From college basketball to junior designer: what sport taught me about creative work

Before becoming a junior designer, Adam Davenport was training for a career in basketball. After studying graphic design while playing college ball in the US, he found his way into events and experiential design – bringing with him a competitive mindset, a tolerance for feedback and a belief that creativity can be trained.

I didn't come into the creative industry through a typical route. Before I ever opened a design programme, all of my time was spent on basketball courts - training, travelling, competing, and eventually playing college basketball in the US.

At that stage, I genuinely thought basketball would be my career. I'd worked my whole life towards playing college ball in America, with the goal of eventually turning pro in Europe. But while I was playing, I was also studying graphic design at my University. I'd excelled in art and design throughout school, and I knew, even then, that it was something I was good at.

The basketball world is built on repetition and performance, and at the time it felt very far removed from anything creative. But the more time I've spent working in design and brand experience, the more I've realised how closely the two overlap.

Adam playing basketball

Creativity can be trained

As a shooting guard, I was constantly making split-second calls in games and in practice: assessing the quality of a shot I was about to take, and whether making the extra pass would set up a higher-percentage shot than the one in front of me. That instinct – pause, assess, choose the better option over the obvious one – is something I still rely on every time I'm working through a brief.

The idea of "training creativity" is also something sport understands well. The best athletes aren't simply relying on instinct, they're building habits through repetition, learning from mistakes and making decisions quickly under pressure. In other words, creativity isn't the opposite of structure; it's often the result of it. That's something I've carried into my work.

When I eventually came back to the UK, I told myself that if I put as much effort into design as I had into basketball, I'd find success. I didn't know at that point that I'd end up in the events industry, it sort of fell into my lap.

Adam and the team at brand experience agency onepointfive

Find your way in through your own niche

A good friend of mine was starting to find success as a DJ and wanted to throw his own events, but his marketing was dreadful. As a young designer keen to get as many projects under my belt as possible, I offered to help him out for free. The events picked up huge traction almost immediately, because the design suddenly looked as professional as what much bigger companies were putting out. Finding success that quickly, so soon after stepping away from basketball, was a turning point. It made me realise just how much power good design actually has.

I designed everything myself for that brand - posters, social content, the full visual identity and for the first time I saw ideas move beyond a screen and into a real environment. The experience taught me how important it is to find a niche and have “your thing” within an industry.

Two weeks after graduating with my design degree, I was hired by a small experiential agency who’d seen my events branding work. That role let me properly develop my understanding of how design functions within experiential, working with some of the biggest brands in the world.

Creative work is a team sport

It also made something else very clear: creative work, especially in live environments, is rarely individual. It's team-based, fast-moving and often high-pressure, which makes it far closer to sport than most people realise. Both rely on collaboration, timing and the ability to respond quickly when things don't go to plan.

Feedback doesn’t have to feel personal

Sport also changed how I think about feedback. In a creative environment, feedback can feel personal. You're attached to the work, and rejection can feel like a judgement on your ability.

In sport, feedback is constant and direct, but it's rarely emotional. It's there to improve performance. That shift in mindset, seeing feedback as part of progression rather than criticism, has been one of the most useful things I've brought into my work.

I felt this most clearly early in my career, going through countless RFP processes - essentially pitching to win new work with new clients. I'd spend huge amounts of time building full presentations and branding options, often going up against agencies many times our size, and more often than not, we wouldn't win. But I never let it knock my confidence or change how I worked, because I believed the work was always good enough. That belief came directly from years of being told “not good enough, again” on a basketball court and learning to separate the feedback from my sense of self-worth.

Consistency matters more than brilliance

Another lesson I've carried with me is consistency. Not every brief is exciting. Not every idea works. But progress comes from showing up consistently, refining your work and improving over time. Creativity, in that sense, is less about moments of brilliance and more about sustained effort.

Why sport and creativity are closer than they look

This crossover between sport, culture and creativity is only becoming more visible.Now we’re in the thick of the 2026 World Cup, the lines between sport, entertainment and brand experience continue to blur. Major sporting events are no longer just competitions; they’re cultural moments that demand the same level of storytelling, immersion and emotional engagement as any other experience.

For brands, it’s no longer enough to simply be present. The expectation is to create something people actively want to be part of.

Looking back, I didn't realise how much sport would shape the way I approach my creative work, but the overlap is hard to ignore. Both require discipline, rely on teamwork, and are ultimately about performance, not in the sense of showing off, but in delivering something that works, under pressure, in real time.

Your past experience still counts

If I'm honest, entering the creative industry from such a non-traditional background was daunting. I felt a lot of imposter syndrome in those early years. But the confidence I'd built over years of playing basketball let me push past that, I knew I was capable of whatever I put my mind to. I think that's true for anyone making a similar leap. Past experience doesn't become redundant just because you're moving into a new sector, and I think career changes like this should be normalised, especially in a world that's changing as fast as ours is. Human brains can pick up new skills quickly. What can't be taught is the attitude you bring to your craft.

Creativity might look different on the surface, but underneath, it follows many of the same rules. And those are rules I learned long before I ever called myself a designer.