Tennessee Smokies Website Background

If you stroll over to the Tennessee Smokies website now you will see the background I created for them at the end of my internship. I love having this piece in my portfolio as it is main thoroughfare for people to get Smokies info and thereby also see my work.

My idea on this one was to show the unique connection the Smokies have to two areas: the city of Knoxville and the Smoky Mountains. I achieved that by putting the skyline across the header that goes as if you were looking up from southern Tennessee at the trek across I-40. I then put the stadium lights on either side to echo the "stadium in the mountains" (even it is a little bit down the road from them). I felt the stanchions rising out of the mountains just gave the whole background a cool look and helped to frame up the header nicely.

Hendricks and Baez were probably the team's most successful players last year so we decided to highlight them in the background as well. I chose pictures that pointed towards the main info to help frame up the body of the page.

In all, I think this piece turned out great, and I hope you stop by the Smokies website to check it out live!

A Little More After Effects: Baseball Matchup Graphic

So as I mentioned in my blog post last week, I have been teaching myself After Effects recently. With that I have been creating projects for myself to continue to get accustomed to the program.

I had the above idea one day while fiddling around in the program. As I get more into motion graphics, I'm realizing just how many there are around me, especially being such a big sports fan. With that in mind, I wanted to take a stab at my own matchup graphic. I used the last matchup of the Tennessee Smokies season as a test run since it is where my baseball career has left off at the moment.

I really loved the idea of steel doors shutting on one thing only to reveal another, so I went that route. After revealing the matchup logos, the video felt kind of stagnant, so I added in the team names sliding in from center. Even with that though, the piece still felt like it died after those names finished. To alleviate that feeling, I added a little rotation expression to the logos to keep them moving throughout the piece, thus keeping it "active" for the full duration. I made this rotation happen in 3D space to only further that feeling.

I feel overall that I accomplished my goal with this piece, exploring scene transitions and movement from various directions. However, I am up for suggestions on ways to continue to improve. Thanks for viewing!

It's Time for a #TNSTitleRun - Knoxville News Sentinel Ad

This past Monday, the Smokies clinched the Southern League North Division 2nd Half Championship. The team is now playoff bound and will be kicking off a series against the 1st Half Champion Birmingham Barons down in Alabama starting on Thursday, September 5th. Their first game back by the mountains will be on Saturday, September 7th, and we are heavily promoting that matchup. We were able to get an ad in the Knoxville News Sentinel to help us promote the matchup.

Having been in football mode while the team has been on their playoff push, the idea of the hats facing off, much like a helmet matchup graphic in football, popped into my head. I then went with a simple rundown of the possible playoff dates echoing a boxing tale-of-the-tape. Overall, I believe the ad turned out very well and I hope to see plenty of fans out supporting the Smokies on Saturday!

The Final Tennessee Smokies Gold Glove Bobblehead: Darwin Barney

This past Saturday the Tennessee Smokies wrapped up their Gold Glove Bobblehead Series Giveaways with the third piece of the set, Darwin Barney. It was awesome to see the collection come to its completion, and to finally see ally three of my box designs together. This was an amazing project to work on and I think the overall design I chose worked seamlessly between all three of the different box dimensions.

Below are some more pictures of just the box for the Barney bobblehead:

Smokies Park Entranceway Signage

There are plenty of backlit signs around Smokies Park, and I'm glad to have left my mark on a few of them this season. Above are a few of the ones that are in the stadium's entranceways highlighting a couple of the team's 2013 promotions as well as the Smokies Radio Network. 

Tennessee Smokies Wall Pad Art

It has been a little while since I've posted some more of my work but I am now getting caught up posting some more of the signage I've done around Smokies Park.

I created these two signs to showcase the team's complete Gold Glove Bobblehead Series that has been going on this season. They are located right beside the first and third base dugouts on their respective home plate sides. 

It has been a neat experience to have so much of my work making up the signage at Smokies Park this season. Check back soon for more from around the park!

Tennessee Smokies Gold Glove Series Bobblehead Box Design #2 - Yadier Molina

It's hard to believe that the 2013 season only has a little over a month left, but according to the calendar it certainly looks that way.

With that being said, the Tennessee Smokies continued their Gold Glove Bobblehead Series this past Saturday night with the Yadier Molina bobblehead giveaway. This box was a fun one to work on because of Molina's current fame (and great season he is having this year), his wealth of success, and the fact that I had some great photos of his days at Smokies Park to work with. I think using the image of him in his Smokies gear on the front of the box made it a really awesome cover. It then allowed me to put a little image of the bobblehead on the back of the box just above the stats (and man was that a list to whittle down!).

The Smokies will wrap up this series of bobbleheads on August 17th with the Darwin Barney bobblehead. It has been really awesome to have played such a big part in putting together this collector's series, and I can't wait to show off the complete collection come next month. Be on the lookout!

Tennessee Smokies Desktop Wallpapers

As a designer, I believe that desktop backgrounds are one of the most fun projects to work on. They really are canvases of unlimited potential and allow you explore your design capabilities.

I recently created several backgrounds for the Smokies that are now available for download on the team website. The supercharged "TS" logo is one I actually created for my personal PC back when I started with the team in February and I am glad to be able to now share it with the fans. I included a couple fan-favorite players as well as other uses of the Smokies logo. All in all, I tried to create a good variety for people to choose from while exploring styles that were more graphic heavy versus ones that were more texture heavy. I loved expirementing with just what happens when you start mixing things together in Photoshop and seeing what comes out. I have posted a few below, but make sure to check out the full selection at the link to the Smokies website above!

Smokies All-Star Graphics for Chicago Cubs Leadoff Show on WGN America

On July 6th, the Smokies had a special that aired during the Chicago Cubs Leadoff Show on WGN America. They highlighted those members of the team that had been selected to the Southern League All-Star Team. You can watch the full video here.

Working with the Smokies Radio Network team, I created several graphics that appeared throughout the video. It was quite a thrill to see my work broadcast on national television. You can see the graphics below and please be sure to check out the video at the link above!

4th of July with the Tennessee Smokies

The 4th of July weekend was a busy one at Smokies Park, highlighted by back-to-back-to-back fireworks shows on the 4th, 5th and 6th. The team had an ad for each night in the Knoxville News Sentinel, and it was my task to create the trio for the weekend.

I wanted them all to have a similar look, thus the same bottom info line and background. I included Slugger on the fireworks ad for the 6th to breakup the player imagery that the viewer may have gotten used to by the third day.

My favorite of the three is the first ad that kicked them all off. I knew we wanted to come out with a bang (no pun intended), and I thought the angled text to match the angle of the baseball player worked well to achieve that effect.

 

As for during the games, I once again pulled out all the stops on our video board head shots for the team. I kept the same concept as the newspaper ads but translated them into a video board format. I really wanted to do something different when it came to the head shots, so I went with the over-sized number to act as anchor point for the eye to got between the stats and player picture. I  then chose for the name to wrap around the number halfway in a clockwise motion to help lead the viewer's eye to the player picture once they read the name.

These are probably my favorite head shots I've done this year, and I have few shown below for you to see (stats are not those of the players shown and are simply for aesthetic purposes):

Smokies Program Ad and Youtube Channel Art

Above is a little versatility in advertising. I recently wrapped up an ad for the Tennessee Smokies that will appear in the Tennessee Valley Fair program this year. I loved the idea of using a city scape of Knoxville to the mountains as the bar to hold the info at the bottom of the page and I think it turned out really well...

...and then we needed new channel art for our YouTube page. I thought this design also worked well there as it transferred very well to the horizontal format and still kept the simple tagline.

Tennessee Smokies Knoxville Opera Ad

Above is a fun little project I got to work on for the Smokies. The team got an ad in the Knoxville Opera's program and I had the challenge of coming up with an awesome generic ad to promote our team. I saw this really cool style of the heavy outlined graphic like you see above while surfing the internet and thought this would be a good project to try it out on. The paper texture outline works in harmony with the deep rich background to make the piece a cohesive unit.

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: