Sports Designers & the art of collaboration
From a simple tweet on an off-day to making 5 collaboration pieces with five different artists within the sports industry. What does a collaboration piece give to a sports designer?
Ever since I started in the field back in 2001 the term “collab” was a piece of the sports design’s identity. Just like in music where artists meet in order to produce something new, fresh — designers will seek inspiration, organizational skills or just a break from their usual routine.
With the growing social media world people within different interest groups seek like minded individuals. Back in the day places like WCRemix.com and their incredible forum would bring together designers from around the world. The purpose was always to give feedback, look at beautiful artwork and just generally get better with each piece produced. The DM systems on the forums and communicators like AIM were able to bring people from different cultures together and ultimately live and breathe sports on the daily. I myself found some great friends across the world that I would talk to, share ideas and generally make myself better in sports design. Many of those friendships led to pieces of collaboration where sometimes 2–3–4 people would be involved in one wallpaper design. It was incredible to see what someone from the other side of the ocean was able to come up with from a PSD you’ve sent his/her way. In other cases you would be amazed at some people’s skills in organizing their files. When a name “Layer 159” comes into mind and you don’t know how to find a splatter brush that you want moved with that naming nomenclature you may learn a thing or two about organizing your layers properly. These forums were incredible places for growth and collaboration between artists. Less advanced designers were able to learn rules of design, hierarchy and many other crucial aspects.
At one point WCRemix had all of its designers create a ‘mural’ artwork where each one of the 12–15 designers on board added their own style to design. It was an intense mix of styles and an overall crew effort that made their website and people on board special. Although at that point I was running a rival website — Wallpapers-Cave I am still in awe from what they were able to create with the forum and mural project. To this day if you enter their guestbook you will find a number of people coming back and saying that the forums got them into design careers or made them go through a tough time in High-School with an actual hobby. It was a special time and group between 2002–2009.
Why do we do it?
For various designers a collaboration piece brings something different to the table.
For me personally it gives a fresh perspective. Sports design can be repetitive, it can be the absolute opposite of what sports is about, energy, passion etc. Pretty much just like with every other job you can feel burned out or lacking any inspiration to do something new. Passion projects are a part of my routine when I hit a rough patch with my artwork. I pretty much create something that gives me a fun time and still offers a wider perspective on things that can be done for social media, print etc. You always wanted to design a sports card? Do it! A poster of your favorite Chicago Bulls team from the 90s? Do it! You shouldn’t limit yourself if that is something that will give you actual joy of creation. We may tend to get lost in this everyday virtual struggle to bring top quality to our clients. What if you aren’t the only designer who feels that way?
Just like with the mentioned forums and websites like Posterizes.com that brought top designers together and allowed them to grow we can join forces with other designers. Many of us have our own special tricks, some nice way of doing typography, incredible retouching skills. When we join forces with a designer who has a different style we are able to learn, talk and share. With that our tools grow and we are able to do new things while giving back to the community. Maybe you would like to collaborate with a less skilled designer or someone who just has less experience? Both of you will benefit from that connection and everyone can chip in their special piece of creativity to the artwork you are creating.
Let’s be honest. Many people who want to collaborate just want to see your PSD. There is something enigmatic about looking at someone’s working files and discovering how they approach certain things. It’s something very private and personal when you pour in your ideas, inspiration and skills to a computer file that you then allow someone else to see. Of course it will sound crazy to anyone outside of the design community but there is a vibe of doing ‘something wrong’ when we get that PSD from a client that someone else worked on. Right? It feels like we’ve violated someone’s space and work. Yet here the other party consents to this use, they allow us to look into their workflow and we become part of something bigger — together.
You may feel, how will this actually make me better at my job? Working for a sports team, college program is all about working together — as a team. You can always show artwork like this to your future employer and immediately become a team player that they are needing. That you can prepare files in a proper way for other people to use. That you can communicate, show and execute your own ideas but also follow ideas and approach of other designers. I think it’s one of the crucial skills in our industry to be able to work with other people to create the best work. At the end of the day you want your client, team, program to look the best possible, right?
What did I achieve with my collaborations?
It can be a lonely road to follow for a freelancer when you work from Europe on a Pacific Timezone and the account managers seem to speak Hindi or Swahili when you are trying to explain why you designed something the way you did. This is why it’s so refreshing for me to network and communicate with other designers on our Designing Sports Slack Channel. People that I have collaborated with were a great mix of different styles, ideas and approaches.
Joe Caione, Manager of Digital Design, Cleveland Cavaliers
Michał Kołodziej, Designer, Legia Warszawa
Dave Heringer, Social Media Designer, Baltimore Ravens
Kenton Stufflebeam, Art Director, Athletes First
Kaitlyn Cole, Graphic Designer, Western Virginia University
Each design brought different problems and possibilities. Since I triggered the whole collaboration idea I was also the starting party on four of the projects. For instance the project with Dave Heringer was a throwback simplistic Hornets artwork of guard Tony Parker. While the work with Joe Caione was a gritty football scene of Baker Mayfield. And that led me to a graded basketball card of De’Aaron Fox with dwarfs and cookies when I worked with Kenton Stufflebeam. In the 4th project I had to follow the idea instead of leading it with the work on Karl-Anthony Towns “In The City Lights” with Michał Kołodziej.
Here’s what Joe had to say about our Baker Mayfield work:
This was actually my very first collaboration ever. It was definitely a really cool experience to work with someone as talented as Dariusz and put my own spin on his layout and work. I think where we ended up definitely evoked the emotion Baker Mayfield has brought to the Browns and their fans. 10/10 would collab again.
Each individual designer and project were different. Each talk, vision and skill set that was brought to the table was different. And in the end each one of us got something out of these co-operations. We all learned and were able for a moment enjoy the company of fellow designers in the process of creating something new and interesting.
Here’s how Dave Heringer saw our Tony Parker work:
When it came to the graphic we chose a minimalistic, throwback for the Hornets. It’s still simple in concept but very complex in the details with the addition of the pin stripe, bee hive texture and the court platform. The colours being so vibrant on the white background catch your eye instantly while working with the textures to lead your eyes through the graphic. I think it was a huge success and hope to collaborate again in the future.
This is why I see a designer collaboration being very similar to what musicians do when they feature an artist. Many times the mix of styles, skills, inspirations can be completely different yet they become close to a masterpiece together.
I love that the creative sports industry is like a family, no matter where you are in the world or what your background is. Everyone is so willing to help, share ideas and inspiration, and improve the industry as a whole. Working with Dariusz was my very first collaboration and it was an awesome way to network and grow our design skillset!
Kaitlyn Cole about our Julius Randle collaboration
Learn, share, collaborate and bring great artwork to the table in the process. Those are the things that I would like to achieve with each project of this type that I am involved in.
