This season, Atlanta Braves fans watching Gray Media broadcasts will experience a visually dominant team presence. Gameday Creative designed the package around “home field advantage,” emphasizing the Braves. Diamond motifs and team colors are prominent, instantly conveying the team and network affiliation. “There is a lexicon. There is a known sports media language,” said Eric Say of Gameday Creative. “Gray Sports wanted fans to turn on the TV and know that they were watching a sports broadcast. They wanted to be speaking that sports graphics language.”
The Braves logo takes center stage in every graphic, unlike national broadcasts with equally sized logos for competing teams. “When they do a match-up graphic, they got to put them at equal sizes. Both logos have to be the same size,” Say explained about national broadcasters. “When it’s a regional sports network… you know who you’re cheering for, you can make that logo bigger.” Even in hero frames, the Braves logo is significantly larger. The Gray branding is subtly integrated with the Braves logo.
“We want the viewer who doesn’t care about broadcast rights and deals… They want to just tune in to watch their favorite team,” said Scott Flato of Gameday Creative, highlighting the viewer-centric approach. This is just the first iteration; Gray Media aims to expand into other regional sports and markets. “This is just iteration one,” Say noted. “Gray is going to support other sports… So from a design standpoint, it made a pretty interesting project.” The diamond shape, a foundational baseball element, will adapt as Gray expands.
“We wanted a hero shape language for every sport,” Say explained. “This really small fundamental thing can be echoed across the entire package. And we came up with the diamond for baseball, for very obvious reasons.” This modularity allows brand consistency across sports. “You just change out the diamond for whatever the shape language is going to be for football, maybe it’s a gridiron… or basketball, maybe it’s the basketball lines,” said Say. “You have a formula to update this going forward.”
Local creative services teams can easily update the package, built using Cinema 4D with compositing techniques for color and sport-specific element changes. “Where you see the repeated baseballs, that’s a separate pass in 3D that’s composited on top of the background so those can change to basketballs or footballs,” Say explained. Templating ensures adaptability across different broadcast locations. Dave Bachman and The Academy of Lower Thirds handled insert elements (score box, lower thirds) via Vizrt. Stephen Arnold Music composed the modular theme music.
Motion design was prioritized, avoiding trendy, short-lived elements. “The more disruptive a graphics package is, the lower its shelf life,” Say noted. “We still wanted it to be modern and to be on brand, where sports graphics are at, but we wanted it to have a little bit of a staying power.” This considered the financial realities of RSNs. Flato and Say praised Gray Sports for its creative freedom. “They got out of our way and just let us design,” Say said. “That trust meant so much to us.” The package will expand to other Gray Media regional broadcasts soon.