November 4, 2025 • 34 mins
On this episode of “Inside the Oval,” Noah Hammerman, Aaron Llavore, Vince Irao, Chase Iseley, and Malik Shumpert detailed the background on the 49ers marketing brand refresh and offered a look inside the team’s creative process behind the Nike “Rivalries” campaign.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Inside the Oval podcast. I'm Noah Hammerman,
and today we're joined by my team here at the
forty nine ers, my pride and enjoy our in house
design team. The designers are in house graphic design team.
So give it up for yourselves. Welcome to the podcast.
Figure we go, We made it. Yeah, it's super exciting
to have you all here. I think we always talk
(00:21):
about people's careers and how impressed they are with their team.
I know we had Aaron and Serena on last time
to talk through their process and the production department. But
today we have our design team and we'll just talk
through who we are, how we got to this point
in our careers, and some of the cool projects that
we've been working on throughout the off season. Yeah, so quickly,
I'll just run down the names of everybody here. We
(00:45):
have our creative director, Aaron Levore, Hello, yep, wonderful. We
have vinceer Row, our graphic designer, president, president and accounted for.
We have Jace Eisley, another graphic designer. Hey guys, and
Malik our graphic design internat.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's great to have.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
You all here. First question, out of the gates. It's
kind of open for interpretation. Maybe we'll start with Aaron here.
What does it mean to be a part of the
forty nine ers design team known as the Designers.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Where the creative team that shapes how the Foreigners look, feel,
and connect with fans, from our game day visuals to
our brand campaigns and digital content. We also build creative
for every department across the organization, being sure everything we
put out reflects the energy and legacy of the Foreigners
and the faithful. Our professional training is graphic design, but
(01:33):
at our core problem solvers.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Really Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I think I kind of want everybody to get to
know you guys a little bit more on a personal
level and how you got to this place in your career,
because that's what a lot of our listeners are curious about,
how to get our jobs. So I guess, in a
quick elevator pitch type of style, I would love to
hear a bit about each of your career journeys and
how you initially got got Oh, God's started in graphic design.
(02:02):
So we'll start with our newest member of the team,
Malik Schumpert, learning a bit more about how you got
into our team. And how that worked out.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Well.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Yeah, so I'll start pretty much, I grew up always
fascinated with art, so then i'd say about my junior
year of high school, I really started picking up on
graphic design, really not with the intention of turning into
a profession, more more of like a hobby. Obviously, around
that time was peak high school basketball, so I was
heavy into that and making graphics just try just to
(02:35):
try to get my name out there. And then during
COVID I really kind of took off with that. I
started getting a lot of notices from big name companies,
which opened the door for me a lot, especially here
in the Bay Area. Got to work with some big
basketball media companies, and then from there I just majored
in graphic design in college, and I was able to
(02:55):
get a design internship with a sports agency called Disruptive Sports,
which really opened the doors to my eyes of how
far that I could really take this whole design thing,
not just as a hobby, but as a career itself.
And then I transferred to San Jose State for my
junior senior year of college, and there I was able
to pretty much do what I love, make graphics for
(03:17):
pretty much every single team there, as I say, I
had to offer, but I really focused with the basketball
team and then that led me to where I am
now doing what I love with the forty nine ers
around great people every single day.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I think being able to have that experience with this
eruptive is that what it's called. Yeah, it was a
huge benefit to you just trying out new things and design.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
So we're glad to have you here. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's a great internship program that the forty nine ers run,
and I think being a part of that community has
been awesome for us to have you here and for
you to come in and greece us with your talent
for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Our newest full time member is Chase Isley. So how
did you you find this opportunity with us.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I've always been a creative person, but I didn't really
hone those skills until college. I went to cal Poly,
graduated with a graphic communication degree, and then I had
a minor in political science. So honestly, I graduated thinking
I was going more into the nonprofit space. I wanted
to apply my graphic design skills to companies or organizations
(04:24):
that were going to like fill my cup in a
moral way and my dad, I'm from Sacramento. My dad
sent me an internship with the Sacramento Kings, and so
I applied just like shot in the Dark, and I
got it. And so that was sort of my introduction
to the sports world.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And I was.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Quickly obsessed with the environment of sports, the fast paced
of everything, and so I sort of threw myself into
any opportunity that I could. And I actually met some
people at the forty nine ers through a women's connect event,
and so that's sort of how my network grew. And
and when the forty nine ers were looking for a
new contract designer, I applied to the job and that
(05:05):
is how I got here.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, what's great about that story that she's not including
is that she is an Inside the Oval listener, so
she had listened to I think it was Anna Warwick's
podcast episode from her graphic design internship the same seat
in Maleak sitting in now and gotten to learn more
about our team and our team culture, which is really cool.
How full circle that is as well. We'll move on
(05:28):
to vinceer Row. You have now been here three seasons,
which feels like it's gone by extremely fast, too quick,
but would love to hear about your career journey and
how you got to us at the Niners.
Speaker 6 (05:38):
For I'd say, like, my educational journey is a lot
different from everyone here in the room. So actually my
education background comes from broadcasting electronic communication arts in San
Francisco State, we kind of call it BECA and a
lot of that was just like a lot of TV production,
video production, a lot of this radio production too, So
have a big, deep background in both video and audio.
(06:02):
But before that, I was doing a lot of graphic
design and stuff for my high school and a lot
of my so called your scholarships come from that. I
feel like I honed graphic design a lot when I
was in the video production side. You saw I was
still doing you know, graphics, motion design stuff for you know,
a lot of people. So when COVID hit, that's when
(06:24):
I graduated college in twenty twenty, started kind of shifting,
not like my career, but a lot of my focus
on just like sticking to being a designer and kind
of being like a freelance in a way. Found a job,
or i'd say a job, but it was unpaid internship,
you know, which shifted into a job through my connection
and at that time it was all just you know,
(06:45):
creative advertisements. It was like a agency. So spent I
think almost a year there. Then I most of my
knowledge now comes a lot from the Snakers Warriors, ge
League affiliate for the Golden State Warriors, and a lot
of that. I was a marketing coordinator with a focus
in graphic designs, so not just design. I was doing
(07:07):
a lot of but it was a lot of you know,
everything you know in like marketing, right, so I'll be
doing you know, the social media stuff, digital websites, even
goes as far as like game production, so a little
bit here and there. Saw the opportunity here at the
forty nine ers two years ago, and decided to take it.
So here I am.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Now that's great.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, going from that agency side all the way to
sports and then figuring it out over here.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So that's awesome stuff. Go ahead.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
No, I thought it was funny because before I wanted
to be a kinesiologist working so working in sports was
in a way like an idea, but not wanting to
do medical stuff was like not my thing. So hearing
that there's like, you know, marketing design job opportunities within sports,
I thought, you know, was such an eye opener and
(07:55):
it was like the coolest thing to me.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So, yeah, that's shifting entire industries with that sports interest
is really cool as well. I'm sure there are a
lot of listeners that empathize with that exact emotion trying
to figure it out in sports, not knowing where that
allegiance lies or where you exactly want to go with
your paths, but eventually finding your true interest just genuinely
in your life and finding that out. So that's a
(08:19):
really cool path. Aaron would love to hear about your
journey here.
Speaker 7 (08:23):
Yeah, I'm really going to sound like the grizzled vet here.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Getting close to twenty years in the sports industry, so
a lot to process. But getting started in graphic design,
I was in high school. I was doing black and
white photography. We had a dark room, and then actually
the dark room went down for some reason, and they
put us in the computer lab back in the olden
days and put us on Photoshop, and I found out
(08:48):
I really love doing photoshop and photo editing through a
commuter And this will really date me.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
That I was.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I loved creating CD covers for people, So thanks on
my older millennials.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Then, in two.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Thousand, two thousand and one, if you could create a
really cool CD cover, you thought you were pretty cool.
Speaker 7 (09:08):
So yeah, I went into graphic design at Susey State.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
At the time, like my eyes were on, you know,
hopefully working for a local tech company. I mean, this
is Silicon Valley. There's a lot of opportunities there.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
I had no idea there was going to be a
sports opportunity for me.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I actually got a job through a post on Craigslist
back in the day two thousand and seven for the
Golden State Warriors. This is on the heels of there
we believe run, which is kind of you know, it
was kind of unbelievable for me, Like I can't believe
I'm seeing this post on Craigslist, which is kind of
like the dark webs for sailing kings, like stolen.
Speaker 7 (09:46):
Parts or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
But I got a job through there. I interviewed really well.
I think they liked my personality. I think that knowing that,
like I knew, my portfolio wasn't as strong as I
wanted to be, but I think I drew connection with them,
with their team right away. So I spent eventually seven
years with them. Some of the best years of my life,
(10:09):
like learning everything and connecting with people. And I mean
I could speak for all of us, Like working in
sports is kind of like a fraternity or sorority where
you feel so connected and deeply connected with people you
work with that it's hard to move away from it,
Like it's kind of like a drug.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
And I always wanted to.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Do sports, but I had no idea there was a
sports field sports design field. So seven years there and
then I went into I worked in the city at
a couple of startups, tech startups, right kind of at
the peak of the Unicorn phase of app startups. So
I worked a couple tech startups, learned a different skill set,
(10:52):
and then this opportunity here. It came about in twenty seventeen,
which is really a homecoming for me. I've been communing
for over ten years and found a job here, which
is really twenty minutes away from my house, so and
my son was recently born when I got the job here,
so I was like super stoked. But here ever since
building this awesome team that evolves and always gets better.
(11:16):
So happy to continue this thing with the designers.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Absolutely, I think it's really cool to see how everybody
ended up getting to this point in their career. I
know I've gone over my story a little bit in
past podcasts, but essentially, just had a genuine interest in photography.
Took that to my high school basketball coach and he
had me on the JV team. Unfortunately, but that's okay,
(11:41):
Coach Curzy, It's totally fine.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I understand. I know.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I didn't grow any crazy heights or anything, so being
the five to nine kid, I just relied on my
skills in photography. I stayed there. I kind of learned
how to shoot sports. Then I took my photos and
ended up designing with them. Had a great time I'm
doing that, took that portfolio and ended up applying to
college with that, and then doing design all throughout college
(12:07):
to apply to different jobs. Got a bunch of no's,
which is a part of the process. Got a bunch
of no's, but ended up in the right spot for me,
which is across the country. Taking a risk and being
out here was the best risk I could have taken
for my career. So that's a little bit about my
journey and how I got to this point with the
Niners as well. But curious on and I guess we
(12:29):
have very complex jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Really want to know about.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The day to day What does the day to day
life of a forty nine ers designer look like? So
I might toss this one to Vince. What do you do?
You come in and then what do you start doing?
Speaker 6 (12:45):
I mean, in a way, it's either the same thing
that you do every day or completely different. But that's
just like the nature of working in sports. Run down
I walk in orin Tern's already in there starting grinding.
Really brig is the worm, but you know, I come
in kind of have expectations. We have this request or
(13:06):
design process we go through called Reich where it's not
just us doing cool things for social media and all
that stuff, but we have like the system where we
get these requests, you know, internally from other departments in our.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
In our organizations. So we'll beginning.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
Stuff like flyer requests. We do boards for digital website stuff.
So it's really just whatever goes on my dashboard, whatever
we see through our projects is trying to tackle as
much as we can. And during the season, it's kind
of those like preparations of those graphics you see throughout
(13:43):
social media, throughout digital right, could be seeing score graphics
our game day stuff, you know, even goes us to
like the website headers. Some of those rec requests even
translates into the game day stuff, so you know, other
departments have other game day duties. So you know, it
goes as far as like a sign you know, so
(14:04):
really just tackling in house design, motion graphics when he
needs to do a vide production and all that stuff.
So other than getting our lunch strictly at twelve pm
and attending meetings, you know, it's a lot of the
fun stuff that we're doing, just sitting around photoshop having fun.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I think the complexity comes in the fact that we
could be designing anything from like small six hundred by
three hundred like email graphics, to era designed earlier this year,
the sign of that SAP tower banner, like that entire
tower banner is brand new with the Home of the
Faithful signage. So I think it just goes to show
(14:43):
it can be as small as a little email graphic
or as big as a giant poster. And it's a
really cool dichotomy that allows us individually to stretch our
skills in different ways from print to digital to signage
and beyond.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
So I think it's a really cool thing.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
The complexity also come from like timing right where, because
I've always said it too, when you work in sports,
you don't work in your own schedule or always within
the team schedule. And if there's like a breaking news trade,
or if there's like any type of you know, releases
or just the new signings, it's like a lot of
us tend to get on that high red alert mode,
drop everything we gotta do and kind of prioritize like
(15:21):
whatever we gotta do to market the team and its
latest news. So yeah, I think that's the fun part
about it. It's never not like every day could just
be completely different. For like one thing, Yeah you drop
everything at you know, at Chipotle exact time.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, the Chipotle. I can listen to a previous podcast
for that one. But yeah, I'm curious, Aaron, you've been
here the longest, how has the design team evolved since
you joined this team.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I think my favorite part of the design team is
it really evolves with how the team around us is structured.
There's different ways people work, whether it's you know, more
organized flow or shooting from the hip, and I think
through all the iterations of the design team. We've always adapted,
(16:06):
I think, and I say this line a lot, adaptability
is our best ability. And I could say that with
any department in an organization like That's always what kept
us afloat when things got really tough and hard to
work through. But the fact that we've gone through these
iterations and have this really strong team now, I think
(16:28):
we have this really good flow.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Does our work, Yeah, I think it's strong in many ways. Yes,
I think all of us are really capable designers, can
handle the work, the workload, the projects, and everything like that.
I think it's also strong in chemistry, something you've prided
yourself on building with our team. I think we pride
ourselves on that team chemistry and culture. But Chase, what
(16:51):
is your favorite part I'm calling you out here about
working for the forty nine ers brand.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
I think the brand at large is a very prestigious one,
and so kind of going back to what I was
talking about earlier about wanting to feel like my cup
was being filled, Like the forty nine ers are like
a good team of people. They prioritize the community, all
those sorts of things. So it feels good to say
that you work for that brand. But then on a
(17:19):
smaller level, our specific team is freaking awesome. Everyone's hilarious.
I could literally brag about our team all day long.
I do brag about our team all day long. I
think we have a really like close knit group of
people and it's funny and fun and it doesn't feel
like you're showing you're coming to work, And I think
(17:41):
that that is really important, especially because, like Vin said,
like some days are super busy and you're working weird
hours into show up and be with a group of
people that just make it fun is huge. So I
would say that is probably the best part about working
for this brand.
Speaker 7 (17:57):
The room culture is yeah, very important.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
I think we don't realize it, but we keep it
sacred that in our room has this kind of good
energy all the time, and if the energy isn't good,
we'll pick.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
Each other up.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
There's some days we are like that, but generally we
could be working hard and if someone walks into the room,
you couldn't tell if were working hard or not. I mean,
it's always loose when even we're crushing it.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point and something
that we always want to have is just an openness
and rely on each other. I know Aaron mentioned the
pick me up mentality, but it's that we always talk
about it as the football team, but also with our
own team, the I Got your back mentality. The forty
nine ers brand is so strong because these are your designers,
(18:44):
because these are the people that get to come to
work every day and represent your visual system. Curious Molique
on any thoughts from how you've perceived the forty nine
ers brand being the newest person of our team.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
I think just growing up here, always being able to
like every day or every Sunday at one o'clock it's like,
all right, the forty nine ers are wrong, and just
seeing how strong the fan base is, and then coming
into the organization when I started, it was like you
can kind of tell that the way the fan base
is super strong, loyal, and like just determined, that really
reflects within the organization as well. And obviously like this,
(19:21):
being like my first taste of the professional world, I
was a little bit like weary in a way of like, Okay,
what am I going to get into? Am I going
to like these people? And literally within the second day,
like first day, I was like, Okay, yeah, these are
cool people, but then the second day, it was like, Yeah,
these people are like my family, and every day, like
Chase said, it's like I come in and I just
love coming to work, and like work is always a
(19:43):
privilege when you know that you're going there and it
doesn't feel like work as opposed to waking up every
day dreading was to come and even embracing the like
the unknown at times, as Vince mentioned, like any day
could be the same as it was before, or it
could be a complete curveball thrown in to it. Like obviously,
as you mentioned, we have our right system that kind
of organized what you know that you have to do,
(20:06):
but at the same time, you never know what could happen.
But I think just everybody being able to come in
there every single day and can count on at least
ten good lives every single day, I think that's one
of the best parts in Yeah, just having this family
here is like none other.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, only ten. I think it's a little bit more.
Speaker 7 (20:26):
Than you could count on at least at least.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Good that's the minimum.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
No, I think what's really cool is a lot of
people talk about creative culture, and I know I talked
about it a little bit with Aaron and Serena on
the last episode. But the idea of being egoless and
really supporting each other is something that our team has
taken to heart. Our team takes seriously and it's all
with love and trust that we know that each person
has the capability and the skills set to get any
(20:53):
project done. So being a creative culture and also doing
that for the forty nine ers brand, a huge brand,
international brand has been excellent. So it's been a great
opportunity to work with you guys. It'll still continue to be.
But something that is really cool that we went through
this past off season was we called it a brand refresh.
(21:14):
I would love to hear a little bit about what
went into creating this new visual campaign for this season
and beyond. We've been rocking with Faithful to the Bay
for a while and so having that visual system to
kind of lean on as a base and see how
we can improve it in any possible way has been important.
But yeah, how did we kind of go about that process?
(21:35):
And I'll chip in a little bit, but I want
to hear from Aaron's perspective how to chip in a lot.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
I will pun it to you.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
But this off season, starting from January, we started this
thing called the Brand Design Sprint. We literally had forty
plus people in the room to start off with, and
it was really just reflecting on our brand and it
was very open for him.
Speaker 7 (21:58):
We threw stuff on the walls.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Also, Stephanie, our marketing leader, was really keen on honing
in onto the setting the standard, like the base of
our brand. So we call it the brand triangle. That
contains the Oval, which is the team, the eighty years
of history and Foreign Hour's legends, the Faithful, which the
fans know is themselves.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
They call themselves a faithful.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
That term is non negotiable, you know, it's very unique
to our fans.
Speaker 7 (22:29):
And also what's kind of.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
New, which is surprisingly as far as our brand, the
forty nine er, I mean we literally called the Foreigniners,
but we really never explored the creative aspect of a
foreign and er.
Speaker 7 (22:41):
I mean the Foreigniner.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
You think about it's eighteen forty nine, and they're very hopeful, fearless, relentless,
and we were all innovators, and we kept digging into
these three aspects and the Foreignita was the one that
really kind of piqued our interest. If you think about it,
the innovation in the big area goes spans for generations,
right eighteen four and nine, A lot of fearless innovators,
(23:06):
a lot of new companies came out or new thing
products came out, like Levi's is a homegrown eighteen foury
nine company, and I could say like booty and bakery
and stuff that like became generational and fed families. And
then fast forward to like the ages nineties where it
was just the dot com boom or the computer age,
(23:28):
like that Silicon Valley that's where where're from, and now
the AI age. So that kind of way of thinking
as far as how it pertains to our brand actually
is a very good connector. Bill Walsh in the eighties
was the innovator in the NFL and his kind of
coaching trees all throughout the NFL, which is kind of amazing,
(23:50):
even down to Kyle Shanahan how they're connected with his father.
Speaker 7 (23:54):
So we kept digging into that and found so much
to explore creatively. So if you want to kind of
pitch in.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, absolutely, I think those are all great notes from
that day and what kind of came of it and
some of our branding principles that we guide ourselves towards
in our design system, towards that being the Oval, the
forty nine er, and the Faithful. This process of doing
the brand design sprint was brand new to us. It
was introduced to me from hosting these all NFL calls
(24:23):
with our creative teams across the league and somebody named
Katie from the Carolina Panthers. We ended up meeting her
not too long ago, Chase and I did at a
conference down in Miami, but she introduced me to the
idea of a brand sprint in sports. I had never
heard of it in the sports context. I know that
companies like Google and Apple have these kind of design
(24:45):
sprints all the time and it's pretty common practice, but
trying this out at a brand level really interested me.
So I got together with some of our marketing leaders
and made sure, okay, so we'll do a small scale
design team brand or brand sprint, and that was kind
of the agreement. And then it kind of got bigger
(25:05):
and I said, Okay, let's do it with our brand
and integrated marketing team here at the Niners and we'll
kind of discuss. And then it got a little bit
bigger because people were talking about it, and then it
became forty people in a room that one January day
to really get down to business and discuss the future
of the forty nine ers brand. It all started with
a pre sprint personality worksheet, a brand personality worksheet. This
(25:25):
was actually a really cool practice. We discussed with people
like if the forty nine ers were a car, what
type of car would they be? Or if the forty
nine ers were a party, what type of party would
it be. Would it be a backyard bash and having
like a barbecue or whatever, or would it be like
something classy and high brow and everything like that. So
(25:46):
you kind of got to learn how people kind of
perceive your brand within your walls. That led to the
day of the presentation, where we learned obviously about these
survey results and that worksheet, but got to tap into.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
We learned about everybody's thoughts on the brand and how to,
you know, bring it to a new level. Also, another
cool thing was every single person in attendance was grouped
with a bunch of people for lunch, but really the
purpose was to create their own mood board. So in
your job, we called them superpowers. Use your superpower, So
(26:24):
whether that be design, video, website, design, game day production,
anything like that. What does the new brand system in
your eyes look like? That really helped us get to
some awesome like visual results to use as a design
team to put this whole system together. I'm looking back
(26:45):
at pictures just to remember this, and it's like a
giant board of every single possible color of markers.
Speaker 7 (26:51):
I love that photo of you.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You look like a mad scientists there trying to make
sense of all the words that we do on the whiteboard.
I mean that experience was really cool because everyone's ideas
were on the on the document.
Speaker 7 (27:03):
It was like a slide deck, and I mean as
we moved through this brand, now navigate it.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Like if you had any ideas back then, Like there's
no surprises now, like we're still exploring ideas. But something
that was aut of in January, you know we can
come up again because you know, it's all been processed
in our heads and also in this brand sprint.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
It was a great day and it kind of was
a It started with the slide of no umbrellas, so
do not bring an umbrella to our brainstorm. It was
like all holds bar anybody could have an opinion and
it was a really powerful moment. I don't know, I know,
Vince and Chase, you were both there, if either of
you want to tap into how you felt that day too.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
As an empowered creative.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I mean, I think it was cool because I joined
the team in October and this planning sort of started
in like December January timeframe. So really, the brand that
I've been designing with is a brand that I helped create,
and I don't think that a lot of people get
that opportunity. And then the fact that it was on
such a like large scale, I mean, there was there
(28:06):
was so much buy in to refresh our look, and
I think that the reason it's so strong is because
everyone was involved. So everyone feels connected, everyone feels like
they had a part in what we were doing. We
hadn't we haven't really talked about it, but we also
did like a game presentation version of this, so that
was really cool. Like we had already designed all of
(28:26):
these potential graphics and then to see those reimagined for
the stadium at large was like a whole other layer
of this. So yeah, I just think it's cool to
have the opportunity to create a brand and then to
see all of the positive feedback in the brand that
you created.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
What's awesome was that we had the opportunity you know
and doing you know, visual campaigns and looking feels it's
like it feels like it's such a thing that we
only take care of and look at the opportunity to
We took that brand sprin an opportunity to kind of
pick the brains of like everyone in like marketing essentially,
and it's having that such a big group, you know,
(29:06):
you get perspective of like people from different errs of
you know, the forty nine ers. I mean, I could
tell for myself, like I've only been a fan since
like twenty just because I wasn't such a big football guy.
But you're getting so much knowledge from people who's lived,
like from pretty much as much errors as we can
pick out of, you know, so from getting that, you know,
(29:28):
from those mood boards to those ideas, It's just like
I think it was really truly like a sprint because
just nothing was ever just like in the way, and
all the ideas were just coming down like a Parmesan wheel,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I mean it just kept.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
Going and going and going, and I could tell like
all of us in the creative space as just like, oh,
we can grab that from there, and I'm pretty sure
like no idea didn't like stray away from it because
we've always picked something for them something.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I think what was huge with the outcome was like
the incredible amount of buy in with what we were
headed towards. Having that buy in from everyone in marketing
is so huge because every game theme we went into
during the season, all the big events like draft and
schedule revaal, all that all had that tying thread because
(30:17):
we had this brand sprint, like we knew what we
were getting into even though we haven't built the content yet,
you know. So yeah, super huge to have that done.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah, the creative buy in factor is enormous and has
been enormous for us even up to this point in
the season. It's October, so it's nearly been what nine
months since we did that practice, and I think now
we're getting into a really comfortable groove with where the
brand is and the system we've built as designers. So,
just speaking on that design system, what are some of
(30:46):
the new visuals the faithful have begun to see. I'll
tap it over to Vince and then a little bit
of aaron to talk through this too.
Speaker 6 (30:53):
Visuals we've introduced, I think one of my favorite things
is introducing the color of cream. You know, a lot
of the ideas that came from that sprint was like,
you know, we're not weather, but we're very historic, right.
I think when you have something that's white that's been
sitting around, it's not going to stay as white. And
I think that's such like a cool concept. There's this
(31:15):
Western container that we have kind of cultivated from our graphics,
and that kind of acts as like a design element
cultivated off of the Keysar Stadium shape. Me if you've
ever seen that's like a very western, you know, square
circle and the you know, being in the Western kind
of look from the prospectors and all the stuff. We
do a lot of very warm tones, very like Western imagery.
(31:41):
Other than just because a lot of the stuff we
did before it was just you know, bay Area imagery.
Being the eighteen forty nine gold Rush was more of
like a celebration of California, and we like to kind
of represent ourselves as like not just the Bay Area team,
but the California's team.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah, yeah, they area expanding into California. I think there's
so much beauty in California as a whole. I mean,
mind you, like, southern California is full of foreign Anders fans.
We've seen it with takeovers of other stadiums, and that's
not you know, and it's not short on us. Like,
so we kind of lean into that using imagery of
(32:22):
you know, yeah, Western natural like state parks and stuff
like that, like the natural beauty of California coastline in
the mountain regions.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
Like it's all part of you know, the formula.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah, what I love is like we even dug into
local architecture. So the Victorian style homes was a big part.
You mentioned the Western container that was also inspiration from
Victorian architecture. You know, the painted ladies when Schester Mystery
House all in Victorian architecture, but also in a big
(32:58):
area style, very colorful and almost abstract. So embraced all
of that and kind of formulated into this new brand.
So what the fans are seeing in stadium, in the
giant LEDs we have now and in the cm intro
is very Western.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
It's very foreign ironer. We really dug into you know,
the gold mine.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
You know, it's very fantasy like it you know, in actuality,
I don't think it. You know, the gold Rush people
weren't digging into gold mines, they were panning for gold.
But it's it's fun to think about like kind of
that Disney esque theme where it just becomes very visual
and very cinematic. So we love that part.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Also, like all the layers in our design concepts, I
was gonna I feel like one of the questions that
we were asked early on is like what does a
forty nine er look like? And everyone was talking about like, oh,
they're wearing jeans and layers and all of those sort
of things, and that's manifested into like quite literally how
we design everything. Everything has texture, everything is stocked on
(34:03):
top of one another, so designs have a lot of
depth and I think that that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
We had some funny questions in the brand sprint of
what does the foreign in or smell like or what.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
Taste like. I mean, it's you know, offline, but like
it kind of came up with me.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
You just got really silly, and to throw everything on
the walls and on the whiteboards just kind of gave us,
you know, confidence.
Speaker 7 (34:25):
In what we were doing.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Thank you for listening to part one of the Inside
the Oval with our forty nine ers in house design team.
Please subscribe to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify podcasts, anywhere
where you can listen to this and have a great day.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Thanks,
Welcome to the Inside the Oval podcast. I'm Noah Hammerman,
and today we're joined by my team here at the
forty nine ers, my pride and enjoy our in house
design team. The designers are in house graphic design team.
So give it up for yourselves. Welcome to the podcast.
Figure we go, We made it. Yeah, it's super exciting
to have you all here. I think we always talk
(00:21):
about people's careers and how impressed they are with their team.
I know we had Aaron and Serena on last time
to talk through their process and the production department. But
today we have our design team and we'll just talk
through who we are, how we got to this point
in our careers, and some of the cool projects that
we've been working on throughout the off season. Yeah, so quickly,
I'll just run down the names of everybody here. We
(00:45):
have our creative director, Aaron Levore, Hello, yep, wonderful. We
have vinceer Row, our graphic designer, president, president and accounted for.
We have Jace Eisley, another graphic designer. Hey guys, and
Malik our graphic design internat.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
It's great to have.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
You all here. First question, out of the gates. It's
kind of open for interpretation. Maybe we'll start with Aaron here.
What does it mean to be a part of the
forty nine ers design team known as the Designers.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Where the creative team that shapes how the Foreigners look, feel,
and connect with fans, from our game day visuals to
our brand campaigns and digital content. We also build creative
for every department across the organization, being sure everything we
put out reflects the energy and legacy of the Foreigners
and the faithful. Our professional training is graphic design, but
(01:33):
at our core problem solvers.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Really Yeah, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I think I kind of want everybody to get to
know you guys a little bit more on a personal
level and how you got to this place in your career,
because that's what a lot of our listeners are curious about,
how to get our jobs. So I guess, in a
quick elevator pitch type of style, I would love to
hear a bit about each of your career journeys and
how you initially got got Oh, God's started in graphic design.
(02:02):
So we'll start with our newest member of the team,
Malik Schumpert, learning a bit more about how you got
into our team. And how that worked out.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Well.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
Yeah, so I'll start pretty much, I grew up always
fascinated with art, so then i'd say about my junior
year of high school, I really started picking up on
graphic design, really not with the intention of turning into
a profession, more more of like a hobby. Obviously, around
that time was peak high school basketball, so I was
heavy into that and making graphics just try just to
(02:35):
try to get my name out there. And then during
COVID I really kind of took off with that. I
started getting a lot of notices from big name companies,
which opened the door for me a lot, especially here
in the Bay Area. Got to work with some big
basketball media companies, and then from there I just majored
in graphic design in college, and I was able to
(02:55):
get a design internship with a sports agency called Disruptive Sports,
which really opened the doors to my eyes of how
far that I could really take this whole design thing,
not just as a hobby, but as a career itself.
And then I transferred to San Jose State for my
junior senior year of college, and there I was able
to pretty much do what I love, make graphics for
(03:17):
pretty much every single team there, as I say, I
had to offer, but I really focused with the basketball
team and then that led me to where I am
now doing what I love with the forty nine ers
around great people every single day.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
And that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I think being able to have that experience with this
eruptive is that what it's called. Yeah, it was a
huge benefit to you just trying out new things and design.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
So we're glad to have you here. Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's a great internship program that the forty nine ers run,
and I think being a part of that community has
been awesome for us to have you here and for
you to come in and greece us with your talent
for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Our newest full time member is Chase Isley. So how
did you you find this opportunity with us.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I've always been a creative person, but I didn't really
hone those skills until college. I went to cal Poly,
graduated with a graphic communication degree, and then I had
a minor in political science. So honestly, I graduated thinking
I was going more into the nonprofit space. I wanted
to apply my graphic design skills to companies or organizations
(04:24):
that were going to like fill my cup in a
moral way and my dad, I'm from Sacramento. My dad
sent me an internship with the Sacramento Kings, and so
I applied just like shot in the Dark, and I
got it. And so that was sort of my introduction
to the sports world.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
And I was.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Quickly obsessed with the environment of sports, the fast paced
of everything, and so I sort of threw myself into
any opportunity that I could. And I actually met some
people at the forty nine ers through a women's connect event,
and so that's sort of how my network grew. And
and when the forty nine ers were looking for a
new contract designer, I applied to the job and that
(05:05):
is how I got here.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, what's great about that story that she's not including
is that she is an Inside the Oval listener, so
she had listened to I think it was Anna Warwick's
podcast episode from her graphic design internship the same seat
in Maleak sitting in now and gotten to learn more
about our team and our team culture, which is really cool.
How full circle that is as well. We'll move on
(05:28):
to vinceer Row. You have now been here three seasons,
which feels like it's gone by extremely fast, too quick,
but would love to hear about your career journey and
how you got to us at the Niners.
Speaker 6 (05:38):
For I'd say, like, my educational journey is a lot
different from everyone here in the room. So actually my
education background comes from broadcasting electronic communication arts in San
Francisco State, we kind of call it BECA and a
lot of that was just like a lot of TV production,
video production, a lot of this radio production too, So
have a big, deep background in both video and audio.
(06:02):
But before that, I was doing a lot of graphic
design and stuff for my high school and a lot
of my so called your scholarships come from that. I
feel like I honed graphic design a lot when I
was in the video production side. You saw I was
still doing you know, graphics, motion design stuff for you know,
a lot of people. So when COVID hit, that's when
(06:24):
I graduated college in twenty twenty, started kind of shifting,
not like my career, but a lot of my focus
on just like sticking to being a designer and kind
of being like a freelance in a way. Found a job,
or i'd say a job, but it was unpaid internship,
you know, which shifted into a job through my connection
and at that time it was all just you know,
(06:45):
creative advertisements. It was like a agency. So spent I
think almost a year there. Then I most of my
knowledge now comes a lot from the Snakers Warriors, ge
League affiliate for the Golden State Warriors, and a lot
of that. I was a marketing coordinator with a focus
in graphic designs, so not just design. I was doing
(07:07):
a lot of but it was a lot of you know,
everything you know in like marketing, right, so I'll be
doing you know, the social media stuff, digital websites, even
goes as far as like game production, so a little
bit here and there. Saw the opportunity here at the
forty nine ers two years ago, and decided to take it.
So here I am.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Now that's great.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, going from that agency side all the way to
sports and then figuring it out over here.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
So that's awesome stuff. Go ahead.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
No, I thought it was funny because before I wanted
to be a kinesiologist working so working in sports was
in a way like an idea, but not wanting to
do medical stuff was like not my thing. So hearing
that there's like, you know, marketing design job opportunities within sports,
I thought, you know, was such an eye opener and
(07:55):
it was like the coolest thing to me.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
So, yeah, that's shifting entire industries with that sports interest
is really cool as well. I'm sure there are a
lot of listeners that empathize with that exact emotion trying
to figure it out in sports, not knowing where that
allegiance lies or where you exactly want to go with
your paths, but eventually finding your true interest just genuinely
in your life and finding that out. So that's a
(08:19):
really cool path. Aaron would love to hear about your
journey here.
Speaker 7 (08:23):
Yeah, I'm really going to sound like the grizzled vet here.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Getting close to twenty years in the sports industry, so
a lot to process. But getting started in graphic design,
I was in high school. I was doing black and
white photography. We had a dark room, and then actually
the dark room went down for some reason, and they
put us in the computer lab back in the olden
days and put us on Photoshop, and I found out
(08:48):
I really love doing photoshop and photo editing through a
commuter And this will really date me.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
That I was.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
I loved creating CD covers for people, So thanks on
my older millennials.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Then, in two.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Thousand, two thousand and one, if you could create a
really cool CD cover, you thought you were pretty cool.
Speaker 7 (09:08):
So yeah, I went into graphic design at Susey State.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
At the time, like my eyes were on, you know,
hopefully working for a local tech company. I mean, this
is Silicon Valley. There's a lot of opportunities there.
Speaker 7 (09:22):
I had no idea there was going to be a
sports opportunity for me.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
I actually got a job through a post on Craigslist
back in the day two thousand and seven for the
Golden State Warriors. This is on the heels of there
we believe run, which is kind of you know, it
was kind of unbelievable for me, Like I can't believe
I'm seeing this post on Craigslist, which is kind of
like the dark webs for sailing kings, like stolen.
Speaker 7 (09:46):
Parts or whatever.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
But I got a job through there. I interviewed really well.
I think they liked my personality. I think that knowing that,
like I knew, my portfolio wasn't as strong as I
wanted to be, but I think I drew connection with them,
with their team right away. So I spent eventually seven
years with them. Some of the best years of my life,
(10:09):
like learning everything and connecting with people. And I mean
I could speak for all of us, Like working in
sports is kind of like a fraternity or sorority where
you feel so connected and deeply connected with people you
work with that it's hard to move away from it,
Like it's kind of like a drug.
Speaker 7 (10:26):
And I always wanted to.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Do sports, but I had no idea there was a
sports field sports design field. So seven years there and
then I went into I worked in the city at
a couple of startups, tech startups, right kind of at
the peak of the Unicorn phase of app startups. So
I worked a couple tech startups, learned a different skill set,
(10:52):
and then this opportunity here. It came about in twenty seventeen,
which is really a homecoming for me. I've been communing
for over ten years and found a job here, which
is really twenty minutes away from my house, so and
my son was recently born when I got the job here,
so I was like super stoked. But here ever since
building this awesome team that evolves and always gets better.
(11:16):
So happy to continue this thing with the designers.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Absolutely, I think it's really cool to see how everybody
ended up getting to this point in their career. I
know I've gone over my story a little bit in
past podcasts, but essentially, just had a genuine interest in photography.
Took that to my high school basketball coach and he
had me on the JV team. Unfortunately, but that's okay,
(11:41):
Coach Curzy, It's totally fine.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I understand. I know.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
I didn't grow any crazy heights or anything, so being
the five to nine kid, I just relied on my
skills in photography. I stayed there. I kind of learned
how to shoot sports. Then I took my photos and
ended up designing with them. Had a great time I'm
doing that, took that portfolio and ended up applying to
college with that, and then doing design all throughout college
(12:07):
to apply to different jobs. Got a bunch of no's,
which is a part of the process. Got a bunch
of no's, but ended up in the right spot for me,
which is across the country. Taking a risk and being
out here was the best risk I could have taken
for my career. So that's a little bit about my
journey and how I got to this point with the
Niners as well. But curious on and I guess we
(12:29):
have very complex jobs.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Really want to know about.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The day to day What does the day to day
life of a forty nine ers designer look like? So
I might toss this one to Vince. What do you do?
You come in and then what do you start doing?
Speaker 6 (12:45):
I mean, in a way, it's either the same thing
that you do every day or completely different. But that's
just like the nature of working in sports. Run down
I walk in orin Tern's already in there starting grinding.
Really brig is the worm, but you know, I come
in kind of have expectations. We have this request or
(13:06):
design process we go through called Reich where it's not
just us doing cool things for social media and all
that stuff, but we have like the system where we
get these requests, you know, internally from other departments in our.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
In our organizations. So we'll beginning.
Speaker 6 (13:23):
Stuff like flyer requests. We do boards for digital website stuff.
So it's really just whatever goes on my dashboard, whatever
we see through our projects is trying to tackle as
much as we can. And during the season, it's kind
of those like preparations of those graphics you see throughout
(13:43):
social media, throughout digital right, could be seeing score graphics
our game day stuff, you know, even goes us to
like the website headers. Some of those rec requests even
translates into the game day stuff, so you know, other
departments have other game day duties. So you know, it
goes as far as like a sign you know, so
(14:04):
really just tackling in house design, motion graphics when he
needs to do a vide production and all that stuff.
So other than getting our lunch strictly at twelve pm
and attending meetings, you know, it's a lot of the
fun stuff that we're doing, just sitting around photoshop having fun.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
I think the complexity comes in the fact that we
could be designing anything from like small six hundred by
three hundred like email graphics, to era designed earlier this year,
the sign of that SAP tower banner, like that entire
tower banner is brand new with the Home of the
Faithful signage. So I think it just goes to show
(14:43):
it can be as small as a little email graphic
or as big as a giant poster. And it's a
really cool dichotomy that allows us individually to stretch our
skills in different ways from print to digital to signage
and beyond.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
So I think it's a really cool thing.
Speaker 6 (14:59):
The complexity also come from like timing right where, because
I've always said it too, when you work in sports,
you don't work in your own schedule or always within
the team schedule. And if there's like a breaking news trade,
or if there's like any type of you know, releases
or just the new signings, it's like a lot of
us tend to get on that high red alert mode,
drop everything we gotta do and kind of prioritize like
(15:21):
whatever we gotta do to market the team and its
latest news. So yeah, I think that's the fun part
about it. It's never not like every day could just
be completely different. For like one thing, Yeah you drop
everything at you know, at Chipotle exact time.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, the Chipotle. I can listen to a previous podcast
for that one. But yeah, I'm curious, Aaron, you've been
here the longest, how has the design team evolved since
you joined this team.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I think my favorite part of the design team is
it really evolves with how the team around us is structured.
There's different ways people work, whether it's you know, more
organized flow or shooting from the hip, and I think
through all the iterations of the design team. We've always adapted,
(16:06):
I think, and I say this line a lot, adaptability
is our best ability. And I could say that with
any department in an organization like That's always what kept
us afloat when things got really tough and hard to
work through. But the fact that we've gone through these
iterations and have this really strong team now, I think
(16:28):
we have this really good flow.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Does our work, Yeah, I think it's strong in many ways. Yes,
I think all of us are really capable designers, can
handle the work, the workload, the projects, and everything like that.
I think it's also strong in chemistry, something you've prided
yourself on building with our team. I think we pride
ourselves on that team chemistry and culture. But Chase, what
(16:51):
is your favorite part I'm calling you out here about
working for the forty nine ers brand.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
I think the brand at large is a very prestigious one,
and so kind of going back to what I was
talking about earlier about wanting to feel like my cup
was being filled, Like the forty nine ers are like
a good team of people. They prioritize the community, all
those sorts of things. So it feels good to say
that you work for that brand. But then on a
(17:19):
smaller level, our specific team is freaking awesome. Everyone's hilarious.
I could literally brag about our team all day long.
I do brag about our team all day long. I
think we have a really like close knit group of
people and it's funny and fun and it doesn't feel
like you're showing you're coming to work, And I think
(17:41):
that that is really important, especially because, like Vin said,
like some days are super busy and you're working weird
hours into show up and be with a group of
people that just make it fun is huge. So I
would say that is probably the best part about working
for this brand.
Speaker 7 (17:57):
The room culture is yeah, very important.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
I think we don't realize it, but we keep it
sacred that in our room has this kind of good
energy all the time, and if the energy isn't good,
we'll pick.
Speaker 7 (18:10):
Each other up.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
There's some days we are like that, but generally we
could be working hard and if someone walks into the room,
you couldn't tell if were working hard or not. I mean,
it's always loose when even we're crushing it.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point and something
that we always want to have is just an openness
and rely on each other. I know Aaron mentioned the
pick me up mentality, but it's that we always talk
about it as the football team, but also with our
own team, the I Got your back mentality. The forty
nine ers brand is so strong because these are your designers,
(18:44):
because these are the people that get to come to
work every day and represent your visual system. Curious Molique
on any thoughts from how you've perceived the forty nine
ers brand being the newest person of our team.
Speaker 5 (18:57):
I think just growing up here, always being able to
like every day or every Sunday at one o'clock it's like,
all right, the forty nine ers are wrong, and just
seeing how strong the fan base is, and then coming
into the organization when I started, it was like you
can kind of tell that the way the fan base
is super strong, loyal, and like just determined, that really
reflects within the organization as well. And obviously like this,
(19:21):
being like my first taste of the professional world, I
was a little bit like weary in a way of like, Okay,
what am I going to get into? Am I going
to like these people? And literally within the second day,
like first day, I was like, Okay, yeah, these are
cool people, but then the second day, it was like, Yeah,
these people are like my family, and every day, like
Chase said, it's like I come in and I just
love coming to work, and like work is always a
(19:43):
privilege when you know that you're going there and it
doesn't feel like work as opposed to waking up every
day dreading was to come and even embracing the like
the unknown at times, as Vince mentioned, like any day
could be the same as it was before, or it
could be a complete curveball thrown in to it. Like obviously,
as you mentioned, we have our right system that kind
of organized what you know that you have to do,
(20:06):
but at the same time, you never know what could happen.
But I think just everybody being able to come in
there every single day and can count on at least
ten good lives every single day, I think that's one
of the best parts in Yeah, just having this family
here is like none other.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, only ten. I think it's a little bit more.
Speaker 7 (20:26):
Than you could count on at least at least.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Good that's the minimum.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
No, I think what's really cool is a lot of
people talk about creative culture, and I know I talked
about it a little bit with Aaron and Serena on
the last episode. But the idea of being egoless and
really supporting each other is something that our team has
taken to heart. Our team takes seriously and it's all
with love and trust that we know that each person
has the capability and the skills set to get any
(20:53):
project done. So being a creative culture and also doing
that for the forty nine ers brand, a huge brand,
international brand has been excellent. So it's been a great
opportunity to work with you guys. It'll still continue to be.
But something that is really cool that we went through
this past off season was we called it a brand refresh.
(21:14):
I would love to hear a little bit about what
went into creating this new visual campaign for this season
and beyond. We've been rocking with Faithful to the Bay
for a while and so having that visual system to
kind of lean on as a base and see how
we can improve it in any possible way has been important.
But yeah, how did we kind of go about that process?
(21:35):
And I'll chip in a little bit, but I want
to hear from Aaron's perspective how to chip in a lot.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
I will pun it to you.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
But this off season, starting from January, we started this
thing called the Brand Design Sprint. We literally had forty
plus people in the room to start off with, and
it was really just reflecting on our brand and it
was very open for him.
Speaker 7 (21:58):
We threw stuff on the walls.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Also, Stephanie, our marketing leader, was really keen on honing
in onto the setting the standard, like the base of
our brand. So we call it the brand triangle. That
contains the Oval, which is the team, the eighty years
of history and Foreign Hour's legends, the Faithful, which the
fans know is themselves.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
They call themselves a faithful.
Speaker 3 (22:24):
That term is non negotiable, you know, it's very unique
to our fans.
Speaker 7 (22:29):
And also what's kind of.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
New, which is surprisingly as far as our brand, the
forty nine er, I mean we literally called the Foreigniners,
but we really never explored the creative aspect of a
foreign and er.
Speaker 7 (22:41):
I mean the Foreigniner.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
You think about it's eighteen forty nine, and they're very hopeful, fearless, relentless,
and we were all innovators, and we kept digging into
these three aspects and the Foreignita was the one that
really kind of piqued our interest. If you think about it,
the innovation in the big area goes spans for generations,
right eighteen four and nine, A lot of fearless innovators,
(23:06):
a lot of new companies came out or new thing
products came out, like Levi's is a homegrown eighteen foury
nine company, and I could say like booty and bakery
and stuff that like became generational and fed families. And
then fast forward to like the ages nineties where it
was just the dot com boom or the computer age,
(23:28):
like that Silicon Valley that's where where're from, and now
the AI age. So that kind of way of thinking
as far as how it pertains to our brand actually
is a very good connector. Bill Walsh in the eighties
was the innovator in the NFL and his kind of
coaching trees all throughout the NFL, which is kind of amazing,
(23:50):
even down to Kyle Shanahan how they're connected with his father.
Speaker 7 (23:54):
So we kept digging into that and found so much
to explore creatively. So if you want to kind of
pitch in.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, absolutely, I think those are all great notes from
that day and what kind of came of it and
some of our branding principles that we guide ourselves towards
in our design system, towards that being the Oval, the
forty nine er, and the Faithful. This process of doing
the brand design sprint was brand new to us. It
was introduced to me from hosting these all NFL calls
(24:23):
with our creative teams across the league and somebody named
Katie from the Carolina Panthers. We ended up meeting her
not too long ago, Chase and I did at a
conference down in Miami, but she introduced me to the
idea of a brand sprint in sports. I had never
heard of it in the sports context. I know that
companies like Google and Apple have these kind of design
(24:45):
sprints all the time and it's pretty common practice, but
trying this out at a brand level really interested me.
So I got together with some of our marketing leaders
and made sure, okay, so we'll do a small scale
design team brand or brand sprint, and that was kind
of the agreement. And then it kind of got bigger
(25:05):
and I said, Okay, let's do it with our brand
and integrated marketing team here at the Niners and we'll
kind of discuss. And then it got a little bit
bigger because people were talking about it, and then it
became forty people in a room that one January day
to really get down to business and discuss the future
of the forty nine ers brand. It all started with
a pre sprint personality worksheet, a brand personality worksheet. This
(25:25):
was actually a really cool practice. We discussed with people
like if the forty nine ers were a car, what
type of car would they be? Or if the forty
nine ers were a party, what type of party would
it be. Would it be a backyard bash and having
like a barbecue or whatever, or would it be like
something classy and high brow and everything like that. So
(25:46):
you kind of got to learn how people kind of
perceive your brand within your walls. That led to the
day of the presentation, where we learned obviously about these
survey results and that worksheet, but got to tap into.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It a little bit more.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
We learned about everybody's thoughts on the brand and how to,
you know, bring it to a new level. Also, another
cool thing was every single person in attendance was grouped
with a bunch of people for lunch, but really the
purpose was to create their own mood board. So in
your job, we called them superpowers. Use your superpower, So
(26:24):
whether that be design, video, website, design, game day production,
anything like that. What does the new brand system in
your eyes look like? That really helped us get to
some awesome like visual results to use as a design
team to put this whole system together. I'm looking back
(26:45):
at pictures just to remember this, and it's like a
giant board of every single possible color of markers.
Speaker 7 (26:51):
I love that photo of you.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
You look like a mad scientists there trying to make
sense of all the words that we do on the whiteboard.
I mean that experience was really cool because everyone's ideas
were on the on the document.
Speaker 7 (27:03):
It was like a slide deck, and I mean as
we moved through this brand, now navigate it.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Like if you had any ideas back then, Like there's
no surprises now, like we're still exploring ideas. But something
that was aut of in January, you know we can
come up again because you know, it's all been processed
in our heads and also in this brand sprint.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
It was a great day and it kind of was
a It started with the slide of no umbrellas, so
do not bring an umbrella to our brainstorm. It was
like all holds bar anybody could have an opinion and
it was a really powerful moment. I don't know, I know,
Vince and Chase, you were both there, if either of
you want to tap into how you felt that day too.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
As an empowered creative.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I mean, I think it was cool because I joined
the team in October and this planning sort of started
in like December January timeframe. So really, the brand that
I've been designing with is a brand that I helped create,
and I don't think that a lot of people get
that opportunity. And then the fact that it was on
such a like large scale, I mean, there was there
(28:06):
was so much buy in to refresh our look, and
I think that the reason it's so strong is because
everyone was involved. So everyone feels connected, everyone feels like
they had a part in what we were doing. We
hadn't we haven't really talked about it, but we also
did like a game presentation version of this, so that
was really cool. Like we had already designed all of
(28:26):
these potential graphics and then to see those reimagined for
the stadium at large was like a whole other layer
of this. So yeah, I just think it's cool to
have the opportunity to create a brand and then to
see all of the positive feedback in the brand that
you created.
Speaker 6 (28:43):
What's awesome was that we had the opportunity you know
and doing you know, visual campaigns and looking feels it's
like it feels like it's such a thing that we
only take care of and look at the opportunity to
We took that brand sprin an opportunity to kind of
pick the brains of like everyone in like marketing essentially,
and it's having that such a big group, you know,
(29:06):
you get perspective of like people from different errs of
you know, the forty nine ers. I mean, I could
tell for myself, like I've only been a fan since
like twenty just because I wasn't such a big football guy.
But you're getting so much knowledge from people who's lived,
like from pretty much as much errors as we can
pick out of, you know, so from getting that, you know,
(29:28):
from those mood boards to those ideas, It's just like
I think it was really truly like a sprint because
just nothing was ever just like in the way, and
all the ideas were just coming down like a Parmesan wheel,
you know.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I mean it just kept.
Speaker 6 (29:41):
Going and going and going, and I could tell like
all of us in the creative space as just like, oh,
we can grab that from there, and I'm pretty sure
like no idea didn't like stray away from it because
we've always picked something for them something.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I think what was huge with the outcome was like
the incredible amount of buy in with what we were
headed towards. Having that buy in from everyone in marketing
is so huge because every game theme we went into
during the season, all the big events like draft and
schedule revaal, all that all had that tying thread because
(30:17):
we had this brand sprint, like we knew what we
were getting into even though we haven't built the content yet,
you know. So yeah, super huge to have that done.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah, the creative buy in factor is enormous and has
been enormous for us even up to this point in
the season. It's October, so it's nearly been what nine
months since we did that practice, and I think now
we're getting into a really comfortable groove with where the
brand is and the system we've built as designers. So,
just speaking on that design system, what are some of
(30:46):
the new visuals the faithful have begun to see. I'll
tap it over to Vince and then a little bit
of aaron to talk through this too.
Speaker 6 (30:53):
Visuals we've introduced, I think one of my favorite things
is introducing the color of cream. You know, a lot
of the ideas that came from that sprint was like,
you know, we're not weather, but we're very historic, right.
I think when you have something that's white that's been
sitting around, it's not going to stay as white. And
I think that's such like a cool concept. There's this
(31:15):
Western container that we have kind of cultivated from our graphics,
and that kind of acts as like a design element
cultivated off of the Keysar Stadium shape. Me if you've
ever seen that's like a very western, you know, square
circle and the you know, being in the Western kind
of look from the prospectors and all the stuff. We
do a lot of very warm tones, very like Western imagery.
(31:41):
Other than just because a lot of the stuff we
did before it was just you know, bay Area imagery.
Being the eighteen forty nine gold Rush was more of
like a celebration of California, and we like to kind
of represent ourselves as like not just the Bay Area team,
but the California's team.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
Yeah, yeah, they area expanding into California. I think there's
so much beauty in California as a whole. I mean,
mind you, like, southern California is full of foreign Anders fans.
We've seen it with takeovers of other stadiums, and that's
not you know, and it's not short on us. Like,
so we kind of lean into that using imagery of
(32:22):
you know, yeah, Western natural like state parks and stuff
like that, like the natural beauty of California coastline in
the mountain regions.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
Like it's all part of you know, the formula.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
Yeah, what I love is like we even dug into
local architecture. So the Victorian style homes was a big part.
You mentioned the Western container that was also inspiration from
Victorian architecture. You know, the painted ladies when Schester Mystery
House all in Victorian architecture, but also in a big
(32:58):
area style, very colorful and almost abstract. So embraced all
of that and kind of formulated into this new brand.
So what the fans are seeing in stadium, in the
giant LEDs we have now and in the cm intro
is very Western.
Speaker 7 (33:15):
It's very foreign ironer. We really dug into you know,
the gold mine.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
You know, it's very fantasy like it you know, in actuality,
I don't think it. You know, the gold Rush people
weren't digging into gold mines, they were panning for gold.
But it's it's fun to think about like kind of
that Disney esque theme where it just becomes very visual
and very cinematic. So we love that part.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Also, like all the layers in our design concepts, I
was gonna I feel like one of the questions that
we were asked early on is like what does a
forty nine er look like? And everyone was talking about like, oh,
they're wearing jeans and layers and all of those sort
of things, and that's manifested into like quite literally how
we design everything. Everything has texture, everything is stocked on
(34:03):
top of one another, so designs have a lot of
depth and I think that that's super cool.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
We had some funny questions in the brand sprint of
what does the foreign in or smell like or what.
Speaker 7 (34:13):
Taste like. I mean, it's you know, offline, but like
it kind of came up with me.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
You just got really silly, and to throw everything on
the walls and on the whiteboards just kind of gave us,
you know, confidence.
Speaker 7 (34:25):
In what we were doing.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Thank you for listening to part one of the Inside
the Oval with our forty nine ers in house design team.
Please subscribe to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify podcasts, anywhere
where you can listen to this and have a great day.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Thanks,
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