Rock the Vote and Heartlent Group want you to know, #HoopersVote!

This fall, the basketball community is coming together, with celebrities, athletes, fans and media members to remind everyone that #HoopersVote.

Over the past week, you probably saw a lot of highly stylized images floating around social media, bearing the likeness of basketball players, celebrities and basketball media members with the message: #HoopersVote. Those images are part of a new campaign, a partnership between Rock the Vote and Heartlent Group, encouraging the basketball community to flex their electoral muscle in the upcoming election.

What is #HoopersVote?

According to a joint press release, “Hoopers Vote is a movement to engage and amplify the powerful influence of basketball culture and the larger-than-self community that defines it, to drive action both on and off the court – in 2020 and beyond.”

The campaign launched on Sep. 24 and will continue through the election. The centerpiece of the campaign is the more than 200 custom digital illustrations created by Heartlent Group, allowing athletes and influencers to connect with their own communities and personalize the message.

“The original idea I developed with them,” said Elliot Gerard, co-founder and creative director for Heartlent, “was to create a digital “mural” with 50 hoopers and each voter would represent a star and/or state. But the more we got the message out the more people wanted us to create the artwork for them, especially after the WNBPA got involved, I believe we created 50 WNBA players alone, and we even created specific organizational ones using the logos for the WNBPA and Jalen Rose’s Leadership Academy. So far we have created close to 250 voter graphics and are aiming to potentially hit 300 by election day.”

“The original concept was to add elements representing them as a hooper and a voter,” explained Gerard. “Of course, it had to have a specific checkmark going across their faces representing the famous Rock The Vote Logo. I wanted their face within a checkbox like they were checking off who they were voting for. Underneath the checkmark, I had a state shape from the state they represented or grew up in. Around those shapes, I added elements of a star shape to show how they were representing a specific star on the flag.”

“In addition to starting with those elements, I wanted to give a consistent but unique look to all of the pieces I used graphics that represented a basketball court, equipment and plays, a voting form, elements from the state flags, and even US postage symbols to encourage people to mail in their ballot. I also added the voter’s signature to show how they were signing off on their vote.”

At some point this week, generic templates created by Gerard will also be available to download at Heartlent.com so that everyone can join in, adding their own faces and selecting colors to represent their favorite NBA and WNBA teams. The power of the campaign is in its breadth, inspiring as many voices as possible to speak out for the same purpose — getting involved and exercising your precious right to vote.

To see all the Hoopers Vote artwork go to Heartlent.com, or visit them on Instagram: @heartlentgroup and @elliotgerard.