Bring Back the Brown
Campaign & Identity

Bring Back the Brown is a fan-led campaign launched in 2010 to advocate for the San Diego Padres to return to brown and gold as primary team colors, and to push for a modern, tasteful reinterpretation of a brown-and-gold identity that felt uniquely Padres and uniquely San Diego. I co-founded the effort with Tony Martinez and co-led the naming, identity system, campaign strategy, merchandise, partnerships, and ongoing communications.

The work was built with minimal budget and no institutional backing, which meant the campaign had to survive on clarity, consistency, and public adoption. We held a hard line on the ask. We did not position the campaign as retro-uniform nostalgia, and we did not dilute the message by accepting improved versions of blue as a substitute for a primary identity reset.

The identity was designed as a repeatable system rather than a single moment. We built a professional, well-structured platform that fans could adopt as part of their fandom, supported by a coalition from the outset so it carried immediate legitimacy. That system stayed recognizable across years and across both physical and digital social channels, supporting posters, rallies at games, community events, and a petition platform that made support visible and legible. We also partnered with Knockaround on limited releases and later larger-scale giveaway moments tied to their Padres partnership, turning the message into wearable media that could circulate beyond baseball forums.

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Over time, the campaign moved from being dismissed to being addressed publicly by the organization, and the pressure became difficult to ignore. The Padres introduced a brown-and-yellow Friday home jersey beginning in 2016. The 2016 All-Star weekend in San Diego provided a highly visible proof point for brown-and-gold demand through record merchandise performance. In November 2019, the Padres unveiled a full return to brown and gold as the club’s core scheme.