Thoughtful
collaboration.
IPL - 2018 · Sunrisers Hyderabad
Inside the Orange Army — brand & live social design for 9M followers, record-breaking engagement, zero margin for error.
Highlights
- 9M+Followers
- 500+No of Designs
- 1.28mFollower Growth
IPL 2018 was the most engaged season in the tournament's history — 425 million posts, comments and reactions on Facebook alone across the entire tournament. SRH were the third most talked-about team in that conversation.
(Duff & Phelps’ 2018 IPL report)
The
Real Dugout
The team checked in. So did the work.
The brief was unlike anything I'd handled before.
This wasn't just a campaign brief handed across a table — I was travelling with the team, staying where they stayed, inside the machine. It was thrilling and intensely accountable in equal measure.
The work had two very different modes.
Pre-match, I had time to think, iterate, and craft. The moment the match started, it shifted to something closer to live journalism — Playing 11 announcements, in-game stat cards, best catch, top knock, top bowling figures — all had to go out while the match was live.
The internet never forgets.
For a franchise with millions of fans, a single wrong player name, a wrong stat, a wrong jersey number posted live — it's not just embarrassing, it's permanent. That weight was on every single design.
my window
Taj Story
The
Challenge
There's no undo button on a live social post for an IPL team.
I had to build a workflow where I could move fast enough to post in real-time, while being accurate enough to never make a mistake. That meant pre-building templates for every possible scenario — SRH batting first or chasing, win or loss, close match or dominant — so in the moment I was only filling in verified data, not designing from scratch.
I mapped every moment of a match night and built a design ready for each one. By the time IPL 2018 began, I had a loaded arsenal.
The
Design Language
Built around SRH orange, the system used restraint as strategy to create a brand world that never blended in.
SRH's identity is orange — everyone knows that. But I didn't want to just slap orange on everything and call it brand design. I worked with three very intentional tones - Orange Red (#FF4100), Safety Orange (#FF6B00), and Sunshade (#FAB65C).
Each had a role. The deep orange red carried aggression and dominance. The mid orange was the workhorse — warm, energetic, unmistakably SRH. The sunshade brought breath and contrast without ever going soft. Together they didn't just say orange — they said fire.
Safety Orange
#FF4100
- HEX:
- #FA9D3C
- RGB:
- 250 157 060 060
- CMYK:
- 0 50 76 2
Orange Red
#FF6800
- HEX:
- #FA9D3C
- RGB:
- 250 157 060 060
- CMYK:
- 0 50 76 2
Sandy Brown
#FA9D3C
- HEX:
- #FA9D3C
- RGB:
- 250 157 060 060
- CMYK:
- 0 50 76 2
Typography That Could Hold Its Own on a Crowded Feed
I chose League Spartan and Superstar M54 for a reason. Cricket social media in 2018 was loud — every franchise was fighting for attention on the same feed. I needed typefaces that were bold enough to stop the scroll but structured enough to carry stats, names, and numbers without breaking. League Spartan gave me the clean editorial backbone. Superstar M54 gave me the attitude — the kind of letterforms that look like they belong on a jersey, not a brochure.
49 Days. One Final.
No Regrets.
Over the course of the tournament I delivered 500+ designs. Every single one went out under the SRH badge, to a combined audience of over 9 million+ followers (1.28m growth) across platforms. Every post that went out was right.
And a runner-up finish in the world's biggest T20 league.