Matt McGough - Sports Portfolio

Matt McGough PORTFOLIO

Matt McGough

Matt McGough GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Thanks for taking the time to take a look at some of my work. This is just a selection of some of the work that I have completed as part of my time at York City on placement, or at Huddersfield Town in the Premier League or Sky Bet Championship.

Some of the work is included to show my progression and development as a designer, and my willingness to continue to learn and improve. Some sections also include some development work as part of the project which hopefully shows part of the thinking in how the final product came to fruition.

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.

During my career, I’ve worked on my own, and as part of a small team, and understand that working in sport is a team game, especially if you want to be at the top. I’m a team player and willing to try anything to help the team.

I have experienced everything in football, so I have skills in digital design, animation, as well as editorial and layout design for print and digital/ social platforms.

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

VIMEO.COM/ mattmcgough

ISSUU.COM/ mattmcgough

HERE YOU CAN SEE A MORE GENERAL PORTFOLIO TOO!

E-MAIL: mattmcgough03@gmail.com

TIMELINE

2012 – 2014

Leeds City College

BTEC Level 3 Extended Diploma

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

2014 – 2017

University of Huddersfield BA(Hons) Graphic Design

Classification: Upper Second - 2:1

2015 – PRESENT Freelance Graphic Designer

JULY 2016 – MAY 2017 York City Football Club Intern Graphic Designer Sole in-house design presence

AUGUST 2017 – PRESENT Huddersfield Town Football Club

Icon Vector Portraits

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 Revie-managed ‘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

Social Media Identity

As part of some minor restructuring of the club, which saw the club tidy up its social media presence. I was asked to unify the various clubs social media accounts identities to ensure they all looked the same and had the same styling in their profile pictures, even though they will have subtle differences.

The main account was left on a plain white background as this is a standard approach, leaving the account to be identified solely by the crest which interested parties will know.

The other accounts used the same crest, and in order to make the other accounts stand out when scrolling down timelines on mobile devices, I made the backgrounds red, and added white text identifying which account it is, in the same font as the rest of the clubs products.

Twitter accounts with coordinated profile pictures;

Top - @YorkCityFC

Middle - @YCFC_SLO

Bottom - @YCFCAcademy

Annual Awards

The first big event that I was given creative control over was the end of season awards (which were branded as Annual Awards) at the end of the 2017/18 season - our first season in the Premier League.

This was also the first time I could go a little more “off-brand” with the design and colour scheme. To give it that little bit of luxury feel, I went for a white and gold scheme, which used the club font and the terrier icon as the main elements - so it still tied into our brand.

Working closely with our events and video team, I created the logo, the programme for the evening, a backdrop to sit behind the players as they recorded the video content, titles and captions for the videos, the ‘Goal of the Season’ voting card, tickets, and room decorations, as well as social media content to go out simultaneously for those unable to attend.

The following year, it was pretty evident that the end of the season wouldn’t be as much of a party as the year previous, so we took a different approach to the 18/19 awards.

We went for a more muted colour palette - which whilst still classy and formal, contrasted nicely with the previous years, to give it it’s own identity, and not be wildly out of touch with the general mood of the evening, given the results on the pitch.

These events are the event of clubs’ social calendars, and are often seen as a way to cap-off a great season with a great evening, so attention to detail, and setting the right mood that sets this evening above all else - is the most important part of designing for the event. All that starts weeks, if not months before, when ‘Save The Date’s go out and booking’s start being made, so having a classy look and feel is more important than being dynamic and exciting like match promos and other social outputs have to be.

As of September 2017, Huddersfield Town moved away from a traditional English academy setup and moved towards a different model, removing the younger age groups, leaving three non-senior mens teams - Under-17s, Under-19s and an ‘Elite Development Team’. In 2020, we renamed the EDT to the B-Team which is much catchier from a branding point of view.

I was tasked with creating a new crest/logo for this team, to mainly be used on digital platforms, helping them separate themselves from the younger aged teams, and the senior team.

Having done some research, B-Team/reserve teams/second teams, are prominent in American ‘soccer’ and in certain European countries such as Germany. In North America, it’s common for the reserve team to use branding almost identical to the senior team, except with the addition of a Roman numeral two (II) or a B, so my first approach was to use the club crest as a base and tweak it by adding in a B within the crest.

However, to give the team its own identity, I moved away from that idea, and tried to make the B the focus, and tie it back to Town by using the club colours and the three stars from the crest.

We made the first shortlist by the office picking out their favourites to present to the players of the B-Team - as we wanted them to pick the crest they would want to represent.

The feedback from the players was that they preferred the roundel based options, but would like something “cooler”, ‘more colourful’, and something that would incorporate the terrier icon.

The second phase resulted in a much more narrow range of ideas, featuring the golden terrier more prominently, in a slightly more sophisticated range of ideas.

As a department we again came up with the second shortlist based on the ones which we liked from the first and second phase, and the players chose the option below, which I then created tonal versions of in a range of file formats to meet all the needs we might use it for, such as watermarks and social media accounts.

Social Media Frames

As part of a more considered social media presence I was also tasked with coming up with designs for a template/watermark that would be applied to content coming out of the club that would go onto social media, ensuring that if the image was taken and posted elsewhere that the content could be identified as being from York City.

Again, its something a lot of clubs do nowadays, and there are visually similar approaches taken throughout the footballing world, and using this approach also helps with promoting the clubs other social media channels.

Red and white were used as red is the primary club colour and white reads a lot better on top of the red background than the navy blue.

This template that was used throughout the season, and was applied to various digital products, such as to watermark photos.

In 2019, I was asked to design a new board commemorating all of Town’s academy graduates since the change to the EPPP model in the 90’s, whilst leaving space for any new graduates that may make first team appearance in the coming years.

We had scouted the location where we wanted the boards to be located, wanted to maintain some visibility of the wall underneath, so we used translucent perspex, which was modern and fitted in with other areas of the training ground, and allowed to apply new names using vinyl transfers.

There are now two of these boards, with 60 names and counting, both boards take pride of place in the reception area of the Canalside training complex, meaning everyone who comes into the building sees them, including the Academy and B team players who walk pass it multiple times a day. Allowing people, and more importantly the youth team players, to see there is a path to the first team from the academy teams, and achieving your first team debut for the Terriers will be remembered beyond your time at the Club.

ePremier League Club Play-Off

I was also responsible for all the graphics relating to the club’s ePremier League Play-off - whilst this was primarily a digital-led focus, as the main piece of the event was the live stream of the tournaments on the club YouTube channel - there were still elements that required printing - such as the room dressing (namely the player posters that were hung in the main room), some navigational signage, as well as player and guardian credentials. Creating these printed graphics meant working with, and following the Premier Leagues brand guidelines for the ePL product and using their club x ePL crest lock ups.

Digital elements, were mainly broadcast overlays, which had to cater for the addition of player cams which were set around FIFA’s HUD graphics (heads up display - in FIFA this is the scoreboard in the top left, and the player name and status bars in the bottom left and right corners). I also created a bracket to be edited live, full screen fixture preview graphics, as well as graphics for

the winners of each console. On top of that was also the non-gameplay relevant sections of the broadcast, such as the ‘starting soon’ graphics at the front of the broadcast.

Given eSports tournaments tend to last for hours, our broadcast ran past 6 hours, and viewers often dip in and out, we thought that it would be a good idea to include the stage of the tournament in the graphic overlays and the console, so fans could better track their favourite players across both Xbox and PlayStation.

View animated assets in a showreel - including living hold screens, and transitional wipes at https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/326432132

View the full Huddersfield Town ePremier League Club Play-off at https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3mW01MtUZII

Digital Teamsheets

As part of an increasing trend in back in 2017 I was asked to create the teamsheet asset for use on match days. As part of the other match day and social graphics in 2017, part of the brief was to start to introduce the players on bigger stage than they might have played at before, so we wanted to include the player’s photos, name and squad number. The other requirements were to include the sponsors logo, competition logo, and to colour them to each kit. This was also an opportunity to promote the clubs social channels.

“The Run In” Social Graphics

As it became clearer during the 21/22 season that the final 7 games would be crucial in the club’s charge to the play-offs we wanted to push the fixture details in a hope that it would to an increase in tickets sales - without it being an overtly direct marketing ploy, the push was more in the caption of the post, and not in the graphics, so was a more subtle way of going about it.

Having the Instagram Carousel was a good way to push these as each slide could be a fixture itself, allowing the accompanying image to differentiate the fixture from the previous slide, and emphasise the home and away fixtures. The carousel also allows the fixtures to be posted in chronological order.

Key elements to consider when designing for these were to consider the somewhat-seamless swipe across, and balancing that with the static slides. The horizontal bars and angled background text run seamlessly across all slides. Whilst each slide has the same format with crests, fixture details, and the hashtag in the corner, so could stand alone as independent graphics away from the carousel.

To post these on twitter, I combined these graphics, combining two carousel slides into one 16x9, so when viewing full screen on twitter you can slide across to view the next slides - giving a similar experience to the Instagram carousel.

INSTAGRAM CAROUSEL SLIDES 4-8

INSTAGRAM CAROUSEL SLIDES 1-3

TWITTER SLIDES

Programme Work

Towards the end of the season I was tasked with giving some of the regular feature pages a face lift, and giving some pages a header that will help establish its identity.

The ‘... by numbers’ page is the regular statistics profile of the side visiting Bootham Crescent, and the ‘today with Yorkie’ page is the kids section of the programme, featuring puzzles and quizzes, with a small column from the mascot Yorkie.

For the last league game of the 16/17 season, were fighting off relegation and in the build up to the game I was asked to produce a one-off poster, aiming to increase awareness and get as many people to attend as possible, to get behind the team, knowing three points would likely be enough to survive.

The club’s Press Officer (my boss, and programme editor) liked it so much he wanted it to be used as the programme cover for City’s last game of the season, which happened to be televised by BT Sport. That game saw programme sales reached over 1,000 copies.

Retail Catalogue

This was a part of the 2019/20 retail outputusually released around Christmas time, as part of the seasonal push to drive customers to the physical stores (at the time we had a stadium ‘Superstore’ and a smaller retail outlet in one of the town centre shopping centres) and to the online store, in the hope of pushing more than just the usual football kits, scarves and hats, and hopefully highlight some of the other products such as the fashion range for women and children, baby accessories, Christmas decorations, and homeware - items people don’t usually associate with a football club, whilst allowing for the kits to be the heroes of the piece.

Creating the brochure, was definitely a team game - combining design, retail, marketing, as well as players from the senior and academy men’s teams players, women’s team players, staff, and children of staff for modelling of products.

Christmas Content

As part of the run up to Christmas, we ran an advent calendar type activity through social media channels, and I had to design and produce the various bits of content.

We produced various puzzles for followers to challenge themselves with for a few hours before we revealed the answers. I created various numbers of spot the ball puzzles, hidden object puzzles, crosswords and anagrams all with a York City theme. The social media frames were also given a Christmassy refresh, adding snowflakes and holly. The official social media profile pictures were also given a seasonal Santa hat addition.

We also produced a graphic with seasonal messages which was posted on social media and printed for posting around the ground, for nontech savvy supporters of the club.

Christmas

Everyone at York City would like to thank all Torquay United supporters for travelling 316 miles to be here today.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

The Directors, Management, Players, and Staff at York City wish all supporters a very Merry Christmas

@yorkcityfc

Christmas message poster for away fans on the last home game before Christmas

message poster for fans, which was also posted on social media over Christmas.

Traditional Spot the ball puzzle.

Hidden object puzzle

Crossword and Anagram puzzles with York City theme

Phone Wallpapers

Here is a selection of artwork created for phone wallpapers. These were created to create more of a link with the fan base, particularly those who use social media, and without a commercial purpose.

The wallpapers I created, range of styles and colours to match the colour-ways of kits for that season. From fixtures to player centric graphics, from more minimal player wallpapers, to more layered graphics that don’t have to use player images, phone wallpapers need to be creative and cover a range of bases, as there’s a wide range of tastes in any fan base.

Player Landmarks

Since the 2017/18 I have been leading on the increasingly popular player landmark graphics for social media.

Each season had to be different so they could have their own identity, so they would stand out against the rest of the crowded social media landscape and the graphics from the previous season, whilst being consistent with the styling of the Club’s output during the season, and remain uniquely ‘us’.

The 2017/18 season was our first attempt at producing this style of graphic, and given that we were new to the premier league at the time with a squad full of relatively unknown players, I wanted to be a little more player centric, to boost the profile of the players.

The following three seasons were a little more text heavy, highlighting the players achievements. As part of this, I wanted to include photography to cover the span of the players career - should it be a career related landmark I would try to include a photo from each of the clubs within the players career. If the landmark was a club specific one, I would try to include a photo from each season during that span.

For the 21/22 season, I wanted to return to a more player centric approach - as it’s a celebration of the players hard work, longevity, and ability. This, combined with Twitter changing the criteria that uploaded pictures didn’t have to be constrained to 16x9, allowed me to shift to using 5x4’s combined with the 21/22 season style, meant that I could use a more player centric approach, allowing the photography to be more ‘heroic’ and stronger.

2021/22 Social Landmarks

The 2021/22 player landmark graphics were the boldest I have created during my time at the club, really allowing the player(s) to be the focus of the image, and are bolder than previously. 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. 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.

FA Trophy Promo

6th and 7th tier sides compete in the FA Trophy, and the FA Trophy is a great competition for non-league sides as the final is played at Wembley and obviously there are great financial incentives.

As York progressed through to the quarter and semi finals the club reduced ticket prices to increase attendances and support the team. I produced the print and social media content advertising the reduces ticket prices.

The quarter final and final poster used the club colours, the semifinal first leg poster used the colours of York’s opponents Lincoln’s away kit, to contrast this important clash away from all the other club messages.

I also produced an advert, offering premium hospitality at Wembley for the final, explaining all the details and that come with it, from a more commercial partnership point of view.

Quarter final social graphic

Semi-final home leg social graphic

2021/22

Match Day Social

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 graphicshould 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 Half-Time/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.

@MattMcGough03

Matt McGough