★ Mizzou Football Signing Day 2022
National Signing Day is one of the most significant events in college football, marking the official commitment of high school athletes to their chosen programs. The lead-up is a season-long buildup, with recruiting campaigns, social teasers, and coordinated outreach designed to celebrate signees and generate excitement among fans, athletes, and the broader community.
For the 2022 National Signing Day at Mizzou Football, I created a comprehensive graphics package for over 100 signees and potential signees, with each player receiving approximately 10 unique assets. This included three Instagram feed versions with coordinated color variations, Instagram Stories, a profile picture and Twitter banner for athlete’s personal use, and a video border coordinated with Head of Video Gordon Meier. I also designed assets for in-person and large-scale displays, including TV screens for the signing day hype party hosted by Head Coach Eli Drinkwitz, the South End Zone video board at Faurot Field to announce new signees to fans in Columbia, and electronic billboards in each athlete’s hometown, giving them a “larger-than-life” moment to share and celebrate. By integrating smart objects and multiple templates, these assets allowed for fast updates and consistent branding across every platform, creating a highly coordinated, visually striking campaign that highlighted each player while celebrating the full recruiting class.
Preparation for National Signing Day takes months of planning. Year-round, we gather assets for potential signees, including photos for those who visit and head swaps for those who don’t. Coordinating and organizing these assets is crucial for quick turnarounds: graphics are sent to recruits on a regular weekly schedule, along with additional personalized graphics for top recruits.
The timeline for the 2022 Signing Day was loosly establishing the #Welcome2th3Zou brand over the summer, initial contact August 1st with the Offer Letter, Official Visit weekend December 17th, our team left for our Bowl Game on December 19th, and NSD was December 22nd!
Mizzou Team: Nathan Samel, Gordon Meier, Jessi Carpenter
Photography: McLain Broussard, Nathan Samel, Jaydyn Jenaya, Mikayla Schlosser, Mitchell Scaglione
#Art Direction
#Creative Direction
#Graphic Design
#Branding
Prior to my arrival at Mizzou, current Creative Director for Mizzou Athletics Jessi Carpenter created the 2022 season poster - this poster leaning heavily into our gold assets set the scene for a lot of the recruiting creative for the year.
Our first contact offer letter was designed largly by intern Nathan Samel, and then animated by video director Gordon Meier. The background gameday and stadium photography became a consistent recruiting asset.
Many photoshoots, for both official and unofficial visits, happened throughout the football season leading to NSD. These assets become invaluable for recruiting material.
Our official visit photoshoots are much more in depth. These are more for the athlete than for the assets, so there is a large production including three separate photoshoot stations, as well as video station. There are more props, more clothing options for recruits to wear besides uniforms, family and friends are invited into the shots. The top right image is the setup for a photo and video shoot in front of our LED screens, the bottom shows one of three photo stations we had set up.
This video illustrates the large scale direction these official visits take. Our team ideated on all photoshoot stations, gathered props and assets like Mizzou Bowl Rings from years past, set up lighting and different stations for very distinct stations - from our classic gold background studio shots, to fish eye lens 90s inspired close ups, to weight rack set up, to the video shoot. It gave all official recruits a very elaborate production.
This is the official look and feel for our 2022 National Signing Day campaign. Inspiration for these came everywhere, from working with recruiting personell, to coaches, to athletes, drawing inspiration from the season poster, but most importantly this was only the second season of NIL recruiting. These graphics had a large focus on game day feel, but more importantly was heavily focused on the athlete’s brand. Big photo, big name, very personalized for each signee.
The night before signing day - we released our first look at this branding. Using a video asset drew attention to the gameday details, and more importantly reminded fans and recruits what NSD is all about: becoming a Mizzouri Tiger.
A screenshot of the artboards for the assets each signee recieved. The tricky part of NSD is there is a very distinct obstical of the unknown. These 10 artboards were created for each potential signee, over 100 athletes, in preparation for signing day. Updatable smart objects made most of this possible.
Going into detail for each asset, an emphasis on the preparation and planning that went into NSD and its execution. Collaboration with the social team on which color to post the day of, with video team for frames for highlight reel, sending assets to the stadium operation staff back in Columbia for the end zone board, sending assets across the country to athletes’ hometown billboards, orchestrating communication to each signee between recruiting staff and coaching for them to recieve their signing day assets. Many moving parts, but a 100% successful day.
Working with recruiting for the athletes’ info (name, height, weight, position, hometown, social media handle), three different versions of social post graphic was made, to be posted in alternating order based off the timing of signing, in addition to an IG story post size.
Each athlete post had a highlight video made, with a branded frame added.
Since we were in Florida for our bowl game, we wanted fans back home to be a part of the day, meaning we also had South Endzone (SEZ) video board assets as well, which fans can see from outside the stadium.
TV size graphics were created for the live event held by Coach Drinkwitz in Tampa, FL.
This size was also used to update the player bio on our DEP.
Athletes also recieved assets for their personal use, a twitter header and corresponding profile picture.
Billboards were made for our top athletes to be shown on electronic billboards in their home town.
Finally a wrap up post highlighting the 2023 class of Mizzou Football recruits!
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