ROLE Chief Product Officer/ Art Director
IMPACT – Worked directly with NFL player Kelvin Beachum (Arizona Cardinals Offensive Tackle) to create a 3-D Digital Token to auction off for his “My Cleats, My Cause” donation to the Phoenix Art Museum.
DELIVERABLES Art Direction Sketches Final 3D gifs
The Challenge
Kelvin Beachum reached out to the team at Bandwagon to develop the art direction and assets for his contribution to the Nike “My Cleats, My Cause” campaign. Players would pick a cause important to them and represent it with custom cleats. Kelvin has a passion for art, and is an art collector himself. He chose the Phoenix Art Museum for his cause and additionally wanted our team to design a digital token to auction off, with the proceeds going to the Museum.
My role in this project was not as a Product Designer, I worked as Chief Product Officer for BandwagonFanclub. In this project I fulfilled both that role and the role of Art Director, with a 3D model artist reporting to me.
Process
To start our creative process, Kelvin sent along a multi-page pdf of small photos in his current art collection. He wanted me and the 3D artist, Seyi Nayin, to get inspired from the artwork that he owned to generate ideas for the token. We were drawn to a piece called “The Revolution will not be Televised.” Originally we wanted to do an extrapolation of it and reproduce it in 3D with 3 variations:
an aged newspaper version
a present day 2D digital rendering
a 3D futuristic model of error screen.
The message was that regardless of the social justice time period, opposition to oppression will never be televised. We shared sketches of this idea with Kelvin, but he asked us to pivot in another direction. He liked that we were inspired by that art, and the social commentary of the direction, but he didn’t want a 1:1 influence. We went back to the drawing board.
An insight that we pulled from the feedback was that Kelvin was aligned with a social commentary take on the artwork. Additionally, other artworks in his collection also featured a social slant. From there I decided to do some research into the league with a focus on Black players and the history of the demographic makeup of the league.
I have a casual knowledge of the NFL due to being a football fan (and flag football player myself). I knew that as a sport, football indexes very high in the Black community, and that there are a lot of Black players in the league, but not many in the most notable role of quarterback. I started to research more into this breakdown and when Black players started playing in the league. I learned a lot about the percentage breakdown, but the most important thing I discovered was a Youtube video narrated by Viola Davis that explained the background of the NFL; how it started out integrated with only 2 Black players, desegregated, and then integrated again.
This Youtube video felt highly relevant to the story we were trying to tell. So I concepted an art direction based off of its information. We’d design 4 football cleats, one to represent each “era” of the Black athlete in the NFL. We focused on cleats since it feet with the “My Cleats, My Cause” theme and also wanted the artifact of each era to be the same, but styled differently.
Pitching the Idea:
We originally took in the idea to digitize the cleats within a newspaper clipping with a Title of the Era as the title of the Newspaper and the year(s) representing the era. The client loved the new direction of the tokens, but didn’t want it embedded in a newspaper frame. After meeting with the 3D artist, we decided to have the cleats rotating on a pedestal, as if it were an artifact in a museum, feeding in the selection of the art museum as a benefactor of Kelvin’s cause. When we took this idea back, he loved it. And animation began on the assets.
Final Deliverables:
September 26th, 1920
Era 1 "In the Beginning..."
Shoe Style: Thick and Heavy Leather Shoe with Cleats
Background and Pedestal Style: Curtains, Roman-Style Pedestal
Secondary Elements: FP initials stand for “Fritz Pollard”, one of the first Black, professional football athletes and first Black head coach, 13 golden beads represent the 13 Black players that played in the League before the color ban.
Story: In 1920, the League formed with over 300 players and 14 teams. While the formation of the League is well known, the integration of it is more obscure. Only two Black players initially competed amongst the 14 teams. One of these athletes was Hall of Famer, Fritz Pollard. During the struggle for Black athlete presence in the League, he became the first Black head coach and saw 13 Black players emerge into the professional football arena. Unfortunately, this integration did not last.
1933
Era 2 "No Colors Allowed"
Shoe Style: Statuquese Cleat, All white, No color
Background and Pedestal Style: Stone Curtains, Roman-Style Pedestal
Secondary Elements: North America is where the League was created, the number 10 represents the ten teams that made up the League, the chain represents the constraints White owners placed on the League and the subsequent ban of Black players in the League.
Story: Professional football began to grow despite the Great Depression. League owners met to discuss its expansion and made the irrevocable decision that Black athletes no longer had a place on League rosters. Total segregation in professional football began.
March 21st, 1946
Era 3 "New Beginnings"
Shoe Style: Classic and Colorful Cleat
Background and Pedestal Style: Floral background represents fresh life in the League with a more modern granite pedestal style in the foreground
Secondary Elements and Backstory: The League breathed new life (florals) when Kenny Washington re-integrated by signing with the LA Rams. This ended the 13-year color ban in professional football – 198 days before Jackie Robinson became the first Black major league baseball player in the modern era.
Story: In Cleveland, Ohio, in 1945, the Cleveland Rams had just won the Championship. The 10 League teams were initially concentrated in the Northern and Eastern parts of the United States. After their victory, the Rams saw a daring opportunity to take their talents West to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The Coliseum was located in one of the largest and proudest Black communities. It took a team of brave journalists led by Haley Harding to fight against an all-white team invading their new stadium. It took LA native and UCLA football star, Kenny Washington, to unite the community behind the team. On March 21, 1946, Kenny Washington became the first Black athlete welcomed back in the League. Finally, integration returned to professional football.
Present and Future
Era 4 "Stars Light Our Path"
Shoe Style: Futuristic, tech-driven cleat. This is the only cleat pointing upward.
Background and Pedestal Style: Metallic, space-age pedestal with LED lights
Secondary Elements and Backstory: This futuristic cleat offers the allusion of transformation into a spaceship with a thruster. Unlike the other eras, it is the only one that points up; signifying the galaxy as our limit.
Story: Currently, Black athletes make up the majority of League players (70%). Consistently, Black athletes have surpassed all barriers; proving their skill, athleticism, and rightful place on League rosters. While Black player representation has grown in numbers in the professional football ecosystem, equity in other industries, and even other roles within sport, hasn’t seen that same ascension. Athletes in the 21st century and beyond utilize their resources to speak out and up for the causes they believe in, advocate for STEAM education, invest in technology and their communities, and advance toward ownership opportunities. This futuristic cleat offers the allusion of transformation into a spaceship with a thruster. Unlike the other eras, it is the only one that points up; signifying the galaxy as our limit.
Results: We auctioned off each of the tokens and were able to make a nice donation to the Phoenix Art Museum. Our client was very pleased and proud of our artwork and storytelling.