Ryan Lopano Blog

Storytelling is a very valuable tool used in marketing, graphic design, and other forms of media. It helps sway the target audience into feeling a certain way or doing a certain thing.

The graphic above comes from the NHL team, the Florida Panthers, as part of their 2023 Playoff Campaign. This was a hyperrealistic graphic created for Game 1 of the 2023 Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes. The creation behind this graphic is so impressive and shows the perfect balance between the Hurricanes’ and Panthers’ brands. It shows an overhead map, specifically showing North Carolina and the Hurricanes’ home arena. Over the top of the arena, there is an actual hurricane taking up a third of the graphic. Despite showing a good chunk of the opponent’s branding, the Panthers are crawling in from Florida and circling the arena. Overall, I think this is a very well-created graphic and does a great job of hyping up the game.

The graphic above is the gameday graphic made by the Carolina Hurricanes. This was also released for the beginning of the 2023 Eastern Conference Final and was a great combat to what Florida created. It shows a Panther at the bottom of the graphic slowly being tempted by treats. This carries your eye to the top of the frame, which shows the Hurricanes’ home arena surrounded by the natural disaster. The icing on the cake is the “Here Kitty Kitty” tagline, which perfectly describes the graphic. This is a super well-designed and creative graphic made by Carolina’s design team, and it did a fantastic job of building up hype for the game and the series. This is especially cool as this wasn’t connected to the Florida graphic from above at all. Both design teams created them independently, and they ended up working so well together.

The next graphic comes courtesy of the Detroit Red Wings. It was created to celebrate Sergei Federov’s jersey retirement. I believe this graphic does an excellent job celebrating and telling the story behind his career. In addition to photos of him, elements such as his number, nameplate, his assistant captain patch, and signature are used. On top of that, ticket clippings, newspaper articles, and other elements are used to tell his story. I feel like this collage comes together so well and really shows all the elements of his career. The designer definitely did a great job using both digital and physical media to create this piece.

The Brooklyn Nets are the next team that I want to highlight. The graphic above comes from their 2025 NBA Draft campaign and does a great job of telling a story. The main point of the graphic is to show that they drafted guard Egor Demin, but the graphic shows so much more than that. The Nets designer used several New York City elements, specifically from the subway, to really welcome him to New York. This includes tiles that spell out Brooklyn, a subway map, the circular number one from the subway, and the sign with also comes from the train system. On top of all of that, they made a very conscious decision to use “Helvetica,” which is the font used in the New York City subway system. All of these elements were used very well to welcome Egor to the team and represent the city of New York.

The Vegas Golden Knights come up with another hyperrealistic graphic for their 2023 playoff series versus the Dallas Stars. The graphic shows A dragon with a knight riding it, flying over the Dallas Stars’ arena. The background shows the Dallas skyline and a sky full of stars, which is very appropriate for the team’s opponent. To add to the Golden Knight’s branding, the font used on the graphic looks very medieval. In addition, the gold is very strong in this graphic, which also ties back to the brand. All in all, it is very Vegas and helps build hype for the game.

This 2024 London Series comes from the New York Mets. They did an excellent job of mixing British landmarks and mixing it with their brand. Some elements in this graphic include the Big Ben clock tower, iconic red buses, and the United Kingdom flag on the edges. Leaning over these landmarks are three Mets players in action poses. Compared to the rest of the graphics created by the Mets that season, this fits really well and adds some great British influence.

This World Cup graphic was create by an indepentent designer for the Portugal vs Spain. The graphic does an excelent job of mixing real life elements and tieing it back to each country. The bull in the foreground represents Spain viewing the Portugal’s ships in the distance. The ships represent Portugal very well as they have a long maritime history. This all comes together in one sports graphic meant to represent the biggest soccer tournement in the world.