Lifelong Vanderbilt fan Shaun Senn started creating Vandy player graphics, or “edits,” just for fun. His social media posts grabbed the attention of Commodore coaches, and soon he found himself with a full-time job at the Athletic Department doing what he loves. Meet the man who creates everything from team posters to season tickets to the cool graphics you find on Twitter and Instagram (@sennsm in both spots).
I was raised by my grandparents in Pleasant View in Cheatham County.
I’ve been a Vanderbilt fan my whole life.
We were at a Sounds game when I was young and we won tickets to a Vanderbilt football game. So, my first ever college football game, my granddad brought me out to see Vanderbilt against Duke. I was 9 or 10 years old. As a kid, emotional things like that tie you to things. You remember things like that. Somebody special took you or something special happened.
Fast forward and now I’ve been a season ticket holder in football since 1998.
I played baseball all through high school, and I was always a Cubs fan. Growing up here you had WGN and TBS, so you either followed the Braves or the Cubs.
Weirdly enough, my favorite player was Barry Bonds. I don’t know what it was about him. I guess the Cubs didn’t have many great players back then.
I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do after high school. I went to Vol State Community College for a bit and realized college wasn’t my thing, especially without baseball. Baseball really got me through high school.
So, I went to work but then realized I needed to do something with my life. I went to ITT Tech for computer aided drafting.
For around seven years, I worked in that field drawing commercial building plans. We did a lot of hospital work and also some stores and restaurants.
Then a job opened up here at Vanderbilt with computer aided drafting. I had some background in civil surveying and they had a geographic information systems position. It was a lot of underground utility work. If they were building an addition anywhere on campus, you’d get the site plans back once they built it and input that in the computer. We tracked things like sidewalks and gas lines. I did that for 10 years, and it was pretty boring.
Somewhere along the lines I got into graphic design. I found that I really enjoyed photography, which led me into Photoshop. I started messing around with Photoshop and posted some Vanderbilt things on social media. Vanderbilt’s then-football coach, James Franklin, caught wind of it and thought I could be of some help.
They wanted me to help with recruiting graphics. Kids in high school love that stuff. They weren’t paying me at first. I was happy as a fan to be a part of the program. Coach Franklin would introduce me to the team at practice. For a fan, that was about the coolest thing you could get.
As great as it was, it eventually got to the point where I either needed to get a job or I couldn’t keep doing this. At that point Derek Mason was hired, and he talked to David Williams about hiring me full-time.
I have been helping Coach Tim Corbin and the baseball program since the season they won the College World Series in 2014. I got a text from [Assistant AD] Drew Fann a couple days after they won, and he wanted to know what size ring I wear. I thought it couldn’t be real, so I told him. The team gets their rings and I never see a ring. But then I met with David Williams about the full-time position, and when he offered me the job, he gave me my World Series ring. I got a job and a World Series ring on the same day. That’s my most prized possession. That was really cool of Coach Corbin to do that for me, but if you know him, it’s not unusual.
I like a clean look. Most of my stuff you see, it’s going to be simple and clean. I like white space. I don’t feel like you have to fill up every pixel of your space.
When I was a kid, on my bedroom wall I had posters of Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Bo Jackson. So, to me, if a kid or a fan likes my stuff enough to hang it on the wall, and leave it on the wall after the season is over, that means the most to me.
I’ll find inspiration everywhere. There have been times where I’ll be at a restaurant and look at a menu and I might recognize a font. There are a lot of sites I follow on social media that I’m constantly looking at, whether it’s finding a different way to show some text, or textures, anything. I’m not a natural creative so it helps me to see inspiration from other people.
In a lot of ways, I don’t consider myself creative. I’ve had to work at it, it’s something I found I enjoyed doing. I taught myself. I don’t have any formal training.
Going back to my love of baseball, my all-time favorite moment as a Vanderbilt fan had to be the 2014 College World Series. That was amazing. I went to all three of the Super Regional games that year against Stanford. I remember how I reacted when Stanford hit the home run to beat Indiana that sent them here. Otherwise we would have had to go to Indiana. I went running through the house yelling and woke my wife up.
A close second would be in 2008 when ESPN’s College GameDay came to campus and we beat Auburn in football. We were 5-0, we were ranked. That whole day was cool, from going over to the Commons and seeing the GameDay set, waiting the whole afternoon for the night game. It kind of brought a tear to my eye that night.
I’m an avid, competitive, disc golfer. A neighbor introduced me to the sport a number of years ago, and now I play every weekend in a tournament or casually. It helps me stay active. We have a course in Dickson where I live now.
Without a doubt, no question about it, growing up as a Vanderbilt fan, being a Vanderbilt fan as an adult, this is a dream job. From being a sports fan who was into graphic design to being able to do this as a job, and you pay me for it? That’s really, really cool and I try to never lose sight of that.
There’s no way I could get another job doing anything I’d love as much as I love doing this. I do my best to help Vanderbilt put out a good product, a good brand, for the fans to enjoy. No matter the stress level — and there are many, many days where I’m stressed to the max — I try to never lose sight of the fact that I love what I do. There are not many people who can say that.
Interviewed by Andrew Maraniss
