Rebranding SDSU as the winning SoCal team

San Diego was losing its team. The Chargers were headed to LA, and a city built on pro football was looking for someone to cheer for. SDSU Athletics saw the opening — but the brand it was showing up with didn't match the ambition. The work had to reintroduce Aztec football with real presence, and build a visual system flexible enough to scale across every sport, department, and surface that followed.

THE DIRECTION

The brief was aggression — earned, disciplined aggression. I rebuilt the Aztecs' visual language from the player up: directing our own photoshoots instead of leaning on game action, and building a graphic system of broken grids, stacked type, and Aztec-inspired pattern work that could flex from a trolley wrap to a billboard to a social post without losing its edge.

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The flagship campaign, One City. One Team., rolled out where the city actually lived — a full trolley wrap pulling up to Aztec games, OOH billboards that broke format with players cresting the bulletin, and a Pumphrey for Heisman mural that loomed over a city block. Later seasons pushed further: Together We Rise planted the roster across a California silhouette, staking claim to more than a stadium.

Quick turns, small budgets, multiple projects in parallel. I led from concept through art direction, on-set photo direction, and final design.

THE REACH

What started as a football refresh didn't stay one. It spread to every other SDSU sport, to other departments across the organization, and across town to the University of San Diego. Select designs were picked up as official Nike merch. One City. One Team. carried beyond the campaign, with fans and press adopting it on their own. A rebrand scoped as a season became a seven-year creative partnership — and a visual language that helped SDSU step into the space a pro team left behind.