Syracuse University Poster

I was trying to get a job within the athletics department at Syracuse University (SU), in early December, although I haven't heard back from them I still have a lot of ideas swimming around in my head to design something for them. I wanted to design something in print or video. I did a lot of storyboards for a video, but Photoshop called my name on this one, plus snow was not helping my athletic field shots.

A lot of my inspiration for this poster came from a conversation I had at a local pub. A Syracuse University game was on the television and a gentlemen was talking to me about the history of SU and how they are not the Orangemen any more. I did find a style guide for SU online and found the orangemen was still prominent, but I still wanted to be creative. So, with inspiration from the color orange and texture treatments from Madden football, I excitedly decided to play with orange paint.

The idea for the ad campaign was to have actual SU athletes getting covered with orange paint. The paint would symbolize school spirit like when fans paint themselves, but the paint on the athlete(s) would instead be splashes of paint, like they are the warriors of orange. The SU athletes would either be in game mode or just be triumphantly standing, similar to a Nike Ad (as seen below but with eye contact) to make SU sports look sexy, fun, and top of the line. I felt that concept would be a strong visual communication for SU athletic admissions and could really make the student athletes, and the sports program shine for new comers.

In the end finding photos to work the project brought be towards an game-play football photo, which was still a great find. I think this athlete is Mike Williams Syracuse University's star wide receiver in 2009. He ranked seventh nationally with an average of 8.2 catches per game; and third in the country in total receiving yards with 623.