Stadium ribbon board graphics used at Indiana University for the 2025 football season
Partnerships 
& Affiliations
Athletico partners with colleges, professional sports teams, high schools, endurance events, performing arts, and more. These partnerships serve as a way to extend our brand presence in the community and drive people through our doors.
In 2025, Athletico revamped its partnership advertising templates. In the past, we relied on generic designs, but this time we introduced three dedicated categories—each with its own look and feel:
•  Endurance Events
•  Performing Arts
•  Collegiate & Professional Sports
Our creative team was challenged to push the envelope and try things we hadn’t done before. Each designer developed their own concept for all three categories. Ultimately, my concepts were chosen for two of the three.
Endurance Events
Our endurance partners include races such as the Chicago Marathon, Indianapolis Women's Half Marathon, and more.
As a former collegiate runner and coach, it was important to me that we create visuals that resonate with endurance athletes. The most important part of my concept is image choice. This is why the image takes up the majority of the real estate in each asset.
In the past, our endurance affiliate ads showcased athletes competing. For this campaign I wanted to focus on the true story at hand – the body of work that endurance athletes put in to prepare for competition.
I utilized curved lines as a graphical accent in our templates. When you look at endurance events, you will see lines, curves, and repetition everywhere. This includes track lanes, road markings, and swimming lanes.
My concept was ultimately chosen for this campaign.
Performing Arts
When coming up with potential concepts for this campaign, I wrote down words that describe performing arts: balance, flight, control, motion. These words drove the direction of my creative choices.
Performers are cut out from their image as a way to create depth while showcasing flight and motion. 
While we typically left align all body copy, I felt that justified copy would be appropriate for this campaign as a way to display balance. To really drive this feeling home, I added white space to side margins of the email/eblast template.
The footer was added on a navy block to balance out the blue block at the top of the graphics. The navy was given less real estate as it is visually heavier than the blue, and I wanted it to stay balanced.
My concept was ultimately chosen for this campaign.
Professional & 
Collegiate Sports
These partners have large, global brands and it is an opportunity for us to reach a wider audience. For this concept, I wanted to create a style that would resonate with sports fans rather than just potential customers. I took inspiration from professional sports television broadcasts and in-stadium jumbo tron graphics.
The repeating, offset header gives the feel of graphics you would see used as stingers transitions.
The repeating coral slashes are subtly inspired by markings on fields or courts, while bringing the familiar look of repeating shapes often found in sports broadcast packages.
Photos were treated with a gradient map made up of colors within our brand. This treatment was an attempt at trying something outside the box of what we normally do, and it is similar to treatment you see in sports video game cover art.
Ultimately, we went a different direction and did not use this concept for the campaign. It did, however, receive a great reception. Elements from this idea were incorporated into the final version.
Professional & Collegiate Sports
Stadium Graphics
I was given the privilege of designing and animating all of our in-stadium graphics for this campaign, which has been a dream of mine for 15 years.
These graphics are currently being displayed throughout professional and collegiate sports venues including, but not limited to, Soldier Field (Chicago Bears), Kinnick Stadium (University of Iowa), Wrigley Field & Lakefront Stadium (Northwestern University).
Most of our ads run on ribbon boards, which presents unique challenges. Every stadium has different size ribbons. We often get opportunities to run ads on very short notice, so it was crucial that I set up the templates in a way that allows dynamic, non-destructive customization of these animated boards.
In order to accomplish this, I utilized expressions, essential properties, and controllers in Adobe After Effects. This allows us to change dimensions and content, and all the elements auto reposition on the boards without breaking any key-frames. All animations are driven using linear expressions, so pacing can be adjusted using a slider.
As this is an extension of the professional & collegiate sports campaign, I utilized elements from that in our stadium graphics, such as the diagonal, colored shapes.
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