boston sailing center

Who is bsc?

The Boston Sailing Center is a prominent sailing school and club situated in Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1977 by Rick and Sandy Karinen, the center has been a leading hub for sailing education, recreational sailing, and fostering a vibrant sailing community. Offering a range of courses for various skill levels, access to a diverse fleet of sailboats, and organizing events like races and regattas, the Boston Sailing Center has played a significant role in promoting sailing culture and skills on Boston Harbor.

What needs to be done

Boost social media following through Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok and Twitter
New apparel for members and staff
Update website daily or as needed

Target demographics:

The center has members ranging in ages from 18-75

current members

BSC offers classes for every level of sailor

students

We want to bring more young adults into the club in a social aspect and teach more people about sailing

young adults

Boston has a ton of colleges and universities full of young people looking to learn new skills and take advantage of the cities nautical history

college kids

Soling racing cups

Members participate in racing year round, some of these are done exclusively on Solings, a 23 foot racing boat. Solings have a memorable logo that resembles a horseshoe. Soling races are a beloved tradition at BSC, so when I was tasked with redesigning the winner’s cups, I wanted something that would reflect past designs, BSC as a whole, have nautical aspects, but also be a new design members hadn’t seen yet.

apparel

The Boston Sailing Center is a well known Boston staple. It’s the largest sailing club and school in New England, and is a household name among sailors in the North East. With that comes a legacy, and an expectation to uphold when it comes to how we market ourselves. I had the time of my life researching all things nautical, and getting to incorporate something I enjoy so much into my work. Apparel design is one of my favorite types of projects because I get to go back to the drawing board, literally. My process starts with research and drawing any and all ideas that I can think of.

Some examples of my sketches:

Once it’s down on paper, we gotta transfer it to a vector format. This is where I start to lose people. I’m a visual person who needs to see all of my options in front of me all at once, this can mean looking at a screen of designs with only minimal tweaks, that at first glance all look the same. More often then not, the first design I make is the one I end up going with, but it’s still important to milk each design for each it’s worth because there’s the possibility you missed an opportunity to create something better.

Here’s an example of some of my “headache boards” as I’ve heard others refer to them as:

Wade edwards regatta shirts

These shirts were based off the design for the soling cups, with slight modifications. The Wade Edwards Regatta is a annual memorial regatta for a past president of BSC. It was very special to get to see my apparel designs not just in real life (used to this being that I was Merchandise Chair of Alpha Delta Pi Theta Theta) but that it was truly my first professional apparel design, and was shared with members and even Wade’s family.

social media

One of the main efforts, I was taken on to do was aid in their social media content, and expand their audience. I did this through creating more professional content for Instagram, including a template for daily morning story posts, created a Tik Tok and came up with content ideas, sending out email updates to members and students, and more! Some of the tools I used were:

Illustrator
Indesign
Photoshop
Canva
Constant Contact

Check out some of my content below!

instagram logo

Designed in Illustrator by me; burgee provided by BSC