How ModestWorks and Moniker gave Atlético Dallas a myth and a crest

Ahead of joining the USL Championship in 2027, Atlético Dallas turned to Dallas-based brand studio ModestWorks and San Francisco-based identity studio Moniker for its identity, marking the pair’s second football collaboration after Dallas Trinity FC. “The core soccer community in many cities across the United States is Latino,” explains Chairman & Founder Matt Valentine, and in Dallas, that community, clustered in and around the urban core, had grown distant from the professional game. The club was founded for exactly those fans: they “didn’t feel connected to a professional team in the market,” he tells us, so Atlético Dallas set out to “provide an outlet for the passionate soccer fan that wants a hometown team to support.” The brief that reached the studios asked for something “bold yet classic,” as Chief Commercial Officer Sam Morton puts it – a more traditional football crest set against the conventions of the North American game, and an identity that felt as though it had always belonged to Dallas yet could stand alongside the greats of world football. The solution began with the name. “Atlético” is recognised across world football, and in Dallas it also reflects the city it serves – a place where, as ModestWorks’ Creative Director Robert Milam puts it, “roughly 42% of Dallas identifies as Hispanic or Latino” and “Spanish isn’t a second language.” Around that, the studios found their positioning. The club should feel as though it has always existed. The aim, Milam explains, “wasn’t about making the club look old” but about avoiding “signals that would date it.”