UCLA Football
An illustration of infamous Los Angeles landmarks for the official UCLA Football scholarship letter graphic.
ROLE
Illustrator
TIMELINE
2023 Jun;
4 Weeks
INTRODUCTION
A big welcome to Los Angeles for our Football athletes!
This illustration will be printed into a 25x33 inch poster cut up into 9 puzzle pieces (each in A4 size). This is because colleges are only allowed to send players posters no larger than A4. The receiving player will be able to piece the puzzle pieces together to form a large poster of the Los Angeles map with infamous landmarks.
APPROACH
What are UCLA students's favorite landmarks?
First, I started out by brainstorming the most prominent and famous landmarks amongst the UCLA student community. This included Royce Hall, Wasserman football center, Rose Bowl stadium, the Good Year blimp that appears every football game, Santa Monica pier, the Getty Villa, Hollywood sign, Griffith Observatory, DTLA, and LAX airport. Then, I hand-drew this rough sketch in procreate with the landmarks divided into a 3x3 grid.
PROCESS
The infamous UCLA blue and yellow merged into Los Angeles
Then, I transferred the sketch into Illustrator and used color blocks and gradients to create the the simplified illustrations of each landmark. This is the mood board I worked from as I developed the illustration style. I was heavily inspired by the artist Crushiform and her style of using abstract shapes. The piece uses the UCLA football color palette of dark blue and white with yellow highlights. In each landmark, I incorporated a hint of yellow from the sunset in the background to get that infamous LA glow.
CONCLUSION
A big 9 piece puzzle poster for our 2026 athletes
The final piece of this project turned out a success and the entire department loved it! I felt that I was able to capture the sporty and cool feeling from the illustration style that would attract the attention of incoming UCLA Football players. The piece will be sent out to 285+ incoming athletes for the 2026 school year. Currently, I am using the assets from this illustration to create a motion design animation of each landmark popping up as a short video.
