A new Chicago franchise presented at the city’s planetarium.

The Chicago Sky were born as a placeholder. English Wikipedia says that in February 2005 the NBA commissioner, David Stern, announced that Chicago had been awarded a new WNBA franchise, known for the time being as “WNBA Chicago,” and that in May that year the former NBA player and coach Dave Cowens was named its first head coach and general manager. The real-estate developer Michael Alter, president of the Alter Group, became principal owner and chairman in 2005, according to Wikipedia, and he has led the ownership since then.

The name arrived in September. Sports Business Journal reported on 21 September 2005 that the new franchise had formally unveiled its Sky nickname, its logo, its sky blue and yellow colours and its uniform the previous day at a ceremony at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium. The report said the logo was designed by Flow Creative, and, citing the Chicago Sun-Times, quoted the team’s president and chief executive, Margaret Stender, on the brief she had set: the name and the logo had to be “distinctly Chicago,” “aspirational and encouraging,” and “high-energy.”

Wikipedia records how Stender explained the colours at that launch: yellow and blue stood for a beautiful day in Chicago, between the blue sky and bright sunlight, chosen to highlight the city’s skyline. Visiting WNBA players, among them Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Ruth Riley and Temeka Johnson, ran a basketball clinic for children after the unveiling, and Sports Business Journal noted that the team planned to raise its profile across the city with street banners and public appearances before its first season.

The club stood on its own from the start. Wikipedia says that, unlike many WNBA teams, the Sky have never been affiliated with an NBA counterpart, even though the Chicago Bulls play in the same market. The team’s first home was the UIC Pavilion on the University of Illinois Chicago campus, which it used from 2006 to 2009.

White, light blue and gold across three arenas.

The early uniforms kept close to the launch palette. Wikipedia describes the home kit from 2006 to 2010 as white with light blue on the sides and a light blue collar, and the road kit as light blue with gold on the sides and a gold collar. From 2011 the side panels became stripes and the team name and numbers were set in gold on both kits; in 2013 the club introduced a new typeface for names and numbers while keeping the basic design.

Sponsorship then found an unusual position on the jersey. Wikipedia says that when the Magellan Corporation became the jersey sponsor in 2015, the Sky put its logo on the left shoulder, in the place previously used for the team’s alternate logo, rather than across the front. In 2016, as part of a league-wide move to all-colour matchups, the team added a gold uniform to its light blue road set, and in 2018, when the club unveiled a new Nike uniform, Magellan was joined on the jersey by University of Chicago Medicine.

The home court moved twice. Wikipedia says the Sky left the city in 2010 for Allstate Arena in the suburb of Rosemont, where they played until 2017, and then returned to Chicago in 2018 at Wintrust Arena, which the club describes as sitting in the heart of the South Loop.

Ownership has widened without changing hands. Wikipedia lists Alter as principal owner with Nadia Rawlinson as co-owner and chair since 2023, and names Harvey Alter and the investor John Rogers among the owners. Throughout these changes the core of the identity, a light sky blue set against a warm yellow, has stayed in place, and the team’s colour list, as Wikipedia gives it, is now sky blue, radiant yellow, black and white.

Design and documentation.

A women’s professional basketball club builds its identity under a different set of pressures from a men’s club in the same city. Many teams in the league were set up in markets that already had an established men’s franchise, and some began life as sister clubs to an NBA team, sharing an owner, a front office and an arena. That arrangement shapes the brand from the start: the women’s team often borrows a colour, a type style or a naming idea from its partner, then has to decide how far to move away from it as it gains its own owners and its own audience.

Colour is usually the first place that independence shows. A club can stay close to the regional palette of the city’s other teams, or pick a combination that no neighbour uses, so that a jersey reads as its own at a glance on television and in the stands. Names tend to come from weather, landscape, local landmarks or a sense of energy, and short single-word names give designers room to build a mark around one strong shape.

Arenas matter too. Teams that share a building with a men’s club, an ice-hockey team or a concert schedule have to make their court, signage and branding stand out on nights when the venue belongs to them, and teams that move between venues carry their identity from one building to the next.

Redrawn in 2018, and a lioness in 2024.

The first full redesign came on 7 November 2018, after the team’s first season at Wintrust Arena. In its announcement the club said it was unveiling a new logo and colour scheme, and that its branding had not changed since the team began in 2006. It said the new primary and secondary logos were developed over a year-long design process with the creative agency David Day Associates, that both paid tribute to the city of Chicago, and that black and grey were added to the blue and yellow for a sleeker, more contemporary look. The club’s president and chief executive, Adam Fox, linked the timing to the move back into the city and described the new look as “strong, modern, and refined.” A new court design and new merchandise were to follow in the months after the logo.

The mascot followed in 2024. Block Club Chicago reported on 28 August 2024 that the Sky had introduced Skye the Lioness to replace Sky Guy, the team’s earlier mascot. The paper traced the change in part to a fan campaign: a supporter, Nora McConnell-Johnson, had printed “No More Sky Guy” stickers that spread among fans and on social media. According to the report, Skye was designed by Tom Sapp of Real Characters Inc., the costume was built by Randy Carfagno Productions and the mascot consultant Jeremy Legg also worked on the project. The team’s chief marketing officer, Tania Haladner, said in a statement that the club wanted a mascot that fully represented the Sky.

The choice of animal tied the mascot to a city landmark. Block Club Chicago noted the connection between lions and Chicago through the lion statues that guard the Art Institute of Chicago, which wore Sky jerseys during the team’s 2021 playoff run, and said Skye would wear No. 00 and make appearances at places including the Art Institute and the city’s zoos. Wikipedia says Skye made her game debut at Wintrust Arena on 28 August 2024, with Sky Guy kept on through the rest of that season.

For a design guide, the Chicago Sky show how a team without an NBA partner built its identity from the city itself: a planetarium launch, a palette taken from a clear day over the lake, a redesign timed to a move back downtown and a mascot drawn from a museum’s front steps. Compare the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago Cubs and the WNBA. For this guide we use sky blue, radiant yellow and black with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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