New and Exciting: GoRedbirds.com (12.18.09)

After a great performance by the Redbirds on the gridiron during the fall, freshman quarterback Matt Brown was named Missouri Valley Conference Freshman of the Year. Brown, a redshirt freshman from Marion, Ill., stepped in for injured starter Drew Kiel in the first game of the season and helped guide the offense to new heights in 2009. To honor Brown, we decided to design a masthead to go on all the football pages at GoRedbirds.com.

I saw something similar to this in ESPN the Magazine's Next feature on Jake Locker and thought it was really neat. I like typography and using words as design elements, but I haven't really done a whole lot with it. I dug up some old quotes from Illinois State head coach Brock Spack about Brown prior to the Southern Illinois game, then created a mash-up of sorts, along with his yardage from this season - a new freshman record. I was pleased with the final product.



We're also working on a launch of the Redbird Athletics Video Vault on Vimeo. It's an effort to provide fans with the ability to fast forward or rewind through old games - something not available currently on the CBS All-Access player. We're also looking to improve the quality of the video beyond what CBS All-Access streaming allows. I created the following graphic for our Redbird Athletics Video Vault Channel on Vimeo and a channel badge. I found an old film strip graphic and a picture of an old film reel and grunged it up a little with photoshop filters and brushes.



That's what's new and exciting right now.