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This story is part of our CSC 360 package for August 2023, to view more stories, click here.
Pictured above: Nolan Alexander and Liam Kissinger of Kennesaw State and Johnny Smiley of Oklahoma were 2022-23 CSC Creative & Digital Design Contest winners.
Creative bent: Hear from CSC Creative & Digital Design Contest winners
With insight from Johnny Smiley of Oklahoma and Liam Kissinger and Nolan Alexander of Kennesaw State
by Barb Kowal – College Sports Communicators, Director of Professional Development and External Affairs
Creative talents abound in throughout CSC, and you’ll find ample examples of it when perusing the list of national winners in our 2022-23 Creative and Digital Design Contest (formerly the publications and digital design contest). The new name reflects our organization’s emphasis to recognize the growing digital/video/graphic work of our athletic communicators and our newest CSC members, the creatives.
Click here to view the 2022-23 CSC Creative & Digital Design Contest Winners list
We chatted with Creative and Digital Design Contest winners from the University of Oklahoma and Kennesaw State University to get their takes on best practices for CSC members when it comes to design work and social content strategy.
Oklahoma led the nation with 13 overall awards, including four “Best in the Nation” nods. Kennesaw State tied for third nationally with BYU in number of national honors achieved with 10. This included a “Best in the Nation” recognition in the online magazine/special event program category for men’s basketball NCAA Tournament content. (Kansas State finished with 12 awards to place second nationally).
The KSU Owls were awarded for their gameday graphics, statistical milestone graphics, motion graphics, hype videos, recap videos, posters, media guides, and programs, while Director of Creative and Digital Media
Liam Kissinger’s individual work was recognized a contest-high nine times.
Below, read more from
Johnny Smiley, Oklahoma Director of Creative Content and Kennesaw State’s Assistant AD of Communications & Broadcasting
Nolan Alexander and Kissinger.
“I’m so proud of the work that our KSU team accomplished together, and Liam’s honor as the most-awarded individual is a testament to his talent and growth this year,” noted Alexander. “As we look to enhance our brand, our mantra at the KSU Owl Network is ‘yOUR story.’
Our story fits into
your story, but you can’t tell
your story without telling
our story.
"That means doing our best to create an environment where individuals can follow their interests and passions within the boundaries of our brand and expectations.”
Adding to their honors, the KSU Owl Network was a two-time finalist in the
Sports Video Group (SVG) 2023 College Sports Media Awards (for Outstanding Live Non-Game Production for KSU-Jacksonville State basketball postgame coverage and Outstanding Social Media Video entitled “This is Home.”
“I think it's excellent to be able to have my work recognized on such a large scale and against so many other talented folks in this industry,” Kissinger said. “To just turn 24 with these honors sets a precedent for me to continue to try and best myself. I believe it also demonstrates that for a brand standard, we are setting a solid foundation.”
From the Oklahoma perspective, Smiley, who earned six CSC honors either solo or on digital projects with colleagues, noted that he is self-taught in graphic design and photography.
“I started out at West Florida, a Division II school, and there was no graphic support when I was there,” Smiley said. “I first dabbled in graphics, and then I said, I can gain these skills and took the opportunity to learn. I put the work in. There is NO WAY around that. The time you put it will reflect what you will get out of it. You must put in long days and long nights to learn the tools.”
Below are some quick hitters with these three CSC members.
What goes into developing your social and digital content strategies?
Alexander: KSU has a story to tell, and each program fits as a piece of the puzzle. We consistently discuss what each story is and how we portray it. What images are we showing? Who are we showcasing and why? How are we writing to our audience and who is that audience? The answers to these come from relationships, presence in our programs and the direction we incorporate from administration. For example, in our run to NCAA Men’s Basketball March Madness, we wanted to portray the following: the connection of the team, its resiliency, milestones, impact of the student sections, and what an entire community brought together looked like.
Smiley: When creating visuals, keep in mind your goals for your department, your university, and your team. Each year we have to come up with new themes, a new look and feel. For instance, when designing game day graphics, we want our OU fans and followers to feel like they are missing out on the experience if they are not here with us in person. There’s a boldness in that mindset, and we want to put our student-athletes in the best limelight, too, while driving home our mission. We want (fans) to get hyped and buy tickets. Big games coming up? Player accolades? We emphasize all this, as it’s all about wanting people to want to be part of our university and our athletic experiences.
I firmly believe that college graphics and digital work is hitting its stride. Graphics five years ago pale in comparison to what we are doing today with our tools, our textures, shadowing, etc. I think our college sports graphic work far exceeds the look and feel of national movie graphics or posters, for instance.
Liam Kissinger of Kennesaw was recognized a contest-high nine times for his creative work.
For those who are relatively new in working in graphics and digital, what advice can you give them?
Kissinger: The most crucial thing that I would say is to listen to criticism, stick to a brand and figure out how to stretch that brand. Many young creatives feel they are restricted, but it's about listening and understanding the big picture. Be recognizable but not be repetitive and boring with what you're putting out.
Steve Love (Penn State) taught and stressed this idea of brand to me that made it possible for me to create work so cohesive. When I was at Texas State,
Chris Kutz taught me how to create brand standards in a way that makes it universal to a brand and identifiable marks and elements.
Smiley: Know your audience, and know your limitations. Here at OU, we have three designers, and I focus my work on football, men’s and women’s basketball and softball graphics and photography. When I was at Stanford, we had two designers for 36 sports. It was necessary to create a generic look for all sports and to create templates. So, you want to create in-depth designs first to built around; don’t go and get the photo first and then start the design. You want three or four templates that are really great, and easy to swap photos in and out, depending on the sport. You can create this great look in the offseason. That way, you can spend your time creating special graphics for big occasions or milestone that come up.
To use or not use templates??
Kissinger: I tend to not use templates as I feel it restricts the freedom of thought and stick to my elements folder to inspire how I want to do things. My biggest points for staying on brand are working with our marketing and communication staff at the beginning of each season to make sure we have a look that everyone likes and then building out a page of all of the things that go together to create the seasonal brand; from there, we further dive into different ways to build out the brand. One of the most important things for me when I'm doing this is to be able to create at least 20 unique and different graphics that resemble each other in some ways, but not entirely so that I know I'll be able to have a large creative scope of influence as I continue on this path.
Smiley: There is a place for templates, particularly with smaller design staff. Templates don’t have to be boring! That’s where the use of textures and blending textures to create your brand identity comes in. There are things you can do on a simple template to enhance your work. Textures are built on top of the photo. At OU, I built an invitational-tournament-near-the-beach graphic. I overlaid sand and palm trees around a centered image. People lose sight of the resources they have. Yes, you might have great photos at times, but some get too caught up in working with the photo first. You want to do the other things in Photoshop to make the photo look good and more professional. Textures, shadowing, shadowing of text, for instance.
Johnny Smiley created this winning statistical milestone graphic.
At a smaller, non-Power 5 school with limited staff, how do you go about building a creative staff? What is your approach and philosophy of staff building as it pertains to generating content. How do you divide the work? How do you strategize as a department?
Alexander: Our staff knows exactly how I feel about being process-oriented, and each year we refine what process is best for us. We develop ideas, filter them through each program’s brand and personnel, schedule a plan to execute, reassess to see if it makes sense (did something unexpected happen for better or worse?), allow the creative or communicator to make their editing magic, provide feedback, and determine the most opportune time and medium to post.
Ideas originate from interns, staffers, coaches, administrators, and sometimes the athletes themselves. From there, it’s important to follow a chain of communication not only to make sure everyone is aligned, but is also ready to support if needed.
Interns play a critical part in what we do. They’re listed as award winners and we would not be able to tell as powerful story as we have without leveraging their talents and excitement.
We play to our strengths for both interns and staff members so when we do interact as a team, we can complement each other. Looking at our NCAA Tournament coverage, we divided our roles into buckets of strengths. We held meetings to discuss plans of action for each day and outcomes, created shared documents, and affirmed how each role would coordinate. We try to avoid putting square pegs in round holes as much as we can.
Anything else that you'd like to offer in terms of setting up content strategy and a staffing?
Alexander: Be organized. Not everyone on the team will be organized and that’s okay. We were all made uniquely. Having members support the creative mind with structure for execution is important. That looks like knowing what is on the plate of your personnel, setting up a brief planning meeting, following up on tasks, and communicating a publishing calendar.
Just because something worked last semester doesn’t mean it will again, or we hit a roadblock and had issues — how do we refine our approach and process. It’s important to reflect on where I have missed the mark and if others have, how we can alleviate it.
When designing an online magazine, special event piece or postseason media guide, also important pieces of content and branding, what are some pitfalls to avoid?
Kissinger: When designing this kind of content, you want more of an artistic piece than an information piece. You want something that people down the road will be able to display in their homes or keep for memorable and creative art. With our winning basketball postseason guides, something that (Kennesaw assistant director)
Mark Wasik thought of that elevated us was the informational graphic on the back. It allowed the basic information of our brand and who we were to be on display for many news outlets and broadcasters in a way that was more digestible and easier to talk about. Print is still a crucial part of what we do and while people are moving away from tickets and media guides to reduce costs, there are still many ways for fan engagement that create memorable elements that something small and cost to the department but a memorable keepsake for the people in attendance with that.
Last insight or thoughts to share …
Alexander: From a communications standpoint, praise! What we do is often a thankless job. When content comes out regularly, it can be taken for granted. Do your best to praise positive actions and work as often as you can inside and outside your team. Remind your team members how their efforts fit into the bigger picture and the important roles they play. That makes it easier to provide constructive feedback and edits. I try to explain the ‘why’ behind edits and feedback. It may not be immediate, but I will attempt to follow up with how this change fits into the big picture. I’m not always right, either. I tell that to our team as well to give them an opportunity to be heard.
Try your best to meet everyone where they are. It may mean postponing a project or conversation, or it could mean recognizing a student’s latest actions don’t align with their stated career goals.
Kissinger: The Kennesaw resources from Nolan, my SIDs, student interns, and our video department all cohesively work together so well for me to be able to make stuff on this scale. Without them I would not have the time to be able to make these unique graphics that stood out so much in this CSC competition, too. I really want to acknowledge and thank all of them for everything they do to make my life easier when it comes to the creative process. Compliment your colleagues!
Smiley: What do you lean on to gain the necessary design skills? There are a ton of resources online, on YouTube, helping you learn the basics and tools of Photoshop. My advice is don’t follow a tutorial which shows you an effect. I’d advise to follow social media creatives on social, and you will pick up on things. You will find a lot of little changes to hit your goals — it’s the shadows, lighting, the type of branded text in front of a player; base it off real-world principles. That way, you can place your athlete in a more real environment instead of placing it a generic background.
This photo from Johnny Smiley of Oklahoma took second place in the University Division for "Photo of the Year"
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