ABOUT THIS ENTRY

This season, the NBA Social and Digital Content Design team was challenged with designing unique graphics around the 2022 NBA All-Star Game player announcements. This submission details the NBA’s graphic design for one of the biggest NBA moments of the season.

How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?

These graphics have set a benchmark for announcements across NBA social and digital media platforms moving forward with the goal of creating highly engaging and shareable graphics. This graphics activation presents a standard for finding ways to stand out in the feed through design and focus on all goals and call to actions that are important for major initiatives. It expands the content creation process from just thinking about how design applies to digital, but also to how it can grow beyond that into the physical world.

Objective: This season, the NBA Social and Digital Content Design team was challenged with the extraordinary task to design graphics around the 2022 NBA All-Star Game player announcements and give them the special vibrancy that the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Season carried all season long. The goal for the NBA was to “make greatness shine on the land” and celebrate the NBA’s rich history during NBA 75 and in Cleveland.

With this goal, the Content Design team focused on how to give the NBA All-Star Announcement graphics a special feel - focusing on promoting the NBA All-Star Game a major 3-day weekend event in ‘The Land’ and tune-in to the broadcast. The goal was to not only create something digital, but create art that could be displayed in the physical world, as well.

Strategy & Execution: How do you showcase greatness shining in The Land? With event-poster graphics celebrating the biggest stars in the NBA playing in Cleveland during the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Season. These poster graphics captured multiple themes from the season and 2022 NBA All-Star including:

• The addition of three stars to represent the three NBA All-Star events that have taken place in Cleveland
• ‘The Land’ text focusing on this special moment in Cleveland
• A subtle nod to the ‘NBA Lane’ marketing campaign which features a wall of event posters for legendary NBA matchups

The focus of these graphics was to celebrate each player’s special recognition while promoting the game in Cleveland. The art was versatile - allowing them to be published to multiple platforms. They were used across the NBA’s social media accounts, including: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and YouTube. In addition, they were used on NBA.com and the NBA App.

Not only were these graphics used in the digital world, they also came to life in the physical world. They were used to decorate the NBA’s fan experience event - NBA Crossover - at NBA All-Star. They lined the hallways where fans could take a photo next to their favorite player's art.

Results: The NBA used these graphics in real-time during the NBA All-Star game player announcements to announce each player playing in the game. In addition, the graphics posts promoted tune-in to the NBA All-Star Draft and NBA All-Star Game. The graphics received over 70 million impressions. The goal of creating vibrant, event promotional graphics was achieved and helped to fit multiple business needs - from building awareness around the NBA All-Star player announcement, to driving tune-in to the NBA All-Star Draft and NBA All-Star Game, to bringing awareness to Cleveland and to providing a physical art space at the NBA Crossover event for fans to interact with.

Production

NBA

Credits

Andrew Yaffe
Head of Social, Digital & Original Content
NBA

Bob Carney
Senior Vice President, Social and Digital Content
NBA

Ashley Atwell
 Senior Director, NBA Social Content
NBA