For the women’s college basketball team, the momentum and excitement around women’s sports has served as a catapult to engage with new fans. ESPN’s newest creative look surrounding the NCAA DI Women’s Basketball Tournament has been at the center of ESPN Creative Studio and Art Director Alex Young’s focus in this year’s tournament lead up.
Was there a particular theme or message you wanted viewers to take away from the look and feel of this year’s creative?
At the center of the campaign is a concept we call “The Journey.” We wanted the visuals to reflect the emotional arc of the season — momentum, pride, contrast and the pure fun of the game.
This is the first animation campaign to follow the launch of the new ESPN Brand Identity. A large part of our mission was to balance amplifying the overall ESPN brand while maintaining a distinct voice for the women’s tournament and college hoops more broadly.
The team built a flexible system of elements that flows throughout the package. Organic paint strokes, “remixed” materials and textures, bold team identities and gold championship marks. The color palette centers on white, black and gold with deliberate pops of red and other subtle nods to our broader ESPN brand DNA. Taken together, it creates one unified thread that ties together court, campus and crowd.
How did the growth of the women’s tournament influence the approach to this year’s creative?
We kicked off this work in spring 2024, the ESPN Research & Analytics team, led by Kevin Hack, shared insights on how the women’s game was attracting new and younger fans. That pushed us toward a more modern, tactile and highly shareable visual language.
The championship logo system was elevated with more gravitas – a calm, centered anchor, so the tournament feels elevated without losing its playful, fan-forward energy.
How do you hope fans experience the tournament differently with this new creative?
We want fans to feel like they’re inside the story, not just watching it and presented in a way only ESPN can, regardless of the platform. As a result, the team emphasized contrast and collision to amplify emotional beats and add playful, semi-abstract elements that click with younger audiences. The goal was a visual world that resonates with everyone — die-hard fans, casual viewers and digital natives.
From the initial concept to its debut, what has the journey been like bringing this creative package to life?
It was a balance of research-led strategy and hands-on craft. We started with fan insights and competitive analysis, moved into concept sketching and 2D/3D prototyping and stress-tested templates to ensure consistency at scale. The teamwork and collaboration on this project was felt in every corner of ESPN Creative Studio, in addition to a strong partnership with Meg Aronowitz (SVP Sports Production, ESPN Global Event & Studio Production), Kate Leonard (Coordinating Producer) and many others across Production. The result is a flexible, volume-friendly system with enough craft for premium moments and enough efficiency to maintain the package in future years.
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