How a college pool party lead to doing freelance design work for Red Bull

As a graphic designer who grew up in extreme sports, Red Bull has always been a dream client. The Austrian energy drink giant sold has sold 75 billion cans since 1987 including 6.8B in 2018. Red Bull's marketing has been rooted in adrenaline since their first motorsports athlete (Gerhard Berger, F1 driver) in 1989. In 1992 the first Red Bull event (Red Bull Flugtag) happened in Vienna and by 1994 the company was expanding to global action sport sponsorship starting with windsurf stars from both the Netherlands and USA. (SOURCE)

I grew up attending Red Bull events and looking up to snowboarders, motocross racers, skateboarders, and BMXers wearing the iconic Red Bull helmets. There was something about the athlete exclusive hats and classic silver/blue helmets that added a badge of legitimacy to the athletes. At the time my dream was to become a Red Bull athlete myself, not designer. My life revolved around BMX and I was slowly rising through the ranks. By 18 I was spending time at the Olympic Training Center and on the Jr. Elite World Championships team, so it wasn't a full "[half]pipe-dream" thinking I could possibly become a Red Bull athlete.

As I was rising through the BMX ranks I was also practicing my design skills. Self taught with some inspiration from my family of artists, I was quickly using my friends and connections in BMX to work with high profile athletes. I can remember vividly at the age of 19 the first time I was emailed the Red Bull logo. It was from British Red Bull athlete Shanaze Reade; who had hired me to create her numberplate for the USA BMX Grand Nationals. Opening up the vector logo I felt like I was opening a present on Christmas. I ended up creating the busy design seen above, which in hindsight had way too much happening. In 2014 this was one of the coolest things I had created however. This plate lead to doing some more plates for BMX olympians including current World Champion and Red Bull athlete Twan Van Gendt.

Although I was working with a few Red Bull athletes to create their numberplate stickers, I was still hired by the individual athletes themselves. It was nice, but I still wanted more. I was dreaming to work with the company. I even entered helmet design contests (seen on the left, 2014), and created mock Olympic Helmets in proposal to work with the company (seen on the right, 2015). Neither proposals saw the light of day, but it is important to try. In fact by attempting to design some olympic uniforms the awareness lead to designing Connor Fields' Olympic Gold Medal winning frame (that is for another article though).

Once I started studying at UNLV in 2016 my goals in BMX slowly started dwindling. I was meeting people around campus and started to get inspired to become more career focused. My last real hoorah at racing was racing the 2016 World Championships in Colombia and qualifying as of the 16 Americans to race the Olympic Trials LCQ. I continued to ride until completely stopping after a bad crash at the end of 2017. While I was transitioning out of the sport I continued to design and still followed action sports closely. Most of my childhood Red Bull idols had retired, but I found new inspirations from ex-skier, businessman, and youtuber Jon Olsson, and the Red Bull F1 team which carried my love for the elusive "athlete" hat.

Being a top athlete in a sport it was always easy to meet people in that world. I'm not sure if it was a sense of respect, or comfort I had in my uniform, but I was a completely different person. Outside of the bike track I was introverted and lacked social confidence. After attending my first year at UNLV I hadn't made many connections and was worried I was going to miss out on one of the most important aspects of college, networking. I set a goal to meet more people, and get involved. I went to club meetings, and even went to a few fraternity "recruitment" parties.

It was at the Kappa Sigma pool party where I met Zach Koerber. We casually talked about some of the social media projects he worked on and added each other on social media. I ended up not joining a fraternity. This was partly because I was way too broke to pay for any dues, and because it seemed a little too party focused. I ended up finding my home in various school clubs (shout out to The American Marketing Association at UNLV, and The Rebel Events Board).

Ironically even my involvement at school lead me to enter another contest in attempt to work with Red Bull. Zach, who worked with Red Bull as a student ambassador, told me about the international competition where students create a 1 minute video as an application for their online show "Can You Make It". I gathered together a team of 3 called the "RedBels" in hopes of traveling through Europe using only cans of Red Bull as currency. Our team ended up making it through the first two rounds of user voting and made it over hundreds of submissions to the final judges round. Unfortunately we were not selected but it was a great experience.

Flash forward almost exactly 2 years and Zach has since graduated. He now runs his own Digital Marketing Agency - Advent, which has worked with White Claw, Red Bull, and Lulu Lemon to name a few. He reached out to me to help with a Red Bull activation at Caesars Palace the following week. They needed a simple chalk board graphic to go on an awesome beverage cart they were renting to sit poolside. I proceeded to tell about anyone who would listen about this project, then instantly went to work. I quickly provided some proofs and after two revisions I sent it off to print.

Just one week after receiving the project brief I was on my lunch break receiving a photo from the client happy with the outcome. I was actually walking outside Dream Racing (my current job) looking at some of our exotic cars when the photo came in. That was really a moment of actualization for me. Two years ago I was really struggling. I was trying to find happiness outside of BMX and become more socially confident. I was working hard at a T-Shirt shop and didn't know how to get into a true design position that I loved. It was when I received that text that I realized how far I had came. I remembered forcefully going to the party I didn't want to go to in hopes of making some new connections. I had no intentions of career benefit, but there is no way to know what small actions will lead to in the future. Today I work in a position that challenges me creatively daily and I truly enjoy. After hours I am able to work with some of the best companies in the world. For that, I am truly thankful.

I hope this story can help inspire someone to keep pushing. To put their phone away and put themselves in uncomfortable positions, especially if they are in college. There are so many great connections to be made, and there is no way to know where they will lead in the years to come. Good luck and enjoy the journey!