Rise to the Top: A Southern Miss Splash Page

Football season may be a few months away, but that doesn't mean that ticket sales aren't in full gear. Southern Miss' renewal deadline is fast approaching, and I created this splash page graphic for their website to reminder their past ticket holders of that fact. They wanted to play off their "Rise to the Top" campaign for this upcoming season, and I think it works well as a slogan to get people to renew.

New Smokies Park Stadium Signage

There's a new look going up around Smokies Park...my signage! The team has been updating the stadium signage this season to reflect new names for certain areas of the park as well as to give the stadium a general facelift. Being the graphic design assistant for the team, I have played a major part in this. You can see several examples of my work below.

I tried to keep some unifying element between all the signage to make sure each sign ties into the next and that they all feel like they belong together. The curly border lines were carried over from the main entrance signs and adapted for use along the baselines. I then stuck with the team's color scheme to once again keep some signage unity.

This has been one of the most full throttle projects I've ever had the chance to work on and there is definitely a part of me that feels lucky to have had the chance to create these signs. With any luck, these signs will be up for years and years and become part of the memories of so many Smokies fans. It is that chance of creating lasting memories that drives every project I do and continues to push me to make each project better than the last.

BASELINE DIRECTIONAL SIGNS:

CONCESSIONS DIRECTIONAL SIGNS:

BACK-LIT CONCOURSE SIGNAGE:

Tennessee Smokies Gold Glove Series Bobblehead Box Design #1

The Smokies just wrapped up a series with the Huntsville Stars this evening, capping off the festivities with a patriotic postgame fireworks show. However, on Saturday evening, the team had its first of three bobblehead giveaways this season.

Three former Smokies won Gold Gloves in MLB last year: Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies, Yadier Molina of the St. Louis Cardinals, and Darwin Barney of the Chicago Cubs. Because of that, the Smokies are releasing a Gold Glove Bobblehead Series this season, and it was up to me to design the boxes for them. Each of the players will come in three differently sized boxes based on the bobblehead heights, so I had to create a design that could easily transfer between all three.

As you can see above, I went with a double swoosh design where the white area on the front and back of the box is reversed. On the front, this allowed for a perfect spot to put the name of the player at the top and then the title of the bobblehead series along the side. On the back, the white area worked well to include a biography of the player as well as highlight the sponsors at the bottom.

I used the two side panels to highlight the "collect-ability" of the series, using one side to highlight which one of the set this bobblehead was as well as when the other two will be given away.

This was my first major dip into designing for a 3D object, and I am very pleased with the results. I can't wait to see the other two boxes and the complete set all together at the end of the year. Be sure to come on out to Smokies Park on Saturday, July 20th, to get the second bobblehead in this series as well as a little piece of my portfolio!

Tennessee Smokies: The Process Logo

The Smokies Radio Network has started a web series this season titled "The Process." It chronicles the story of the Tennessee Smokies and how all the parts of the team come together to both win games and develop players at the same time. You can check out the first episode preview and full length episode here.

The radio network wanted a logo to brand the series and yours truly was on hand to create it. I went with the elongated diamond shaped because I like it as a nice border for the logo as well as a hint to a baseball diamond. to really wrap it together though I wanted to include a hint to our geographic location in the Smokies. Thus, the blue mountains in the background came about to wrap the logo together. I thought the piece turned out rather nice, so be sure to check out the series all season long to see the team's story and my logo making several appearances.

Smokies Website Score Bug

Starting off a series with a win is never bad, and I especially like it as a way of highlighting the new score bug I created for our website recaps. As you can see above, for each game recap we now include a score bug over one of the pictures from the game as a cover for the article on the website. This project was a lot of fun to work on. There was a lot of motivation to make it look awesome since it will be popping up on the website almost daily with each game recap. I hope you check the team site often to see how the Smokies are doing!

Smokies Social Media Porch Special Graphic

The Smokies are currently running a special on their Facebook and Twitter pages showcasing a new promotion for the Social Media Porch. Fans can get tickets on the Magnolia Porch for Memorial Day for only $15. It's an awesome promotion for those that follow the team on both of these social media outlets.

In creating this graphic, I liked the idea of the title echoing the perspective in the view from the seats in the background. A little happy accident in Photoshop created the cool black-on-red, developing photo look. I thought it worked perfectly with our color scheme so I ran with it. Hopefully we have a great turnout to kick off the unofficial start of summer!

CFF Cycle for Life Poster and Postcard

Cycle for Life Postcard:

Cycle for Life Poster:

As I catch up on posting the projects I've worked on over the past couple months, I wanted to share a non-sports related one. Above are a couple promotional items for the TN Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's Cycle for Life coming up this August.

My usual love of rough textures and fonts work well with the bike race theme and I love the play between the rough sans serif and clean sans serif fonts that I chose. They were fun pieces to work on and hopefully there will be quite a large turnout to the event in a couple months!

Smokies Series Preview Graphic

The Smokies recently started including series preview articles on the team website and yours truly has thusly started to create graphics for them. I really wanted to echo the score bug (also created by yours truly, to be covered in a future blog post) we have been using on our game recaps as well as have a little fun with the player pictures in the back. I played around with some color variations and motion blur to end up with the picture of Matt Szczur in the background of this one, which I really like. I'm sure there will be more of these to come throughout the season, so be on the look out!

#6KatThePete Graphics

The college baseball season is winding down, and with that, Southern Miss baseball is making one last push to end the regular season with a bang. They are hoping to break their single-game attendance record when they take on Ole Miss this next Tuesday, May 14th.. Thus comes the hashtag #6KatThePete and the graphics I created above.

I thought the idea of the empty stadium worked best because it has a calm before the storm feeling to it. It's just sitting there waiting to be jam packed with Golden Eagle fans cheering on the team, and hopefully that all will come true next Tuesday!

Inside the Tennessee Smokies Game Program

If you purchase a Tennessee Smokies Program at the ballpark this season you will see some of my handiwork while flipping through the pages. I created a few of the ads in this year's program and have included images of them below. My particular favorites are the Wood Bat Showcase and new Concessions Map. I really love the contrast in the bright green field and the deep blues on the concessions map, as I think they play off each other very well to make it an easy piece to look at.