I had the immense privilege to lead motion graphics while also designing Key Art for A Clean Sheet: Gabe Landeskog. The six part docuseries follows the Colorado Avalanche Captain as he navigates anxiety, recovery, and the realities of being sidelined from professional hockey.
Role: Graphics Lead, Graphic Designer, Motion Designer
Show Brand Strategy
The crux of the show was to convey Gabe’s rehabilitation and mental state as authentically as possible. It was an absolute necessity that the graphics embodied Gabe Landeskog the person. A viewer watching A Clean Sheet should not feel as though they are watching a sports documentary, but rather they are hearing Gabe’s story told in his own words without filter.
The graphical manifestation of authenticity was realized by heavy use of handwriting in place of type.
Key Art
Key Art for a series always needs to provide as much emblematic context as possible while serving as a visual hook that can reign in clicks. Gabe’s reality as an injured hockey player placed him on the outside looking in, sidelined in the locker room with his jersey hung behind him and dressed in street clothes.
Journals
During his recovery, Gabe kept a paper journal to document his physical and mental progress as he worked through the injury. Creative leadership for the documentary dictated the need for a graphical representation of this journal and the graphics team was able to realize it with a custom built After Effects template filled out with actual scans of the handwriting.
Timeline
Rather than presenting Gabe’s story chronologically, A Clean Sheet made frequent use of time jumps between scenes, going back and forth between past and present. Of course, audience comprehension can be jeopardized as soon as our place in the story starts to swing, so we developed a handwritten timeline with dynamic position and scale so viewers could follow “when” the story was taking place.
End Credits
The End Credits needed to put a bow on the narrative. Seeing as so much of the documentary centered around his family, it seemed fitting to accompany the credits with pencil drawings of Gabe, his wife, and children.
