Cheer DC

Overview

Cheer DC is an all-volunteer LGBTQ+ cheer squad in Washington, D.C., and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. The team raises money, awareness, and spirit for the LGBTQ+ community through performances across the DMV, and it's a member team of the Pride Cheerleading Association.

A cheer squad's logo has a hard life. It lands on uniforms, banners, social avatars, and event programs, often printed by whichever shop the team can book that week. Cheer DC needed an identity that could survive all of that and still look like one team.

The mark

The logo starts with the three red stars from the D.C. flag, set over a heavy italic wordmark with speed lines cut through the letters. It reads as sport first and as D.C. a half second later, which is the right order for a team that performs.

The primary lockup is navy and red. Around it we built a full system: a stacked version for square spaces, a logotype and a logomark that each work on their own, a light blue alternate, and knockout and cutout versions for dark backgrounds and one-color printing.

Color and type

The palette comes from the flag and the uniform. Navy (Pantone 539C) and red (Pantone 187C) are the primaries. Light blue, orange, and yellow are the secondary colors, there for event graphics and social posts that need more range. The brand typeface is Cornero.

Pride and advocacy alternates

Cheer DC performs at Pride events, and the logo needed to show up there as itself. We drew a set of advocacy alternates that fill the letters and stars with community flags: the six-color rainbow, the Philadelphia flag with its black and brown stripes, the Progress flag, trans pride, and an intersex star. Every version keeps the same letterforms and star layout as the primary logo, so each one is still clearly Cheer DC.

Social avatars

Profile images get cropped into circles and shown at thumbnail size, so the social set uses the stacked mark on its own. There are versions on light blue, white, black, the rainbow and Progress flags, and trans pride, each in a full and a cropped cut.

The handoff

Everything shipped ready for whoever picks it up next, whether that's a volunteer making an Instagram post, a screen printer, or a banner shop. Every logo comes in two sets, CMYK for print and RGB for screens, as SVG and PNG, with editable AI and EPS source files.

A one-page brand kit pulls it all together: the logo, the logomark and logotype, the knockouts, and every color with its hex, RGB, and CMYK values, plus Pantone numbers for the core colors. It also links straight to the Cornero license, so nobody has to guess where the font came from.

Outcome

Cheer DC now has one identity that works everywhere the team shows up: on the field, on a flag, in a feed, and on a printed banner. The identity was delivered in early 2025, ahead of the season Cheer DC hosted Pride Cheerleading Association teams from across the country for WorldPride in Washington, D.C.