Episode 220 Snippets: Kennon Pearson of Duke Athletics

Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 220: Kennon Pearson
On episode 220 of the Digital and Social Media
Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Kennon Pearson,
Assistant Director of Creative Service and Graphic
Design for Duke Athletics.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the
podcast. To hear the full interview and more, check
out the podcast on all podcast platforms and at
www.dsmsports.net.
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net

Kennon’s Career Path
“I was born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, I've
lived all over the state, but mostly the triangle in the
Raleigh area has been home basically my whole life. As
far as the creative, I tell people all the time that art has
been a part of my life since day one. I come from a very
musical family, my sister and I did piano lessons for 13
years, and then I also did a trombone and percussion
in high school. And I played guitar and bass in bands
over the years. Music has been a big part of my life.

“And at an earlier age, I started picking up art, as well. I
remember using Photoshop 7, which was the version right before
the first CS, if that dates me a little bit. At first, I was just doing it
for fun. Then I did it for bands (music) because that's who I was
around. Then I did some freelance work going through college
and eventually, after getting tired of working in the culinary and
service industry, I finally landed a job — my previous job at Blue
Pack Marketing. Originally I was designing stuff that we sold on
t-shirts on Teespring. Then we eventually started our own
brands, basically replicating our formula for social media
marketing, for print-on-demand services, for everything from
small brands to big brands like Mike Tyson, the Discovery
Channel and History Channel, and everything in between….

“From the moment I started to the moment I left — we
still laugh at people who do and have done dropship
because we never did that; I know that my bosses did at
one point, but what they found out very quickly very early
on [was] that was not the way to do it. So we went straight
to working with — first it was third-party for printing
services for print on demand, and then we managed to get
some in-house stuff and it just kind of blew up from there.
It was such a wild experience. I worked in niches and
interests and worked with products that never thought I
would because I didn't go to school for art. I didn't know if
art would ever be a serious thing for me.

“I was there almost six years and just developed a lot of skills. But
then in 2020, a lot of things changed for a lot of people and I
decided I kind of wanted to do something a little bit more fun as
an artist… I was like, what would interest me? And then I was
like, well, maybe sports. I knew there was sports design, but I
didn't realize it was the industry it was, and it is still kind of
fresh…I did some designs for fun [and] I really liked it, and
eventually started freelancing. Then last year I started seriously
applying for jobs and, after quite a few applications, not a lot of
interviews and just kind of being accessible and present, I finally
was reached out to by someone who worked at Duke and they
said, ‘Hey, we're opening a new position and we think you’d be a
good fit for that.’ Then after going through applications and all
that, it worked out and I've been there since October now…

“This was definitely a case of they just saw my work on Twitter…there wasn’t even a
posting yet for this position when I applied. Somebody retweeted one of my tweets
about wanting to look for a job and I had my portfolio and resume (in the tweet) and
it just happened to be right place, right time in terms of who saw my stuff.”
“Something that [I've said and heard from] other creatives, both people who have
asked me that question and people that gave me advice — one of the biggest things
[is] you can create amazing art, but if you're not putting it out there for people to
see, they're not going to see it.
So you got to find ways to put yourself out there and be accessible in terms of being
on sites where people can access you, but also being accessible in the
communication sense. Like, [when someone] DMs you, be really personable. I've
always been that way with my social media strategy. On my social media, I still am
myself, especially on Twitter. I'm chronically on Twitter, but I also put my art out
there and I make sure that that's at least half of what I'm putting out there, so that
way people know, ‘Hey, this guy is an artist and he does work frequently’ just in case
someone might be interested in my work.”

On creating for clients and balancing creative enterprise
with a creative brief
“It's kind of been a mix of both. I would say at least for my
time at Duke, it definitely has been more [talking] a lot
with the people that I work within my department. When
they need something, they usually do have a specific brief.
It may not have 100% of the details like who they want
included or what they want it to look like, but they'll have
— if it's a record or a tournament, or maybe we're doing
some marketing materials — here's the information that
needs to be in this, and this is the size we need it in.

“My teammates have been extremely amazing in giving me as much detail
as they can as possible and I interpret it for the look of whatever it is. So
for example, if I'm doing something for a team, a lot of times we have
established looks for that team for the season. So I try to kind of keep it
along those lines. And then if it's something for marketing or for our
fundraising at Iron Dukes, or if it's just Athletics in general, like our
athletics accounts, we have kind of an overall Duke look that we've been
running on.
“So really, it just comes down to interpreting what's given to me and
keeping it in a consistent look, but not too copy-paste. Every template
doesn't look the same; not everything is templated, so we have a little bit
of creative freedom in terms of how we interpret it. Up to this point with
my team — a lot of people are pretty new and we've been kind of going
along — when we all came in during seasons last year, we were
maintaining current seasons’ looks.

“Now the spring has been our first full-time of
everyone’s doing something fresh, so we
established our looks and now we're kind of going
along with that. Then once this month is up,
because ACC and NCAA [tournaments] are going
on right now — once those are done and then
everything is done; like sports are done [and] kids
are out of class, we're going to be spending time
over the summer creating our art direction for the
next year. And that will hopefully dictate how we go
through our creative processes next year.

“Plus another thing: we'll know is which templates did we use
last year? Which ones did we not use? What were we missing?
What posts were we doing too many last-minute of? We'll
have all this data so we can go into the next season and be
ready, and that way, whenever something needs to be
created, it's much easier to interpret a brief because there's
already established, look, we've done something similar in the
past.
“We're working on ways to make things continue to be
creative and innovative, but not also be so fresh that we are
kind of like ‘I don't know what to do’ every time. It's just like,
alright, here's exactly what I'm going to do..”

On the creative variables that Kennon considers
when ideating and constructing a piece
“I'll start with colors because that's one of the most
interesting topics that I [discuss] when I converse
with other creatives — because I'm in group chats
and, you know, directly talking with people who work
with other teams in colleges and pro sports and all
around, and I think one of the most challenging
things that everyone runs into a lot of times is colors.
And you may think that's kind of weird.

“But think about it this way. So, I don't count black and white as team
colors, unless you're the [Brooklyn] Nets and those are your colors.
[Otherwise, black and white] are colors that basically any team can use
because they're universal. So when you're stuck with basically a primary
color and no secondary color, you really have to figure out how do I balance
that contrast? Because sometimes in our blue, black on top of it, like if you
[have] black text, it doesn't read very well, so you almost have to stick with
white on black, but if you're on white, you can do blue or black [text] on it.
“Whereas there are some schools that may have — I would say the Florida
Gators is a good example. They have blue and orange plus white and I'm
sure they can use black, too, in some things. That's one of my favorite
things to consider is do we want this to be a very blue piece or a very white
piece? So that's usually our interpretation. In years past, [Duke has] done a
lot of white pieces because it compliments the white screen studio shots
they do.

“When my coworkers and I started doing what we do
currently, we've been going very blue-heavy recently. And
even then, we've changed it a little bit. Well, at least I've
changed it a little bit on some of the projects I've worked on
since a lot of our spring sports are outdoors and doing
postseason in outdoor looks. I've actually been doing a lot
more full color, kind of vintage summer vibes on stuff,
especially for our women's golf team. I did it for men's golf,
tennis, softball — just a bunch of utilizing the full color from
a photo and actually the composition of the photo because
we have an amazing team of photographers and media
people — and even our social media, people are doing photos
— so taking those and interpreting it.

“So really to kind of string it back, a lot of that process in
our head, even though we have our baseline look; a lot of
times it still is creative freedom. It's like, what do I want to
do with this? Or what's the focal point? Like with records
or number of wins, usually we like to highlight the number
in big [font], and then it's like, alright, do we have cutouts
for this? Do we want them to be smaller? Do we want them
to cover it up? Do we want them to be inside of it? There's a
lot of things. So usually when we're creating, we look at the
two things we start with — is there a focal point text or
person, and then how do we want to color it? Do we want it
to be blue? Do we want it to be full color? Stuff like that.”

What Kennon is trying to accomplish with the creative output
“I think back to kind of a rule of thumb that I learned in my
last job — because a lot of the print-on-demand products we
did were t-shirts or we did designs on tumblers; those are
already small products and our rule of thumb was how well
can you read it from far away? You don't want to have a
paragraph on a t-shirt; for one, it looks ugly. Two, lot of
people who have graphic t-shirts want a quick statement that
you can read from far away. So I try to think of my designs
the same way, because if you're looking at your phone, even if
you've got the max size of that year's iPhone, it's still going to
be smaller than a desktop…

“So when I'm designing these things, I'm seeing it in a higher fidelity,
but I always zoom out when I look at it to see — how am I going to stop
the scroll and then interpret it as best as possible, as quickly as
possible? And usually that result requires a big number, big text or
something in it that kind of stands out. Because if you have a bunch of
tiny text, some people aren't going to read it, some people it's not even
going to register while they're scrolling by.
“So my philosophy is always whatever that focal point is, it needs to be
pronounced enough to where someone's like — they don't get banner
blindness and they just keep scrolling. They see a number, they see a
word, they see a person and they're like, oh, who is this? What is this?
And they stop. And even if they didn't, even if they stopped long enough
to just kind of see what it is and keep going, you still stopped them.”

“One thing we've been doing a lot of, and I think this is
pretty common with a lot of people — I know that square
technically works on all platforms, but when you have
stuff, like — when you're on Instagram, when you're in
your feed, a 4x5 you can look at, and it takes up more
screen space; and same thing with Twitter. Now, when
[Twitter] got rid of the vertical crop last year, that
became huge because a lot of people on Twitter were still
thinking very traditional, like Facebook and all that kind
of stuff, where you had a 16x9 piece and you had a wider
landscape to literally fit more information; but it's
smaller on a phone.

“So a lot of times when we're doing big things like records [and]
achievements, typically we'll always do it in a 4x5 format because it is
more mobile-optimized. And that can be used on Facebook, too, and
Twitter, Instagram, all that kind of stuff. If there's anything that needs to
be a specific size outside of that, like if it does need to be a 16x9
landscape portrait or landscape project where you have it on a video
board or you have it in an email, we'll specify that and try to find a way to
reinterpret it.
“But a lot of times we're sticking to that 4x5 ratio because it allows us to
use it across multiple platforms and really it forces you to make sure that
you're not too cluttered in what you're putting in there, because you have
a limited amount of space. Which kind of is paradoxical because you're
picking that size because it takes up screen space, but if you put too much
in it, it becomes hard to interpret what it is.”

On where Kennon and his team start when producing creative
for teams
“That's the interesting thing because we really don't template
some of that stuff. There are certain things where, if there's like
weekly awards for both lacrosse teams, we have, ACC Defensive
Player of the Week or Offensive Player of the Week — those we
can template because all the information is the same and then
you're just changing out the person and their title. But then, for
example, I've been doing a lot of softball stuff this week [and]
we had 40 regular-season wins, so we're doing something for
that. And then[we have] our highest ranking coming up soon,
and then all-ACC [teams] are coming out soon.

“There are probably elements that I'm borrowing from other things I've
done, but really, a lot of what we're doing for records, we're just creating
on the fly unless we know there's going to be a bunch of that exact same
one for that team —like a player of the week kind of thing or player of the
month, it's really just artistic interpretation where we're making
something unique for every single one. And that can sound like a lot — it
is if you think about it — but we've gotten so used to doing it, that it's just
kinda like we want those pieces to stand out because I think that no
matter what, they'll still look, and feel like a Duke piece and they'll always
try to keep it to looking like it is part of that team.
“But we want to make it special, especially big milestones, like, if a coach
wins their 200th, 300th career win at Duke, that's a pretty big deal. So
finding good photos for cutout, good composition, good layout, all that
stuff is great. But you don't want it to look exactly like the last landmark
that another team did, if that makes sense.”

Managing time and resources and planning for creative needs
“I do think that is in terms of making sure that we don't get
overbooked [by others asking for creative assets], everyone always
communicates for this first. Almost every single time, it's never ‘Do
this.’ It's ‘Can you do this?’ Because they understand, especially like
right now during crossover seasons or during postseason —
everything in postseason is reactive. You're done with your
templated stuff. They already have what they need for scores and
for final scores of the game and game start, that kind of stuff for
every team. So what you're doing at this time of year is doing those
things like all-ACCs, what your bracket is as you're going through
in NCAAs and who wins something big, or hits a milestone

“But it is our team members coming to us directly and saying, ‘Can you do
this?’ And ‘this is what we need.’ So if they know a big win is coming up, like
it's someone's 300th win or someone's 200th career point, they'll see the
trend where they're like it'll happen by about this game, so it is
ready…Luckily most of the time we have a little bit of leeway. Sometimes
things come out — like rankings usually come out the night before across a
lot of teams — so sometimes that is assigned to us the night before. And
usually it's the first thing you'll do when you come in the next day.
“So it really depends. But a lot of times we can kind of predict milestones
because that's a consistent buildup, like a number of wins, like when you
have someone who's always scoring and you know they're going to hit this
point at some point in the season, you might as well just get it ready because
at some point that will hit. They'll hit that number of goals or whatever,
unless something wrong happens…something completely unforeseen. But
most of the time you can predict these things, which is really cool.”

On the overall Duke Athletics brand vs. individual Duke sports
“I would say up to this point, everything has been kind of
interpreted for its own; at least in the time that I've been doing it,
each team has its own identity. It still looks like Duke and that's
something we always want to make sure happens. But in general,
everything kind of has its own look. And I think part of that has to
do with the fact that we do have a dedicated team of designers and
creatives that can create these looks across multiple sports versus
having a single person who may not be a part of the organization,
or even just having a single person trying to do everything. That
would probably limit it a little bit, but we have enough creative
between not just the designers, but also our social media people —
they all have some level of graphic design experience, too.

“So sometimes there's stuff that's really simple that may just be literally
slapping text on a photo and something like that [social media people] have the
skills that they can do [it]. Because if we're in the middle of a lot of other
projects, they can take things on pretty easily, as well. Or even if they want to
take a shot at it — I think that's something that's really cool with our team is
everyone may have something specifically they do, but if you want to try
something different, if you want to experiment with that, everyone has that
flexibility.
“I know several people [take photos] that might not normally do it, or one of the
other graphic designers — [he doesn’t] have to do any social stuff, but he
decided he wanted to try some social stuff, and now he's running social for track
and field and also he's helping out with softball and some other stuff. Everyone
has that kind of core thing they do, and everyone's trying to maintain each
individual look, but we all help each other out, so that way you can establish this
like broad Duke look that is specialized per team, if that makes sense.

“I've seen it with some other college athletics — because
college athletics are definitely unique in that, regardless of
who's your biggest team or teams, everyone still…I know a
lot of colleges that have looks that are the same across both
athletics and their other teams. There's some people who
[are] like us where Athletics is one look, teams are another
look. It's all different, t really comes down to what that team
wants, what that school wants. And I don't think there's a
right or wrong with that either. I've seen some really good
examples of schools [where] it’s a completely consistent
look across all the teams and some who are like us — I think
we do a pretty good job of keeping it all different.”

On branding and creative for individual athletes
“Being that that has become such a recent thing, at least the
broader Duke Athletics hasn't had a chance to interpret that
yet. I know that that is something that we're looking to do. I
know that, for example, football did a series of people
showing off their tattoos and the meanings behind it, like
some very personal content with people. And I know that
their recruiting is the same; they're putting out stuff where,
when someone commits, they're getting personalized designs
that look like the current Duke football look, but it's for that
person — that post is that person's committed picture or
whatever.

“So I think that right now, a lot of the dabbling is — more of
that player-focused stuff is probably slighted towards
recruiting at the moment. But I know there is this desire to
want to do more, to show off for those athletes. One small
way we've been doing it is we started recently putting out
weekly schedules that show who's on the road and who's at
home. And instead of saying like football or baseball, it has
our Twitter handle…so if you want to see where the
women's lacrosse is this week, you'll see the @DukeWLax.
So we've already done that with teams. Now that may be a
thing we can add in for athletes where they're featured in a
record or something you could have their [social handles]...

“There is one example — because I did a lot of baseball [content] this
year and what we wanted to do for our gameday posts — the first post
you see (of the day) is the gameday post. I created the overall look
across a few colors and Shane (the SID) adds in the photo he wants
and the information; so it's very plug and play. But then the second
post...I did a cutout for every guy and he's standing next to a phone
that has his top five songs on Spotify and it's got his handles and stuff.
“And when we did football, when we were doing Signing Day, [it was
the] same thing. We were doing this [around the] world feel. Everyone
had a passport and in the passport it showed what their Twitter
handle was, their Instagram, TikTok, that kind of stuff. So we've
dabbled in it a little bit, but I think that there's so much room to do
[more]...you could do it [where] almost every post was player-centric.”

About being efficiently creative in the production process
“One thing I've learned over the years is the amount of time that
clicking around can really add to getting something done and
efficient. One thing for example is we use a lot of the same sizes,
something that's a 4x5, 16x9 — so I have a folder on our Box
[cloud storage]…where I have a 4x5 PSD, a 16x9 PSD. Or if it's
something where I know I need to use multiple artboards, I've got
that set up, so that way I'm not having to open it up, add a color
and add guides every single time; it's already set up. So I just click
it open, do a ‘save as’ in the new place, so it doesn't overwrite my
template and then I'm done in terms of setup; it's the DPI that I
need it to be, the pixel size, it's got the guides and color.

“And I also have — we don't have a shared one yet, but currently I've been using
my own library where I have logos saved, any common textures that I use for all
sports or even for some sports — colors, because we do have different blues,
which is kind of funny. We have our athletics blue, and then we also have the
school navy blue. I'd say we mostly lean towards the athletics blue obviously, but
we can use the navy. And we have three fonts that we use; really only one plus a
Gothic font. Then there's another one — the third one, some teams use it, I know
that women's basketball went really heavy on this kind of serif font.
“But basically everything is starred. I have templates saved, I have folders in Box
that have textures I might need. So everything is accessible as quickly as possible.
The things that take the most time is putting together composition, like doing the
cutouts, blending things together, all the typical stuff. But as far as setup, having
PSDs ready with your guides and your sizes that you always use ready to go — I've
been doing that for a long time and it just saves you a couple of clicks and some
effort you can just double-click something open and you're ready to go.”

About the Coach K farewell initiative for Duke MBB and
Duke creative services overall
“So, this is where it gets interesting. And I think some
other college athletics [pros] will kind of understand
this, but not everybody will. So for us [in] athletics, even
though both football and basketball are teams under
athletics, they are technically their own teams. So our
football has their own dedicated creative, both men's
and women's basketball have their own creative
directors and they have their creatives that they lean on.

“We, the other designers in athletics, we cover basically
everything else [besides football and basketball]. But
that being said, because we are all Duke Athletics, there
is cross-pollination. So a lot of the basketball stuff that
myself and my coworkers did was through our marketing
team or for Athletics. So maybe not directly through
basketball, but something as big as [Coach K] it doesn't
matter if you're not directly involved with them because
everything was involved with it. I mean, Iron Dukes was
involved with it, Athletics, every team had something to
do with it, so it was very cool how that all came together.

“As far as like just the like social stuff and as records came
through, basketball was kind of handling that…The main
thing I got tasked with, which I still need to frame — I was
tasked by marketing to create a commemorative poster of
Coach K to celebrate his 42 seasons. What we did was we
wanted to make a mosaic out of a photo. This
photographer took a really good black and white side
profile picture of him, and we wanted to feature athletes
from across his entire career. I can't remember the exact
number, but we ended up going through and picking about
200-something photos to create the mosaic with. And it's
across his entire career at Duke, so that was really cool.

“It's a pretty big poster. It's weird looking at it on a screen and then seeing it in person
because I think it's like 24 by 36 inches. It's huge. Also, I was extremely fortunate that I
was gifted a signed version. That's the one I have at home and we have a non-signed one
in the office.
“And then my coworker Darrell, he and I both collaborated on banners that would go
outside Cameron [Indoor Stadium] and outside one of the parking garages, where it said
‘Thank You K’ and had him with his 1K logo and some other stuff. It was cool to see that
in person. So we did video board stuff for that last game. And then for the postseason, as
they went deeper — right before they went to face UNC [in the Final Four], we did an ad
for the newspaper and in New Orleans. So that was kind of cool. We did a lot of other
small stuff.
“But the biggest thing was that last week before the last game, because you had content
going out every single day and you had several pieces of content going every single day
between videos about him and this season, previous seasons — everything from still art
to video, to email marketing, to things in person and having ESPN come in and all this
other stuff.

“There was so much going on for that last week that it was just like the last
game was what it was leading up to, but there was so much going on the
weeks before and the week of that it was just this massive one project…It
would not have functioned the way it did without everyone contributing in
some way. It was a massive honor to be a part of that experience. And
even though my contributions were only a fraction of it, I still am proud to
have been a part of that experience.
“I didn't know that I was going to be doing anything for basketball this
season because I kind of figured they had it on lock being that it was his
last season; it's a big deal. But in one way or another, we all came in and
did it and I’m very proud of what we did. I think that we were all thinking
off the top of our heads [that] regardless of how the season ended and how
far they went in the tournament, that we were going to create the best
stuff we could as possible for as long as possible. I think the team did a
really good job and I think it's something we can always be proud of.”

On thinking about the volume of creative output and what’s worth doing
“At least with the Coach K stuff, there was never such a thing as too
much…It was our one chance to do a lot of stuff [and] we did a lot of
stuff. But as far as athletics in general, I think in general we try to make
sure that everything has a purpose. So when we're creating a design for
something that — for holidays is a good example, it can be kind of
tricky. So we did one design for Mother's Day, but then for, like, with
Memorial Day coming up, the 4th of July, we may have photos instead,
because we'll have photos of athletes with American flags. Or when we
were going through Black History Month, we wanted to highlight a lot of
important people who were not just athletes, but also coaches and our
athletic director, Nina [King], all this cool stuff. So we did this unique
design.

“So it really varies. But I would say in general,
everything we design — at least like design
creatives, not necessarily photos or posts — we try
to make sure that it has a purpose and we have an
outcome we wanna reach instead of just making it
for the sake of making it. That's why you don't
necessarily see a lot of memes per se. It would be
cool to do some more fun stuff like that, but I think
that in general, we try to make everything as
purposeful as possible, and it works really well for
us.”

How Kennon and his team think about measuring the success of
their work
“I would be foolish to say that analytics aren't as important because
sometimes you put something together that's really cool and it
flops, and sometimes you'll put something itogether quick and it
just takes off. So it's hard. Analytics are great and I think that's
something that we should strive for and making sure that we're
growing our accounts and that certain posts are getting more
things. But a lot of the times, you're going to have a lot of disparity
between certain teams within Duke, because some teams have
bigger following, some teams don't, [for some] the audience is only
consuming live content, some are only going in person. So I think
you have to take that aside.

“As far as something that's successful, it really just comes down to, it
becomes kind of a gut feeling; like, we're putting something
together, what is going to be impactful? And if even just a few
people like it and see it, that's still successful. Of course, you want it
to be big numbers and huge shares; you want your analytics to be
insane. Sometimes it doesn't happen, but that doesn't mean that
something was a failure. I think that a lot of times what you might
consider a failure is is it something that we created, like a template,
that just didn't get used or used at all or used enough or didn't make
sense? I think that's probably more I would say is a success is is it
something that we made that is used frequently if it's a template? Or
if it's not a template, is it something that caught somebody's eye?
“It's hard to explain that, but I think it is very gut feeling-ish.”

The creative asset Kennon has produced that he’s proudest
of
“It would be easy for me to say the Coach K [poster], because
that is the most visible, but there's one that — you can find it
if you're sleuthy enough — but I would say the one that I am
most proud of, but I can't necessarily share yet is the first
piece that I ever did for Mike Tyson that we used in a pitch.
“So it's kind of a tie between that and the Coach K one, but
the Coach K one you can easily find that and I have happily
shared it, so maybe I'll say that one”

Kennon’s favorite sport to produce creative for
“I would definitely say soccer because it's my favorite sport,
it's the one I follow the most. I did get to do a little bit for
both men's and women's soccer last year, and there's really
cool stuff there, the end of their season and postseason.
When I first started doing graphic design for sports when,
back in 2021, I wanted to find an interest in it, it was easy for
me to find athletes because I knew who they were and I knew
what kind of feel I wanted to go for it. It was just an easier
medium to work with. Plus, unlike stuff like lacrosse, there's
not a lot of complicated cutoffs to do. I don't have to cut
through nets and stuff.”

The strangest or wackiest promotion that the Carolina Mudcats minor league
baseball team (that Kennon has worked with and attended some games)
“That's a tough one. I think they've done a really good job of the giveaways that
they do every season. They'll always do a bunch of jersey [promos]...I would
say maybe not necessarily that this is the wackiest promotion or giveaway, but
it is interesting because they have three different brands that they operate as.
“Obviously there's the Carolina Mudcats, which is who they are. They are
owned by the Milwaukee Brewers, so they have, especially on Thursday nights,
they have a theme night that's called Micro Brews. So they wear uniforms that
are Brewers colors, and they even have a new branding around it that's
exclusively Micro Brews. And then there's the Hispanic Heritage look that all
minor league teams do, theirs is the Pescados, which is this really cool sugar
skull looking version of a mudcat skeleton…It's really cool to see how they
navigate using three different looks every season.

The most memorable game Kennon has ever attended
“I have two. One isn't truly in person and that's why I want to say that it's
two [memorable games]. So I'll start with that one. So 2019 was the first
year back from an almost nine-year playoff drought for the Carolina
Hurricanes [NHL team]. We were in round one against the Washington
Capitals who had swept us in the regular season and the intensity
between the fan base and the teams had been brewing for a while. We
make it to game seven and I'm watching it at a watch party that me and
some friends were helping host downtown Raleigh and it was packed and
[the game] went into like double overtime, it was super late and we were
all just on our seats and all of a sudden there was a really crazy block that
Brock McGinn made]. They were in Washington when they played this.
And when they got to the other side of the ice, he scores the winning goal.

“Now we couldn't hear this because we were loud, but when we
watched back, the entire arena went so quiet that on the
broadcast all you hear is the Canes players and the fans — the
few Canes fans that were at Capital One Arena [in Washington].
It was so quiet after that goal because it was supposed to be the
Capitals’ back-to-back season of winning the Cup. Thank God it
wasn't. But we didn't hear that because as soon as that goal
went in — the explosion of beer was instantaneous in the pub, it
was instant, beer flew everywhere, everyone freaked out. My
buddy got picked up by some random dude, just like carried
halfway across the room. It was extremely memorable. I always
said if there was a way to tattoo a video of the phone capture
that I have from that night, I would tattoo it somewhere…

“As an in-person [game he attended] — the inaugural home opener game
for Charlotte FC, I think that was a really cool experience. For the people
who don't know, they play in the same stadium that the Panthers play in
for regular-season games, typically Charlotte FC only [opens] the lower
bowl [of seats], but for this game they wanted to break the attendance
record. They wanted to really pack that place, and they did...It was like 74
plus thousand people. It was the highest-attended MLS game ever and it
was full and it was shaking and it was a night game. The presentation was
huge, the videos that they did and the fireworks, everything was just
assive. And it was such an unreal experience. I'd been to big soccer games
before, [but] I haven't been [to] anything crowd-wise that big…That one
was definitely a unique experience because it was a record-breaking night
and it was cool to see — most of the people there, I would say, that
might've been their first soccer game. There were a lot of people there that
that was the first time they've seen professional soccer in person. So
getting to share that experience with them was really cool...”

Kennon’s favorite guiding principle or mantra for
creative work
“When it comes to creative, I would say this is a
piece of advice that I was given and that I give to
others — I say it all the time, and this isn't just
specific to creatives. I think this is something that
could be applied, period, but this is definitely
something creatives need to hear, which is bet on
yourself. Always bet on yourself…

“It's a combination of I was hearing it from people before I got the job that
I had when I was looking for jobs to make this career pivot. I saw a lot of
people who were shifting from team work to being freelance or to working
for an agency or starting their own things, or even just changing teams or
schools — they had found an opportunity and they bet on themselves to do
it. And, you know, I believed, I knew I would be able to, [that] this is a
space that I could get into through hard work and through connecting and
all this stuff.
“And it really took betting on myself to make it happen. And lo and behold
I made it happen. And now, even though I am where I am, in terms of
other parts of my life, I'm betting on myself. Whether it's decisions that I
can make to improve my health or to improve my diet and my fitness, or
maybe it's just the people I'm around, the things that I do — I'm always
betting on things for myself that I think will help me out in the long run.”

The best meal to get in Raleigh and where to get it
“So if we're going for sit-down stuff, any of the
Ashley Christensen restaurants are always a banger. I
love Death and Taxes, there's Beasley's — they have
like chicken and waffles kind of stuff. There's a lot of
variations on those as well, but she has a variety of
restaurants across the Raleigh area that are really
good.

“There's obviously tons of hidden gems, Raleigh and
Durham — both cities have a ton to offer…Now, if
we're not going to sit down, if we're going for fast
food, there are the two staples that are a must-have
when you come to North Carolina, which are
Cookout and Bojangles. Cookout is — everyone
always complains about how good the quality is
[and] I'm like, it's not about having good food, it's
about getting as much food as possible in what's
called ‘the tray’, which is a special — as much food as
possible for as little as possible. There are so many
combinations of trays you can get. My go-to is
probably a barbecue sandwich with chicken
quesadilla, Cajun fries, and then one of their 40
flavors of milkshakes as my drink. So that's a tray,
but there are other combinations. And then
Bojangles is just great fried chicken and biscuits, it's
hard to go wrong. I'll eat it for breakfast, lunch,
dinner — I'll never stop eating it.”

How Kennon keeps up with the tech and trends in the creative space
“Well for one, I'm such a tech and software nerd that I'm always
consuming content anyway across the different platforms.
Everything that I'm subscribed to in one way or another, it gets me
that information. But I always say [I am] chronically on Twitter,
because I have such a massive adoration for the platform as far as
being a creative in this space. I know, obviously, it's not the only
niche that exists on Twitter. Obviously, you can get your news there,
you can have communication, there's activism on there. There's a lot
that could be offered on Twitter. But as far as the creative space, it's
where I've made the most connections, i's how I got my job, it's how
I've gotten some freelance, it's a place to share all of my art.

“It's not like an Instagram where you're obsessed
with making a specific feed or obsessing over the
grid. I can post about my personal life and then
reshare something from Duke and then also show
a personal piece. And I follow a lot of topics and
people and schools and teams and everything so
that way I'm always up to date with what's going
on and I can see that.

“Now outside of Twitter, obviously things like Behance and other
portfolio-based platforms are great. Gondola — I cannot say
enough good things about Gondola and how it's enabling people to
basically create a portfolio that's analytics-based. And they're
always working on [more], they’re working on an app for it, they
recently came out with a [Google] Chrome extension where instead
of having to enter the information on their site, you could be on,
you know, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter and use the Chrome
extension to do the crediting and stuff and it gets added that way.”
“So Twitter, Gondola, Behance [are]great platforms; obviously
Instagram and Facebook still exist. But to me, they're there. I don't,
we use them for work and I don't really use them personally.”

What does Kennon want to see more of / less of in sports creative
“Anyone who's ever talked to me or seen any of my stuff online,
you know that I am a big advocate for — I think that a lot more
teams, especially professional teams, but definitely also college
teams need to start considering the trend of remote work as being
something that works for them as well, and not have such an
antiquated view. I am going on 10 years as a professional graphic
designer now, and I can tell you with certainty that there has
never been once in my entire career that my job has required
[that] I've needed to breathe the same oxygen as someone else to
do my job because inevitably the assets are all digital in one way
or another.

“The communication for approval processes and briefs and submission
it’s all [digital]…If you need someone to be doing more than graphic
design, like photos and all that stuff, it's not a graphic design position, it's
a creative position. So define your [jobs] better. If you want someone
who's doing more than just graphic design, you need to change their title
and pay them more. Although there's no shame in being well-rounded —
I too love photo and video and all this other stuff — but at the end of the
day, my main position is graphic design and that's something that is a
purely digital format.
“I think that I'm definitely not alone. I know a lot of big people who have
left their jobs to do remote stuff and, you know, there's never a short
supply of creatives out there, but I think that they'll have bigger access to
the best and brightest if they're not limiting themselves to having to
relocate someone to breathe the same oxygen as you...

“Another thing I'd like to see more of is just people being
open about their experiences and being more willing to be
vulnerable about their experiences as a creative, because it's
very easy to get so soaked up in what you're doing and be so
outwardly grateful because it's a small niche to already be in.
There's less jobs for this kind of thing than there are people
who want to do it, especially in pro sports — you know, a lot
of these teams have a designer or two designers and then
some freelance stuff. So we’re always in a position where we
feel like we can't say anything bad, or we can't reflect on
things publicly because someone's gonna snatch up a job and
some kid will take the position for less money and do all
these things.

“But the thing is, at the end of the day, we all thrive together
where we are all a collective team of creatives out there. Even
the people who don't work in this space, but are interested in
the space, we're all part of the same ecosystem. And I think if
you're willing to be more open about what's going on in your
life and your experiences, I think that will be better because
there are people who have been through some bad experiences
with specific schools or teams and I think they have every
right to be vocal about it. And then some people have really
good experiences, but then something in their personal life is
happening and it's holding them down and stuff and I think
that they feel like they can't say anything publicly. I think that
willing to be vulnerable and more personable is a big thing.”

On whether we’ll see more specialists or generalists in creative
going forward
“I think we'll always see specialists; especially for certain things,
you're going to need it. For things like even photo, for 3D work
and animation, a lot of times those are more specific. But I would
say that as far as graphic design, if you are a graphic designer, it
wouldn't hurt to dabble in other stuff like learning some basic
UI/UX stuff, even if it's not the not coding part of it, pick up
Figma. It's not a coded software. It's cloud-based,..And then like
photo editing, not just like cutting things out and doing
Photoshop with, but doing true photo editing, and maybe picking
up a little bit of basic animation motion graphics on something
like After Effects.

“I would say that we will see a little bit more generalists, more and more.
I think it's good to have multiple skills, but also don't feel like you have to
do everything because it's good to have a lot of things that you dabble in,
but if you spread yourself too thin, you'll lose your passion for something.
“Like, for me, I like doing photography for sports, but honestly I try to do
as little paid or work photography as possible and just do it for like
landscape photography or travel or whatever. I make it so that it's my
guilty pleasure. And it's still a creative thing that I can grow in and maybe
do more of in the future, but as much as I do enjoy doing it for sports, if I
do it too much, I feel like I'm going to be commodifying yet another
interest of mine, whereas I'm happy doing graphic design full-time and
doing it outside of work. But if I do that with everything, I'm going to get
burnt out at some point.”

Kennon’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“I want to shout out Gondola (@ongondola on Twitter and IG) and the
Gondola team because the platform that they've created and to give this kind
of analytics-based tagging system to where people — and it's not just
designers — if you are a social media person, if you are a videographer,
anything you do that is social media-based and forward-facing, you can tag
yourself, you can tag other people who are involved.
“It's a chance to really show off your work and the impact that it has in a very
easy-to-navigate website, hopefully soon-to-be app as well…They want to give
more power to people, to the creatives in terms of showing what their impact
is. Because I feel like sometimes people don't don't know what their impact is
or don't get to share their impact as much. So this is a great platform.

“There are so many good creatives out there,
honestly, just go through and find who works at a
team or a college that you like, see who it is, follow
their Twitters because there's a lot of people who
just share their work and that's it. And there's a lot
of people like me who are all about everything
else. You'll find an amazing community out there.
You just kind of have to look..”

Where to find Kennon on digital/social media
Kennon is @KennonPearson on Twitter and
@kpearsonmedia on Instagram. Also, find his
website KennonPearsonMedia.com and check out
his profile on Gondola – he’s also open to Twitter
DMs!

Thanks again to Kennon for being so
generous with his time to share his
knowledge, experience, and expertise with
me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to
the podcast, follow me on LinkedIn and on
Twitter @njh287, and visit
www.dsmsports.net.
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net

Episode 220 Snippets: Kennon Pearson of Duke Athletics

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