Evan Brown makes posters to pump up players and students
VANCOUVER — An aspiring graphic artist, Evan Brown started tinkering with the computer one day, trying to find new ways to make ordinary look extraordinary.
His first sports poster was one for his favorite NFL team, the Dallas Cowboys.
Now, he produces one every week for his favorite high school football team, the Union Titans.
A senior at Union, and a former player with the Titans, Brown opted this school year to focus on his academics and his art.
His talents have helped record this special season. Union has won 13 consecutive games and will play for the Class 4A state championship Saturday in the Tacoma Dome.
As the Titans picked up win after win this season, Brown gets back in front of his computer to work his magic, week after week.
Classmates, teachers, even football parents tell him they look forward to his posters every week.
The players love them, too.
“I played last year. I know the players. I feel that helps me because I know them,” Brown said. “They’ll talk to me. ‘Put me on the poster.’”
The feedback is all the reward Brown needs.
“I’ve been told, ‘This is amazing.’ Or ‘That was kind of cool,’” Brown said.
He just wanted to find a way to show his support for the team, and get the student body excited about the next game. The posters are just another way to make this run to the state title game even more memorable for all involved.
“You get that big-program feel,” Brown said.
Brown wants to focus on graphic design, media communications, and fine arts when he goes to college.
“I think I got my creative influence from my mom,” he said of Eileen Brown, an apparel developer at Nike.
He got his love for the Cowboys from his dad Patrick.
It was a Dez Bryant poster that Brown made that sparked the idea to focus on the local team instead. He also was part of a marketing class at the high school.
“My job was to market things for the school,” Brown said. “So I made a poster.”
He showed the principal, Brian Grimsted, and the principal enthusiastically OK’d Brown to keep doing them.
That first Union-based football poster “looked good from a distance,” Brown said, but had some rough spots for the trained eye.
He works the computer every week now, trying to improve his skills.
His favorite poster came prior to last year’s game against Camas for the Class 4A Greater St. Helens League championship.
“It’s not my best one, but it was the first of that kind,” Brown said. “It kind of kicked off from there, that I could do it. I’d never done something that big with that many players. It took me so long to do it.
“They look better now. They’ve come a long way.”
Brown is also part of Titan Nation, a group that tries to pump up the rest of the student body at big events.
“There is a buzz in the air,” he said of this week as the school prepares for the championship game.
And should Union win the title on Saturday?
“I’m thinking about doing something special,” Brown said.
