ready digital files I’ve supplied.

Ideally, though, I get to take things further, with social media graphics (animated and otherwise), merchandise such as scarves (so many scarves!), website development, kit consultation, and so on.

Anything you're working on that is new to you? A new product or service you can offer? What's next for Calyx Design?

Let’s see…. I’ve been gradually developing my animation chops (as seen in motion graphics for PDXFC and AC Chehalem Valley), but that’s a work in process.

I’ve recently begun to develop a line of merchandise that I sell under the name of CalyxWorks. In some ways, this is an outgrowth of my work with the tifo crew (you’ll see t-shirts that began life as rail banners), but it also allows me to share new and varied design inspirations directly with a larger public. I’ve even added a mailing list where folks can be notified when a new design drops!.

Generally speaking, though, my wheelhouse is anything that falls under the rubric of Visual Branding for small businesses … especially soccer.

To check out everything Calyx has to offer and to get in touch: https://calyxdesign.com/