Matt McGough - Portfolio

Matt McGough PORTFOLIO

Matt McGough

Matt McGough GRAPHIC DESIGNER

HELLO

Thanks for taking the time to take a look at some of my work. This is just a selection of some of my work that I have completed as part of my time at college or uni, as part of some freelance work, or paid employment, and some stuff that I have produced in my own time of my own back. It does not include all my work and might not show all the skills that I have.

I’ve tried to include a range of work, however with most of my career being in the sports industry, there is a lot of sports content in here. The wide range of work I’ve completed during my career means I have plenty of transferable skills that I can apply to different projects in different fields.

If you have any questions, want to talk about some work, or just want to say hi and talk all things football or design, please get in touch.

ABOUT ME

Graphic designer from Leeds with a passion for design, sport and mexican food.

I’m a team player with skills in digital design, animation, as well as editorial and layout design for both print and digital/social platforms.

I think I’ve experienced enough of what the design world can throw at you to be able to give anything a go, with an attitude to match.

SOCIALS

You can see more of my work on social platforms. If you want to get in touch drop a message in my DM’s on Instagram or an email in my inbox.

INSTAGRAM: @mattmcgough03

TIMELINE

AUGUST 2017 – PRESENT Huddersfield Town Football Club Graphic Designer

2014 – 2017

University of Huddersfield BA(Hons) Graphic Design Classification: Upper Second - 2:1

JULY 2016 – MAY 2017

York City Football Club Intern Graphic Designer Sole in-house design presence

2015 – PRESENT Freelance Graphic Designer

SEPTEMBER 2014

VIMEO.COM/ mattmcgough

ISSUU.COM/ mattmcgough

*FIND MY SPORTS SPECIFIC PORTFOLIO HERE

E-MAIL: mattmcgough03@gmail.com

Spiral Communications, Leeds Intern Graphic Designer 1 Week Internship/Placement

2012 – 2014

Leeds City College

BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma

Grade: Distinction Distinction Distinction (Equivalent to 3 A’s at A Level)

CONTENTS

JEMS - Jewellery By Emma M Swailes Multimedia Branding, & Advertising

Town Legends Vector Portraits

Branding, Packaging, & Advertising

Vector Artwork Vector Artworks

‘Everything Arsenal’

College Final Major Project

Scannergrams Digital Distortion

GLITCH Exhibition Poster

‘From The Centre Circle’

City In Flux Infographics, Website Design & Development

36 Days Of Type

York City FC Printed Products 2016/17 Posters, and Programme Printed Products

“Zombones” Branding, & Packaging Design

Match Day Social Graphics Social Media Templates

2021/22 Social Landmarks Photomontage, Photo-editting

7

10

11 3

15

18 19

JEMS – Jewellery by Emma

Multimedia Branding, 2013

This brief was part of a college brief but involved working with real life small businesses from around the Leeds area that had links with the college.

I was partnered up to work with JEMS - Jewellery by Emma M. Swailes. Most of my work involved using existing product photography (taken by Photography students from the same college), and some of the existing branding, in this case the little ladybug motif.

Using this I was able to produce a more interesting background for all marketing materials for both digital and print platforms. Using the shape of the bug to create little windows to showcase some of the products that were available.

M. Swailes

Overall I was pretty happy when I finished this brief because I think all the work fitted together seamlessly - as if it was all done by the same person - even thought it was made by a team of three parts that were never in the same room and communication was a bit of an issue throughout.

It also felt great to work with a local small business that really wanted some help with some branding and marketing.

Seven years on I still think it looks great, even though there’s bits and pieces that I’d like to have another go at and do better.

Huddersfield Town Legends Vector Portraits

Vector Portraits

Autumn 2021

During the 2020/21 season I was asked to put together some illustrations of iconic members of Huddersfield Town’s past.

Herbert Chapman, whilst most well-known for his connection to Arsenal in the 20s and 30s, and being one of the games greatest innovators, Chapman had set the foundations for the Huddersfield Town that went on to win the FA Cup in 1921/22 in his first full season in charge, as well as the English top-flight title three seasons in a row 1923/24, 1924/25, and 1925/26 - managing the Club to the first two titles and setting up most of the squad and tactics for the third.

In 1954 a Huddersfield Town scout found a 14 year old Denis Law and offered him a trial, which earned him a contract with the terriers in April 1955. He impressed, meaning by the time he left in 1960 for Manchester City, he did so a then British transfer record. He later went on to be among the most decorated Scottish players to have ever played the game.

Ray Wilson was scouted by Town after leaving school, and after impressing then-manager Bill Shankly, he signed professional papers in 1952. By the end of 1957 Wilson was the first choice left back at Leeds Road. By the end of his time in Huddersfield he had 30 England caps and was a regular for the Three Lions. He left for Everton in 1964, but was an integral part of the England squad that won the 1966 World Cup. Despite being born in Derbyshire, Wilson remained in the Huddersfield area after his playing career.

Trevor Cherry was a Huddersfield-born defender, who joined the club as a 15-year-old as part of the groundstaff. In 1963. In 1965 he made his first team debut as a 17 year old. He made 156 appearances for the Huddersfield club before leaving for Leeds, where he went on to captain the whites, and England. Forming part of the historic Reviemanaged ‘Dirty Leeds’ sides of the 1970’s.

“The working man’s George Best” Frank Worthington was as well known for enjoying the party lifestyle off the pitch, as he was for being a skilful and tricky forward. Worthington made over 150 appearances for Huddersfield, as part of a career that saw him make over 750 appearances in the English Football leagues. He was known for his charisma, flamboyance, playing with long flowing hair, and rolled down socks.

These vector portrait illustrations were well received, but ultimately the project took a different direction and weren’t used for the project they were initially created for.

Herbert CHAPMAN TOWN MANAGER, 1921-25

Denis LAW CBE TOWN FORWARD, 1956-60

Ray WILSON MBE TOWN DEFENDER, 1952-64

Trevor CHERRY TOWN DEFENDER, 1965-72

Frank WORTHINGTON TOWN FORWARD, 1966-72

The Box Project

Branding, Packaging, and Advertising,

2014

During the second year of college we were asked to produce some packaging designs, and subsequent advertising for new brand or product that we had to invent for ourselvesthe only catch was that it had to come in a box.

I decided I wanted to a high quality, slightly more high-end chocolate brand, aimed at men to fill a hole in the market.

One of the most well known examples of British sophistication, suaveness and the epitome of coolness is James Bond with sharp suits, fast cars and cool gadgets. The coolest parts of the 007 movies are the gadgets that his Quartermaster, Q, provides Bond with for his missions. I named my brand (Q Chocolate) after Q as he provides an integral part of sophisticated and cool parts of the Bond

‘brand’, and those are the parts I wanted to emulate in my project.

I used a darker colour palette as this is associated with quality and luxury and commonplace in the high end chocolate marketplace. Combined with the tradtional colours associated with the flavours - the green of the mint or the orange of the orange flavour.

Using these colours combined with a darker background allowed the Q part of my brand to stand strong the box and give a stronger onself presence

Using minimal photography and typesetting allowed the strength of the brand to speak for itself in the poster, which would help establish the brand on the market.

Vector Artwork

Vectors, Various

Various bits of self-initiated vector artwork I created during some spare time, using Illustrator just to push myself and better understand what Illustrator is capable of creating.

These pieces were creating using mainly the pen or shape tools combined with the blending options, gradient meshing, and the duplication and rotation tools.

“Everything Arsenal”

– College Final Major Project

App Design, Responsive Website / UI Design, Digital Design, Advertising, Copy writing, and Editorial/Layout Design, Spring 2014

‘Everything Arsenal’ was the title of my Final Major Project (FMP) for my final year in college, and was named as such as I planned to do every possible thing (well almost everything) that a graphic designer could be expected to do in the course of his/her career.

Initially I had intended to do; a new app design, a new responsive website for mobile, tablet, and desktop, a range of 3 new kits, a poster to advertise these new kits, a book documenting the history of the club, as well as business cards and stationary, doing all these would cover nearly all the skills a design might require in any industry.

It was an ambitious project that had to be scaled back a couple weeks into the project when I realised that I wouldn’t be able to complete everything that I had wanted to do, to a high enough standard in time for submission, so I decided to cut out some products and scale back on some of the detail in the book, in order to be able to deliver enough high quality products rather than more average or lower quality products. Realising this earlier in the project, rather than

later definitely helped me concentrate my time on fewer higher quality products rather than creating a shed-load of average outcomes.

All the website and apps screens were just mock ups made using Photoshop and InDesign and were proof of concept rather than being created to go live.

During my research I found that Arsenal’s club motto is “victoria concordia crescit ” which means “victory through harmony”, inspired by this my main aim was to produce a range of products that blended the clubs historic traditions with modern techniques and aesthetics to produce something new yet familiar.

The biggest part of my FMP was creating and editing a 60-page book full with original copy written by myself, which charted the history of Arsenal Football Club from their formation as Dial Square in 1886, to the end of the 2013/14 season. To get the book ready before the deadline involved many late nights - which stood me in good stead for actually working in the industry.

‘Scannergrams’

Digital Distortion, November 2013

This was part of an image making project, encouraging us to use less obvious, and more unusual methods of image making, all with ‘found objects’ and a scanner which led to more abstract outcomes than a designer usual comes across.

The process involved finding objects (in my case some coloured pens, a prospectus for Blackpool college, and some charity wristbands) and dragging them down the bed of the scanner

whilst it was taking a scan. This project was a lot of fun because it was a lot more unusual, it was easy to churn out lots of images pretty quickly - I produced over 100 scans in a couple of hours of dragging objects down a scanner.

The images were then imported into Photoshop to boost the contrast, vibrancy, and clean up and unwanted dirt or detritus off the scanner.

You could quite easily make some prints with the images, but they could be easily adapted in InDesign or Photoshop with some logos and branding to convert them into some form of advertising. There was a couple of other great examples in the class of combining this with layer or clipping masks.

I don’t usually favour this kind of abstract aesthetic, but I think there’s definitely a place for this sort of imagery, and offers a solid contrast to a lot of design

work which relies on a more direct link between the subject matter and the product.

It’s a great way of quickly producing interesting imagery and only really relies on having a scanner, and you can use anything that you have to hand and tend to have more control than you would using a liquify effect or filter to produce this type of aesthetic digitally.

Art, Photography and Graphics

END OF YEAR SHOW

‘GLITCH’ Exhibition Poster June 2014

As part of the final project at college which saw us complete our FMPs, we were also asked to produce a poster for the art, graphic, and photography departments end of year show.

The show was called Glitch, and I felt it appropriate to use one of my scannergrams for my design. The scannergram aesthetic fitted with the title of the show as they rely on distorting an image and ‘tweaking’ how a scanner is used, and led to some glitch-y effects.

I created the header text at the top to fit the same theme, simply by using a rounded font, and splicing it in two in illustrator and slightly offsetting the two halves for the slight imperfection or ‘glitch’ without rendering it illegible. And using a thinner, more rounded font matched the general shape of the mass of coloured pens and a more modern and digital theme I was aiming at.

The rest of the text was placed without any real customisation, just a slight tweak to the tracking, and kerning, to fit the forms of the graphic.

The poster was completed by placing the white variant of the Leeds City College logo on the black background for maximum contrast.

If I were to reproduce this brief I would alter the header text. Instead of slicing the text in two I would take more of a square step out of the text to make it fit more of a digital screen glitch effect.

‘From The Centre Circle’University Final Major Project

Photography, Page Layout, Website Design and Development, April/May 2017

‘From The Centre Circle’ was my Final Major Project of my final year at university. The aim of the project was to archive and preserve the tradition of grassroots and amateur football, whilst promoting and inspiring the next generation to take up the sport.

We were encouraged to base our projects around something we know, and football has been a massive part of my life, and I played at Sunday League level for a number of years, and I know that the statistics show this fine English tradition is deteriorating. I owed it to myself, and to the sport that has given me so much over the years, to give something back to the game.

The vocal point of my project was quotes from past or current players of Sunday League, grassroots, and amateur footballers - both men and women - talking about why they started to play the game, what the best parts of it are, their best memories of playing the most accessible part of the game, and what advice they would give to people looking to get into the game.

I partnered these quotes with photographs I took myself to highlight the unique and beautiful aspects of the grassroots game, that you would not find at the Premier League grounds across the land, elements of the game you only find at grassroots level.

Given my project was about protecting the traditions of the game as well as inspiring the new, I thought it best to create a book (traditional print) and a website (new technology) that would be accessible to those wanting to take up the sport.

The book uses a mixture of traditional and unconventional spreads and layouts, which was inspired by my research, whilst the website was designed and developed by myself using a combination of Photoshop and Dreamweaver.

“As the majority of young boy’s, I loved football growing up. My dad played professionally for Halifax in the old 3rd Division and he signed me up to a team from the age of around 6-7 years old.”

‘City In Flux’

Infographic Design, Website Design, Website Development

Winter 2014/15

The first project during the first year of university was called ‘City In Flux’. Upon finding out that when something is in flux it means that it is constantly changing, I instantly thought of basing my project around population change in my hometown of Leeds.

With birth and death rates what they are, population is changing, and Leeds growing from a small market town based around the wool trade to one of the biggest cities in the country, the change is clear to see. But how would I go about visualising this change? Inspired by the works of David McCandless and Feltron, I though that infographics would be a good visual outcome.

I spent days collating all the population statistics for the various different areas of the city using census records, and putting it all into Excel, and calculating the percentage change in population, as the percentage change would be the easiest thing to comprehend.

The next step was to start visualising these population changes. At first I wanted to use a more literal representation of the areas of Leeds using maps, but it was suggested I use something more abstract as there wasn’t much of a connection between the physical geography and the demographic statistics. So I went about creating representations that were more abstract, using circles in varying sizes or shades of blue to show a progression in time or population size.

After all the time I spent putting the data into excel, creating my own dataset, I decided that I should stylise that similar to the stock exchange and present that along with the infographics in a website - appropriate given Leeds’ link to the growing technological, design and financial sectors.

Other two days during the holidays, I learnt how to make the website using Adobe’s Dreamweaver software myself and online tutorials.

Animation Work

Animation and Motion Graphics 2014 – Present

Another element of the Process and Production module includes, working in Adobe’s After Effects, creating animation and motion graphics. We also had a brief exploration in Cinema 4D, making 3D animations and stills using a 3D space.

I have worked with pure typographical elements, we have developed character animations from scratch using After Effects in combination with Illustrator, I have also used techniques such as rotoscoping, boiling, and created “loops and living holds”, as well some 3-Dimensional work.

To see the full clips, which include sound, transitions and other motion effects, as well as other pieces of motion work (both 2D and 3D), and some development pieces, check out my Vimeo pagevimeo.com/mattmcgough

Left - ‘Rule 32’

Centre - ‘Character 1

Right - ‘Triangle Circle X Square’

“A visitors guide to taking over Planet Earth”

Cover illustration, Branding, Editorial and Layout

March 2015

My second big project at University was based around the Golden Record which was attached to the two Voyager spacecraft that were built and launched in the 1970’s.

The initiative from NASA aimed to give a depiction of the human race should an intelligent space race encounter either of the Voyager probes, which were sent into the depths of space, never to return to Earth.

My project, aimed to inject a bit more humour into what would happen ‘if an alien came to earth and wanted to enslave the human race’, somewhat akin to Independence Day and typically assuming that any alien race is set on taking over the planet and conquering the human race.

My visitors guide was aimed to show aliens how great and unique the planet to try and dissuade them from enslaving the planet whilst pointing out some of the best or most important people on Earth that the aliens should talk to or visit to help them decide how unique life is on this planet and needs preserving.

On the last page I included some strategic targets that aliens may wish to destroy to make it easier for themselves should they want to take over Planet Earth and destroy the human race. I think it

might be best for humans any planet destruction be done as quickly and efficiently as possible

Whilst some of the humour may have been lost during the project, I am still really pleased with some of the layouts and spreads used here. And looking back I included GPS co-ordinates of the landmarks - as if aliens would be familiar with the concept of longitude and latitude.

The Visitors Guide is 32 pages long and available in full at issuu.com/mattmcgough

Over the last few years I have tried to learn more and more about how to use illustrator, completing online tutorials over the summer breaks between University years or in my free time since, to become more profficient in using the software, to the point now where I actually enjoying using the software to do things in my own time.

I felt confident enough in using Illustrator that I needed to push and challenge myself, and with the timing of this new mentality combined with the ‘36 Days Of Type’ challenge being just around the

corner so I decided that I would try to complete that challenge. I set myself the challenge of using Illustrator to create a new letterform (A-Z and 0-9) everyday for 36 consecutive days, and I added another challenge on top, with trying to come up with a different style for each of the days.

Usually most try to come up with one style for the entire set, but I tried to come up with 36 different styles to really push myself and to see what works and what doesn’t.

Some of the styles were inspired by what I had seen around me on the internet or in real life - or by words that start with that particular letter and the meaning of them, such as C for concentric, H/6 and hexagons, and P for pinstripes.

My personal favourites are the G because of the boldness and subtle attitude it has, the K with the slight Japanese aesthetic and the U and W because of the gradients and colours that I used on those two examples.

Social Media Graphics, Website Graphics, Website Advertising

July 2016 - May 2017

From the middle of July 2016 I was on placement at York City Football Club as part of a work experience placement/internship where I was the only in-house graphic designer at the Club.

Primarily my role was to create assests and templates for the club to use across it’s social media channels, and the club website.

This included producing templates that would need to be changed every matchday such as digital teamsheets, or thumbnails for links to the match report, and match highlights. I was also responsible for creating a social media watermark that would clearly identify the content coming from the club, as well as rebranding the club’s various social media accounts so that they all looked like part of the same family, and gave a more unified presence.

I was also tasked with creating images for the Club to use on the website either as thumbnails for articles, or as part of the website side panels which are traditionally used for advertising - in this case we used them to advertise the fixtures coming up in that calendar month.

Half of my time at the club has been spent transferring a design initially intended for print, into a digital format for use on the website and on social media platforms in order to connect with as many fans as possible.

This was my first step inside a club, and was a great insight into how a football club operates, even at a Non-league level (as The Minstermen were in the Vanarama National League at the time) - where people often pitch in with jobs outside their role and being able to lend a hand to other roles makes you realise what goes into running a football club on a day-to-day basis.

Having spent the season with York City and going to Wembley and winning a trophy - it definitely makes the long days and weeks worthwhile.

Posters,

Programme ads July 2016 - May 2017

As part of my placement within the club I was also tasked with creating the club’s adverts that would be placed within the club’s matchday programme.

This meant creating printed work that fitted with the dimensions of the clubs programme, as well as within the club’s visual identity - which was establish primarily through the use of colour, styling, and fonts, which meant I had to coordinate with the club’s programme designer - which was done by a third party.

The challenge was to create a variety of adverts which would have similar themes and appearance to maintain consistency but would have to be different enough to gain the attention of the fans who would see them every week.

The primary focus of my work was to promote club events and incentives for fans, encouraging them to take up the ‘kids for a quid’, and ‘bring a friend for £5’ offers, as well as making fans aware of ticket prices from the FA Trophy games. This was through a two pronged approach, the programme and posters around the ground.

I also produced various adverts for the commercial department, as well as in-house posters that would be used around the ground.

For the last game of the season I was also asked to produce a poster and social media graphic advertising the last game of the season, the season hadn’t gone well for York so the clubs place in the league would be decided on the outcome of the last game of the season. However the Media Officer liked the design so much that he asked me to alter it to be used as the cover of the last programme of the season.

This felt like the biggest and most important thing I had worked in my life to that point and was a massive achievement to create the cover of such an important game which was televised nationally.

“ZOMBONES”

Branding, Character Design, and Packaging Design

November 2015

This cereal box was produced by myself as part of the Process and Production module of my second year at university. I started off by sketching out a few ideas of a character that would be the main focal point of my new brand of children’s cereal.

Inspired by a friends attempt, I went down a less traditional route for children’s cereal. He had used a bit of word play and came up with ‘cereal killers’, whilst mine is probably as dark, it’s less clever in terms of wordplay.

Once I had decided on a character - a zombie which had milk instead of blood and a head that could double up as a cereal bow because his brains and had been eaten - I started to produce sketches of what the box would look like.

I continued with the undead theme, and included a graveyard with some tombstones and a full moon. With a bowl of the new cereal in the foreground with the character reaching over it in a traditional zombie pose but with a spoon in his hand.

The next stage was to add in the rest of the identity of the cereal brand including name and a slogan, a nutritional table, ingredients and a puzzle on the back. I made a maze which saw people run from the zombies with the aim of reaching sanctuary in a hospital.

I used a black and red on yellow for the branding because these are the colours used in biohazard warning signs. I used a distressed headline font to match the zombie effect, and an italic slogan to add a slightly ironic more upbeat 60’s tone to the darker tones associated with zombie outbreaks.

All this was completed within a fun four hour session, and it would have been great to add in more detail and complete the look given more time.

Using the colour combinations for each of the kits used by the first team for the 2021/22 Season, I was tasked with creating the usual suite of match day graphics - “Match Day”, teamsheet, Half-time/ Full-Time scoreboard, and a Man Of The Match graphic - should the performance on the pitch warrant the use of one.

The Match Day graphics were created in square 1x1, 16x9, and 9x16 ratio for the Instagram story. Teamsheet was only in 1x1, the HalfTime/Full-Time graphics were initially 1x1, but mid-way through the season, we wanted to push it more in the Instagram story, to give fans a better sense of the flow of the game, in a more chronological order, because the algorithm doesn’t think chronology is important for the narrative, the story is better for telling the events of the game in order.

I think these are possibly the strongest assets I’ve created for this particular area of design, and I am particularly fond of the ‘match day’ graphics in this range. All the graphics tie together really well with each other and the other assets we have created for this season, as well as when you see them next to each other here, are punchy enough when seen in the grid and timeline, but also feature subtle differences than differentiate each fixture, by changing crests, players, and background images.

2021/22 Social Landmarks

Photo-montages, photo editting 2021/22

The 2021/22 player landmark graphics were the boldest I have created during my time at Huddersfield Town, really allowing the player(s) to be the focus of the image. Combined with Twitter allowing uploaded media to be in a 5x4 ratio, the season style meant we could be bolder and more player centric in the approach, than we had previously. Having a taller canvas means there was less cropping of players as humans tend to be taller rather than wider, especially when they are playing the game.

Come towards the end of the season I wanted the boldness and the player-centric nature of these to carry other into the graphics that were more celebratory of the team’s achievements - reaching the play-offs, and then the final.

I also produced a small range of graphics to cover both of the eventualities of the final; a “We Are Premier League” graphic, and two graphics thanking the fans for their support - one with more celebratory images should Town have won, and a more mellow one should Forest have won.

Matt McGough @MattMcGough03