Industry Insight : Connor Wagner

As Creative Director at DePaul University, Connor Wagner is responsible for designing graphics, capturing content, and managing the visual side of DePaul Basketball. His days vary from planning meetings and practices to travelling with the team and covering game days. In this interview, Wagner talks about how he got into this role, how he stays inspired, and the skills that help him succeed in sports media.

Let’s dive in 👇

What’s your job as a Creative Director really like? What’s a typical day for you?

A typical day is pretty dependent on what our content schedule looks like.  It typically starts with me working on some weekly graphics on my train ride into the city.

On a normal day, I’ll have a few planning meetings, attend practice, and continue to knock things off my content list. In-season, we’ll have a lot of travel days for road games, so those are spent capturing the content of the team and staff on our flights/bus rides, at shootarounds prior to games, etc.  And then there are game days which are the most exciting days. Those are spent coordinating our teams to cover everything needed for in-game coverage and our weekly content.

How did you end up in this role? Was this the plan all along, or did you take a few unexpected turns?

I originally started off wanting to get into sports journalism.  Somewhere along the way, I realised I really enjoyed creating graphics/videos and taking photos. After I graduated, I kept working on my own making designs to try and gradually improve.  After a few months of doing that, I landed my first paid internship and eventually landed my first full-time job at Capture Sports Marketing.  After that, I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity at the Air Force Academy and from there, it’s been a crazy journey with some awesome people that’s led me to where I am today.

What do you do when your team is stuck on an idea? How do you keep things fresh?

When creative blocks happen I always think it’s good to take a step away from the computer, and get busy doing something else.  I think it’s important to realize that burnout is a real thing with the demands of the sports industry.

To keep things fresh I keep my camera roll loaded with a bunch of graphics/photos that I see, a bunch of environmental photos that I’ve taken during my day-to-day, and a bunch more pieces that I can pull from for inspiration.  I think having the ability to look at work others in the industry do and try to dissect it and apply certain ideas/inspiration from things you see around you to your own workflow and design process is one of, if not the most important skills to be successful in this industry. 

What’s the most useful skill someone should have if they want to do what you do?

I talked a bit earlier about having the ability to draw inspiration from everywhere, but I think the other skill that I would say is the most valuable in this industry would be the ability to communicate with people in a fluid and positive way.  You’ll come across a lot of people in the sports world, and being able to talk and communicate well with people will help grow your relationships and create a bunch of opportunities for you as your career continues.

Do you have a favourite tool, app, or trick that makes your job easier?

I recently started using Basecamp here at DePaul and I definitely think that it’s a hyper-valuable tool that allows teams to work really well together.

What’s the most fun or memorable project you’ve worked on?

I’ve had a lot of fun on a lot of different projects over the years but I would say the most memorable one would have to be designing our D-Day Memorial-themed logo this past year.  It’s the first time a logo/concept that I designed has been featured on a uniform and used in a game.

If you had to switch careers tomorrow, what would you do instead?

If I was guaranteed to be really good at it, I’d probably go and try and go play in the MLB. Other than that, I think I’d really like to try and be a sneaker designer at Nike or Jordan.  I’ve always enjoyed making custom shoe graphics, so I feel like that would be really fun to do as a profession.

A big thank you to Connor Wagner for taking the time to share his experience and work with us. It’s always interesting to hear about the effort that goes into capturing great moments in sports.

Check out more of Connor’s work and follow Depaul Basketball on X here:

📷 Follow Connor Wagner
🏈 Depaul Basketball

Thanks for reading!

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