Krista Miller Brings D.C. to Life as the ‘Design Your Own Rally Towel’ Winner

Krista Miller was sitting in her Northern Virginia home when an email from the Washington Capitals came up.

High screams echoed throughout the Miller household, startling her father.  

Miller quickly shared her reaction was the pure joy of emotion that might just jump-start her career.

Three months prior she took a chance with the Capitals’ ‘Design Your Own Rally Towel Contest’ with a design that meant to reflect her staying true to herself and her passions.

The chance paid off as she was the selected winner.

Her love for animals and nature helped emulate the perfect design that more than 18,000 Capitals fans will be waving back and forth for the game on March 1 vs the Philadelphia Flyers.

Miller, a 25-year-old alumnus of the Savannah College of Art and Design and current marketing graphic designer at Kohl's, is thankful for the opportunity and can’t wait to share her design with Caps fans.

“It's incredibly surreal because it was really just like, I put it out there and thought, ‘Okay, this would be fun, I want to give this a shot,’” she said. “I mean, to be a winner is an incredibly honoring experience. So many people from my personal life supported me by voting, and then all of the Caps fans that voted too, it really means a lot.”

When coming up with a design, Miller was inspired by the Capitals weagle logo and based her creation around the symbol. She has a weagle sticker on her computer and continued coming back to it when brainstorming her design. She took the weagle and made her own modifications to it that felt different from the original with a new taste to it.

In the hands of the weagle is a broken stick. Miller says one of her favorite things about watching hockey is when sticks go flying after a shot.

“I wanted to bring in the idea of like a stick breaking because when I watch a lot of the games. I always love when someone takes a slapshot and a stick goes flying like a boomerang,” she said. “So I thought that'd be a good power symbol.”

As she worked on her design, Miller kept returning to how she could make the design have the feel of Washington, D.C.

“I included the stripes and stars on the side as a mimic and reference to the D.C. flag and I wanted to include just a little hint in the eye with a little star for the U.S. stars and stripes too,” she added.

About a week before the contest deadline, Miller sat in her apartment and got to work. She took a Saturday to create what she thought was the perfect look.

Miller’s preparation came in a two-part process.

First, she starts out in her sketchbook as she believes that it forces her to think a little bit more and not be as committal as she would be on the computer. Pen in hand, she makes up some quick sketches and focus on positions and angles of different lines and shapes.

And from there, she enters part two: the computer. When she goes digital, it takes a bit more of her concentration.

“Generally, in that second stage is when I'll put down like gridlines or size requirements or any other important details to consider,” she said. “So, for this one, I put an inch margin on each side of the size of the rally towel, just as like a print safe area so then I could draw within that. And I didn't have to worry about any details coming off the edge.”

Like any artist, Miller made modification-after-modification until she felt comfortable.

She spent around six to eight hours on the Adobe Illustrator program online.

“It was like a few days of just kind of tweaking and refining, but I try to get the majority of the work done in that day and kind of clean it up from there,” she said. “Just so it's like on paper and then I can take a step back and look at it again with fresh eyes or ask any of my friends or peers for feedback on it and work from there.”

Miller credits her college courses as her education into online design and learning programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Even outside of classes though, she found herself exploring each program by picking up little tricks and tools that proved beneficial.

Her art, that started as online commissions in high school, is about to generate the biggest audience it has seen, and Miller can’t wait for the reaction.

“Some of the most important things that I can do with my creative practice is making work that people are excited by,” she said. “That is one of the most rewarding feelings ever is to make something and see people go, ‘wow, that's super cool,’ and they get excited by it. So, I'd love to keep making designs and work that people can interact with and get that excitement from.”