College Football Playoff 2021 National Championship
I was given the opportunity to design as a part of the Social Media Team for the 2021 College Football National Championship in Miami, FL. I worked with fellow designer Chanelle Smith-Walker to create the overall design and producing content for this event. This was an incredible learning experience in the realm of professional collaboration, through communicating concept and design ideas, meshing personal styles, and efficiently organizing workflow to ensure the timely production of content for the largest event in college football.
Behind the Design:
Our primary goal for this event was to create a style that embodied the culture, style, and visual elements of Miami, while still setting this event apart visually from the many other events and "themes" associated with the area. The main aspects we wanted to highlight were the warm, vibrant, tropical feel of the area; the Art-Deco style architecture and flare; the artistic and urban character of the Wynwood district & graffiti art throughout the city; and the excitement and bold nature of the event itself - as this is THE National Championship and thus the biggest game of the season. In a phrase - we wanted to go out of this unique season with a "bang".
We settled on a sunset-feeling color scheme, using gradients between red and yellow, contrasted with a clean, cool slate gray and accenting with a bright turquoise blue, incorporating a slight nod to the Miami Vice feel and style. We focused on a graffiti / spray painted feel for the details throughout each piece, and compositionally wanted to keep things pretty simple to allow the colors and message to draw the attention and really pop off the screen. We also created a pattern used to overlay across colors and create shapes within space, replicating a sort of Art-Deco geometric texture that can be seen within several areas of color and in some backgrounds. The use of a script font behind main text allowed for a subtle accent in both color and style, tying in the Miami Vice / 80's elements throughout each piece and drawing the eye to important information.
Reception & Engagement
Within 24 hours of the conclusion of the National Championship, our total engagement on both Twitter and Instagram combined for the @cfbplayoff accounts on our graphic content reached over 135.5k reactions. Twitter consisted of 19.9k Likes and 3.6k Retweets across all graphic content. Instagram was split with 111k Likes and just over 1k total comments among all graphic content.
It was an honor to design for the 2021 National Championship, and it was incredible to be the First (two) Female Designers for a National Championship & College Football Playoff.
Initial Ideas & Brainstorming
We weighed different elements of our personal styles heavily and considered many different aspects of the Miami area before coming together and developing our final style. The decisions were made by taking into consideration the needs of CFP as a brand, the existing and previously used themes in the Miami area, and the opinions of the Social Media team as a whole. Below are some examples of my personal ideas beforehand and some inspiration used from the very first designs to our final compositions put out on social media. As a team we ultimately decided to veer away from the Miami Vice color scheme and look for a more stylized and urban-focused design. Here are examples where you can see certain elements I carried over to our combined look, such as the Art-Deco pattern and the Script background font for accent colors.
