For Kevin Schuenzel, art and sports have been two deep passions of his since a young age. Growing up in Miami, Florida playing an array of sports—including baseball, soccer, basketball, and football—along with actively sketching and drawing different design pieces, Kevin quickly became interested in pursuing a career that merged both spaces. He was on a mission. Sure enough, in 2015, he embarked on a journey that would lead him to do just that. As Kevin officially started his freelance career as an artist and graphic designer, he connected with Kyle Davis—Miami Pro League's Commissioner—and began to explore the possibility of working with the league. Before he knew it, his relentless drive and commitment led him to an opportunity to combine his love for basketball and visual storytelling. In 2019, Kevin got the chance to join Miami Pro League's team and work on its rebranding. The rest is history! history! Over the past four years, Kevin has become a part of the league's staff—as its Creative Director—and works to create the feel and look of the visual assets for the organization season after season.
Take us through that journey early on! How was that transition into the world of digital media and content creation within sports like for you? What were some challenges that you faced early on?
It actually went pretty smooth. I came to Kyle with the mood board, I remember to this day, and we were trying to figure out what colors to choose. Before me, they had started with the Miami Vice colors—before the Heat got it and it became super popular—like 10 years ago. It was kind of like a transition of: “Where do we go from that?” I remember coming to Kyle with the mood board and we had so many different ideas. I had tons of ideas. I was so excited, I was so motivated. He sat down with me and we put three of the designs that I had together. At that time also, our Nike deal wasn't renewed yet, so we were getting inquiries from a bunch of different brands. When I was designing the logo, I actually designed uniforms that never got to see the light of day for each team. As I was designing the uniforms, before Golden State had retroed their old city uniforms, I had a retro jersey—a Nate Thurmond jersey in the old Warriors jersey (from) the year 1966 to 67. I remember when I was designing uniforms that that design came to my head. The circular logo. I called Kyle and I was like, “I think I have an idea.” I remember designing it, putting what me and him had finalized in a little circle design, putting ‘Miami Pro’ around it, and that's how the Miami Pro logo came to life. It was inspired by the retro city jerseys. I think it was just the motivation, the love that I had, and my God-gifted abilities for designing and drawing that came together and made (the) transition easier. It’s kind of like when preparation and opportunity meet, it's a recipe for success. I just think that with my passion and my love for it for so many years, when the opportunity finally came and I gave them so many options, something was gonna stick. Something was gonna work.
Let's talk branding! How did you get started building your personal brand in this space?
I always had a love for graphic design—that was my first assigned major going into college. It slowly started coming back into my head and in my mind as something that I wanted to do. As I was sitting there doing this desk job, I got sick of getting in trouble for drawing. I was just so fed up with it that I literally just got up and walked out. From that day on, I didn't have any other job lined up, I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I had a little bit of money saved. I think for a whole month instead of watching any TV or movies or doing anything else, I would watch YouTube videos. I locked myself in my room, I'd watch YouTube videos, sit there with my computer in front of the TV, and self teach myself how to put my drawings into a vector format. You know, how to create it on a computer—basically like a digital asset. This was before the iPad came out and stuff like that. I didn't have a Wacom or anything like that, so I would just sit there in front of my TV and I would copy what was on TV; redoing it myself. If I didn't understand it, I would rewind it and keep doing it until it was embedded in my head. When I did design myself, I knew what I was doing, what all the tools were, and everything like that. I'd say maybe like a month or two after that I got my first client. I started just putting my own work out there on social media—sketches first and then creating them on the Internet. Then I went to a friend's party and a mutual friend of ours was like, “Man, I've been looking to redo my logo.” I was like: “Hey man, I just started doing this. I can come up with something really cool if you give me the opportunity.” I didn't charge him much at the time because I didn't have any credit or any recognition. I created it for him, he loved it, and then word of mouth started spreading. I kept promoting myself, kept spreading the word. I got a couple clients after that. A friend of mine knew somebody I looked up to, his name is Alex López—he goes by the name of Friks84 and is a very talented and very well-published artist and graphic designer in the business—, and she was like: “Hey, he's having a workshop. You should go.” It wasn’t that far from my house, so I got up and I went. I sat in the front row and I think it was the passion, the love for it, and the willingness to learn that set in at that point. I remember he was doing something live and he didn't know something about the program that I had just learned from YouTube videos. I told him and he was like, “Oh look, you learn something every day.” The program, Adobe Illustrator, had just done an update and the older version didn't have that so he didn't know about it. It was just like a crazy thing. After the workshop was over, I wanted to build a relationship so I went up to him. I had an opportunity to do a mural and asked him if he wanted to collab on it. He gave me his email and was like, “For sure. Email me some of the details, we'll talk, and we'll set something up.” That happened, sent him an email, we talked, he gave me his number, and I set up a meeting with the people for the mural. We went to the meeting early in the morning and I could tell that the client thought the price was too high that we gave them. That didn’t (pan out), but again, I didn't want the relationship to end there. So I invited him to breakfast, we sat down, we ate breakfast, we learned about each other. You know, we talked about our backgrounds and stuff like that. We ended up becoming really good friends. He ended up even hiring me at one point, so I had my own clients. He had actually already been in the sporting industry and had worked for Under Armour, Adidas, and a couple of other athletes as far as freelance goes. Everything that I didn't know or I didn't learn from either school, myself, or those YouTube videos that I watched, he taught me. I learned from him about the ins and outs so I didn't have to go through the trials and errors he even went through.
Diving into your freelance journey, what was the inspiration behind becoming a freelancer in this space?