SPARC Internship
Timeline
Aug 2025 -
Present
Client
Sergiu Celebidachi
CEO
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
2 Product Designers
The Mission
SPARC Status Quo
SPARC Sports is a Mental Health Sports startup that helps athletes track performance, manage training, and connect with coaches.
Outcome
Business Impact as a Designer for SPARC
60%
Higher emotional activation
Among tested athletes
40%
Top visual preference
Cobalt ranked #1 overall
33.3%
Perceived trustworthiness
Rated redesign most credible
Designer Impact
- Improved feature discoverability and scan speed through a clearer visual hierarchy and color system
- Reduced visual friction during quick check-ins by prioritizing high-contrast, system-driven UI patterns
- Enabled a scalable design foundation — logo system, color tokens, and UI components — ready for future SPARC features
- Strengthened SPARC's external presence with a unified brand identity built for social media, pitch decks, and merch
Its Challenges
Limited guidance for how the brand should scale across new features and marketing touchpoints
The Problem & Opportunity
How might we create a brand and product experience that athletes trust and enjoy using every day?
Athletes encountered inconsistent colors, unclear typography, and a brand presence that felt similar to other sports apps.
Hard to Navigate
Inconsistent colors and typography across screens, making the product feel unpolished and hard to trust
Misleading UI/UX
UI components that varied between features, creating a fragmented experience for users
Lack of Branding
No centralized brand system to guide design decisions or future development
So... The Opportunity
With no cohesive design system guiding the product, we were presented with a design opportunity: how can we build a clear, flexible brand foundation that improves usability across mobile and web while giving SPARC a distinct, performance-driven identity?
Intro to Part 1, 2, & 3
A Focused and Iterative Visual Experience
The most crucial and challenging design task was redefining SPARC's visual identity inside the app while keeping existing user flows intact. Because the app is the primary product touchpoint for athletes, every color, layout, and typography decision directly affected daily engagement and trust.
Our redesign process had THREE parts that came together in the end:
Testing color systems across real app screens
Iterating on UI layouts to improve clarity and consistency
New Brand Design for SPARC
PART 1: COLOR SYSTEMS
SKIP TO PART 2Generative Research
Color System Exploration
Before finalizing the brand direction, we needed to understand how different color palettes would feel in real usage.
Aka... A LOT of screen iterations...
Explored two main options:
I've created 60+ app UI variations across six color themes with four finalized ones. This allowed us to compare how different palettes affected.
Learning about Color Theory
SPARC focuses on mental performance, color choices directly affect how athletes feel while reflecting and training in the app. I researched color psychology to understand how palettes influence emotion and behavior
RED IMPACT ON ATHLETES (Original Color Tone)
Red risks signaling stress or pressure rather than controlled mental preparation. The heightened arousal can work against the calm, reflective mindset SPARC aims to cultivate, potentially increasing anxiety during critical moments.
Red accents (#831923) in navigation and chart elements create visual urgency. This heightened activation may cause athletes to feel pressured or anxious when reviewing their mental performance data, working against the goal of calm reflection and growth mindset development.
Red edit icons (#831923) create tension during reflective journaling. This emotional state disrupts the vulnerable, introspective mindset required for honest self-assessment and meaningful mental training progress.
Success Metrics
Surveying the Audience: The Athletes!
Athlete testing indicated that Cobalt blue and Dark Green is the strongest visual direction for SPARC, delivering the highest levels of excitement, preference, and perceived trust.
60%
Emotional Activation
Of athletes said Cobalt Blue and Dark Green made them most excited to open the app and begin mental training: the highest emotional response across all options tested.
40%
Visual Preference
Ranked Cobalt Blue as their overall favorite, tying for the top visual preference and reinforcing athlete appeal for clean, brighter interfaces.
33.3%
Credibility & Trust
Of athletes identified Cobalt Blue as the most trustworthy option, demonstrating strong perceived credibility for professional mental training.
33.3%
Usability
Found Dark Green easiest to navigate during quick check-ins, supporting athlete workflows that require speed and clarity under pressure.
Bottom Line
Dark Green is currently the leading visual direction, balancing excitement, trust, and usability for SPARC's athlete audience. Qualitative feedback further reinforced a preference for clean, slightly brighter interfaces that remain calm and professional.
Analysis
Choosing the Right Color
Athlete testing indicates that Dark Green is the strongest visual direction for SPARC, delivering the highest levels of excitement, preference, and perceived trust.
GREEN IMPACT ON ATHLETES (New Color Theme)
Dark green communicates balance and stability, better aligning with SPARC's goal of helping athletes regulate emotions, build confidence, and enter training sessions with a composed, performance-ready mindset.
Green accents (#126b40) provide visual grounding while reviewing metrics. Athletes can calmly assess their progress without stress signals, supporting emotional regulation and confidence building: key to sustainable mental performance improvement.
Green selection indicators and checkmarks reinforce positive progress without urgency. Athletes feel encouraged and focused, entering their training with the centered mindset necessary for peak mental performance.
TL;DR Finalized Design Colorway
The dark green system is psychologically better suited for SPARC's mental training platform. While red excels at commanding attention and signaling urgency, it contradicts the foundational goal of mental performance training: cultivating a calm, controlled, and reflective state. Green's associations with balance, stability, and grounded focus create an environment where athletes can regulate emotions, build confidence, and prepare mentally without the added pressure that red inherently communicates.
“Mental training requires psychological safety and calm—conditions that green naturally supports and red naturally disrupts.”
PART 2: UI DESIGN
SKIP TO PART 3Overview
The “Why?” in the Changes
I created multiple UI iterations to better visualize and communicate the athlete's progress. By testing different progress patterns, information density, and visual hierarchies, I aimed to make improvement trends clearer, more motivating, and easier for athletes to track at a glance.
Problem Review:
The Main Question in UI
How might we visualize athlete progress so improvements feel clear, motivating, and instantly scannable during quick check-ins?
Timeline
Fast, Test, Refine
Rapid iteration cycle across multiple wireframe and visual directions, testing hierarchy, density, and progress treatments.
OUTCOME: Improved scan speed and clarity, helping athletes quickly identify priorities and take action.
User Needs & Design Implications
Design for Momentum
Reviewed athlete feedback, scan behavior patterns, and sports performance UI benchmarks. Focus was placed on glanceability, cognitive load, and motivational framing.
OUTCOME: Increased content discoverability and scan speed, helping athletes quickly find and start the right training module.
Final Solution
TL;DR Clarity Drives Confidence
The refined UI system is better suited for SPARC's mental training experience because it prioritizes clarity and cognitive ease. While earlier layouts successfully surfaced data, they introduced unnecessary visual friction that slowed athlete understanding during quick check-ins. By strengthening hierarchy, simplifying progress signals, and reducing cognitive load, the final design creates an environment where athletes can quickly interpret their performance, build confidence in their progress, and move into training with focus rather than hesitation.
PART 3: LOGO REBRAND DESIGN
SKIP TO REFLECTIONBrand Foundation
“Mental strength isn't a mindset. It's a system.”
SPARC positions mental performance as a structured, trainable discipline rather than an abstract concept. The brand balances athletic intensity with psychological control, creating a visual language that feels focused, grounded, and performance-driven.
Mental performance tools often rely on high-intensity visual languages that emphasize urgency over control. This creates a mismatch with SPARC's goal of helping athletes enter a calm, focused, and reflective state before performance.
I developed a grounded, green-led brand foundation that visually reinforces stability and controlled readiness. By shifting the identity toward calm authority and structured focus, the SPARC system better supports athletes in regulating emotions, building confidence, and preparing mentally under pressure.
Logo Symbol Breakdown
Every Element Has a Purpose
The SPARC logo system is built from five distinct symbolic elements, each rooted in the brand's core values of mental strength, athletic readiness, and performance focus.
02 - Color System
Calm Under Pressure
A grounded green-led palette reinforces emotional control and focus while reserving bright accents for moments of action.
COLORS
Dark green reinforces balance, stability, and grounded focus — key emotional states for mental performance training. Bright CTA green is used sparingly to signal moments of action without introducing stress-inducing urgency.
Direct application on logos:
03 - Typography
Strength Meets Clarity
GOODTIMES delivers athletic impact in headlines while NIMBUS SANS ensures high legibility and scalability across the product experience.
04 - Logo Design Process
From Sketch to Symbol
The logo went through four distinct phases — hand sketches, original iterations, spark symbol explorations, and final refinements — before landing on a mark that balances athletic energy with mental clarity.
FINAL LOGO
KEY TAKEAWAYS/REFLECTION
BACK TO THE TOPTakeaways & Next Steps
What this Whole Client-Work Process Taught Me...
Key Takeaways
- 1.Consistency builds trust. Unifying SPARC's brand and UI immediately made the product feel more credible to athletes.
- 2.Real feedback beats assumptions. Testing color and layout decisions with athletes led to stronger, more confident design choices.
- 3.Communication is part of the craft. Frequent client check-ins kept the work grounded in real needs and prevented misalignment.
Reflection
This project marked meaningful growth in how I communicate as a designer, pushing me to become more confident leading client conversations and clearly framing my design rationale. Through regular check-ins and structured walkthroughs, I learned to translate visual decisions into product and business impact, ultimately building strong client trust and satisfaction. Moving forward, I aim to continue balancing thoughtful design craft with proactive stakeholder alignment while iterating directly within real product contexts.
Next Steps
- 1.Apply the validated color system and refined SPARC logo into a full website redesign as the next phase of the product ecosystem.
- 2.Translate the mobile-first design system into responsive web patterns to ensure brand consistency across platforms