NFL Social Lab

Social Media
Graphic Design
Mobile Design
Art Direction

→ 817K+ daily unique views, 6.13M monthly users
→ 42M+ people engaging with NFL content on Snapchat

Turning the NFL into a daily content engine for a new generation of fans

Younger audiences weren’t engaging with football the way they used to. They weren’t tuning in—they were scrolling.

So instead of treating Snapchat like a promotional channel, we treated it like a live publishing platform. The goal wasn’t just highlights, it was daily relevance.

That meant building a system that could keep up with the speed of culture—high-volume, motion-first, and visually distinct from anything else in sports.

I led the creation of a design language that pulled from the legacy of the league but reinterpreted it with more edge and immediacy. From there, we built a scalable content engine—templates, motion systems, and repeatable formats—that allowed the team to produce at volume without losing consistency.

The result was a channel that felt alive, native to the platform, and always in motion.

Impact

Averaged 817K+ daily unique views and 6.13M monthly users (Dec 2017)
Contributed to a broader ecosystem where 42M+ people engaged with NFL content on Snapchat
Helped establish Snapchat as a primary touchpoint for younger NFL audiences

Role: Design Lead, Social Lab
Led the visual system and motion approach across the Snapchat channel and broader social ecosystem
Built and maintained a scalable style system (templates, toolkits, motion behaviors)
Concepted and created high-volume content (15+ pieces daily)
Mentored junior creatives and became the go-to for brand and system consistency across the team

In 2017, the NFL’s core demographic was beginning to age out.

The Problem

The Strategy

Generate content for the NFL’s brand new Snapchat Discover channel that would engage with young viewers and keep them coming back by creating custom content that resonates with younger users, as well as using existing content repackaged in a more digestible format.

Metrics for success

14 snaps delivered a day, 5 days a week
By the end of the year, 1 million subscribers
100K average views per day

The Action

Snapchat was a brand new platform, my team was the first Snapchat team formed at the NFL.
It was unchartered territory with no precedent.

It was the wild west!

So I had to use a system to determine what content performed well as there was no established precedent.

I used these analytics to help craft my snaps and create iterations:

Unique viewers
Time viewed (per user)
Total views
Unique top snaps (per user)
Shares and screenshots
Swipe-up rate (attachment conversion percentage)
Subscribers added

After analyzing the analytics, we realized using large articles in the Snapchat format was not effective - our users were on Snapchat to get bite-sized bits of info quick and dirty, so by using the data we evolved the way we presented and designed the content.

From this

To this!

The Work

We made 14 unique pieces of content everyday, 6 days a week. I created a style toolkit for our NFL Snapchat brand that incorporated the original NFL brand while also incorporating new colors and styles that appealed to younger audiences and felt fresh. The style kit contained design stardards so and tons of templates, pre-made elements, and animation toolkits that allowed for quick creation of snaps while also keeping everything visually cohesive.

Style Kit

The Results

We became a huge new revenue stream for the business. We had a cultural impact - we noticed fan channels trying to mimic our content. We saw tweets about our content.

Our channel averaged around 4K new subscribers daily - most of whom were 18-24… meaning that we were engaging and drawing in new young users and as subscribers they would keep coming back.