2006 Aflac All American High School Baseball Classic Advertisement Campaign

The first official game of baseball was played on June 19, 1846 and was played between a team called the Knickerbockers and a group of cricket players. 

The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play beginning when a player on the fielding team throws a ball that a player on the batting team tries to hit the ball with a bat.

The Aflac All American High School Baseball Classic brings together the nation’s best 38 young baseball players for an East vs. West showdown, with proceeds benefiting pediatric cancer treatment and research. It's outstanding baseball every year. 

The Aflac Classic consistently provides a high-profile event for the players and for the scouts to evaluate the talents of these elite athletes." Aflac All-Americans are chosen by Baseball America magazine and Perfect Game USA. All participants must have just completed their junior year of high school, be in good academic standing and display redeeming qualities off the field that embody the ideals of the sport of baseball, including discipline, determination and hard work.

Since 2003, Aflac has hired multiple artists over the years to create these ad campaigns for the event. Over the years, people have recreated these campaigns not just to revise them but to bring them back to life and make them more modern. 

This can represent the elements of the “traditional” design canon. It generates an obstacle for the future of any graphic designers. When a designer creates a piece, that sets the standard for all of the other pieces other designers will create. 

Martha Scotford states, "For students new to the study of graphic design, a canon creates the impression that they need to go no further: the best is known, the rest is not worth knowing.” This means the person needs to create something of their own rather than copying the design they found. Using it for inspiration is good because it gives you your own view of it. They should use it to set their own guidelines and always aim to create their own unique style. Every designer should have that dream and try to aim for that. Graphic designers and students should then learn what are the factors that make them create a bad piece of design and then be able to make innovative work without failing.

The relationship between art and design enriches our experiences. This synergy creates work that is aesthetically pleasing. Art and design often collaborate, especially in creative industries like advertising, campaigns, product, and design. Like in these different ad campaigns, they are all aesthetically pleasing in their own way. Each of them have a unique and cohesive style.   

Whether for boosting morale or rallying support for a specific cause, Propaganda or Heroic Realism is art that is used to convey a non-impartial message to the audience. By looking at these All American ad campaigns, you see these designs evoke values found in mass media. 

This piece tells the story of the commitment these players have to the sport. It also tells and shows the stylization the artist of this poster and the other posters have. It represents the voice of each designer who got to work on one of these campaigns. It also voices the Aflac company itself by promoting them and the baseball classic. 

Future designers can learn that even though something is not from their era doesn’t mean they can’t use it. You can learn to find resources from any piece of graphic design out in the field. 

This piece can inform and inspire you by taking the art and using your own style to it. That is truly one of your goals as a graphic designer.