Conceptualizing Content For Collegiate Sport With Mississippi State University’s Dan Brown

1Tell us about your role as Senior Director of Creative Strategy for Mississippi State University Athletics (MSU). What does a typical day look like for you?

It’s a huge responsibility year after year conceptualizing the direction of design for all our sports teams at MSU. With 16 teams, the idea is to stay within brand guides but make sure each sport has its own flavor.

Week-by-week, we sit down and strategize with our Communications, Social, Video, and Marketing Teams to go over weekly plans and upcoming events.

In order to stay on top of projects, we use Redbooth: a project management software that allows all staff to submit, review, and comment on projects that are in progress. Redbooth also allows me to manage the workflow with my team of designers and approve and monitor all of the graphics content that is published.

Myself and my assistant take on design requests for all of our sports and I work heavily with our two full-time designers that work specifically with football recruiting. It’s a huge team effort but with the communication and weekly meetings, we don’t miss a beat here at State.

Outside of typical social media and marketing content, I also provide design and direction for our facilities designs, ticket office, (Donors) Bulldog Club, and special athletic director requests.

In my 4 years at Mississippi State, I’ve found myself delegating a handful of the smaller sports here to focus on High-Level, and paid sports content. With the small talented group, I get to work with we manage to provide a high volume of content for every sport offering a consistent look across the whole board here.

2How has your work changed since the COVID-19 pandemic began? Additionally, how are you and MSU finding ways to connect with colleagues and other stakeholders in new ways?

COVID has definitely created a shift in the work field: digital calls and social distancing and consistent wipe downs and sanitizing during photoshoots.

If anything, I think COVID has created a bolder structure to how we do things!

It has also pushed us further into the modern world of digital use. We have had a slow transition into digital gameday guides and programs previously but, COVID has now forced a digital form of Tickets, schedule posters, and the continued digital program guides. It’s a good thing but for some old folks, there is no better feeling than having a hard copy.

As far as communication, video chats have been huge and very beneficial. We continue to video chat but have also had opportunities to meet in auditoriums while distancing. It’s different than your typical table meetings but I think our whole staff has adapted quite well.

3Walk us through your creative process from ideation to creation to publication. Does this process differ depending on the type of graphic/video?

I’m a unique breed when it comes to ideation.

To be honest, there is a point in a conversation where I begin conceptualizing ideas in my head during the conversation. I have the ability (most of the time) to create the idea in my mind before the conversation ends.

My mind moves quickly every hour of the day and I like to think I’m a very outside the box risk-taker when it comes to my ideas. Most of the time, those ideas have a time or place but I believe it's beneficial to always start big and tone it down from there.

The design process usually goes from strategizing ideas and concepts with coworkers. Those ideas then turn into sketches depending on the desired variation or the dynamics of the requested project. Sketches turn into digital copies and then every project goes through an approval process where messaging, typography, and images are all reviewed.

There are rare occasions where too many opinions are voiced on some projects but for the most part, it's usually a quick process and transition from finished design to publishing.

4In your role, you provide the creative direction for 16 athletic teams. I’d imagine this can be overwhelming some days! How do you prioritize and manage all that goes into your role? How can someone learn to manage an array of tasks at once like this?

During my beginning at Mississippi State in 2016, I was the only graphic designer on staff and was tasked with the creative for all our sports.

I would work late nights to be able to accomplish and satisfy all our sports.

Yes, there were times when I had to choose who gets more content than the other sport. I’m a man of equal opportunity and I wanted to give everyone the same amount of love but that was not realistic with the provided resources.

I would prioritize based off of social account numbers and ticketed sports.

The obvious answer is to put your efforts into the sports that people are paying to go be entertained at. A businessman loves the sounds of that, but I couldn’t fault sports like cross country, golf, or volleyball because of low following or non-ticketed events.

I began to adapt a template base format where I would prepare easy workable templates that our communications staff could manage. I also developed award and recognition templates that could be used across the board. It was tough at first but in the end, I became quicker at my craft.

I’ve learned the value of time investment; when to be creative versus simple, and really paying attention to the lifeline of a graphic. Social media is very fast-paced and to be efficient and provide for all areas, I knew I needed to be smart with providing my most creative work on projects that are long-lasting versus the ones that die online within minutes.

Going into my 5th season at MSU, I now have 1 full-time assistant, 2 full-timers at football, and 3 interns. I have the chance now to delegate sports and be more creative and regress away from template-based projects.