Project overview
This is a personal project and is currently in progress. The Sundodgers, the University of Washington's Club Ultimate Frisbee team, is consistently ranked as one of the best teams in the country, and is well respected by programs nationwide. These designs aim to illustrate the perennial strength of the program, the team's dynamic offense, and the state of Washington. All of the following designs created on a jersey template in Adobe Illustrator.
logo
The team already had a logo in place that had been used in previous years jerseys. The trident represents the waters of the Pacific Northwest, with its purple and gold colors representing the University of Washington.
A rough, rough draft
This iteration was mainly to decide what the backbone of the design. The above design features fractured gradients and the 'Richardson Brand Accelerator' font. Due to the University of Washington's colors, the gradients of dark purples gave the jersey the most dynamic look
Logo variations
The logos on the right are tests for a single and two color versions of the logo, on a background divided into two colors. This step was mostly to experiment with the logo's placement on a jersey that was not monochromatic. These versions ended up not being used, but this set of iterations allowed me to visualize the color layouts that worked and did not work with the logo.
breaking convention (or trying to)
In the ultimate frisbee community, light implies a white jersey. However, this design iteration attempts to break this mold by bringing in the gradient patterns used in the first iteration. It also introduces a space needle shadow on the right front of the jersey, as well as the team logo on the small of the back.
making vectors
Since this is a club team, the University of Washington's official mascot, the husky, was not available for this design. However, the design still needed to be distinctive--which led me to Mount Rainier. On a clear day, the mountain can be seen from the center of the UW campus, and has become a defining characteristic of the university. Additionally, I created lightning vectors from photos to illustrate Seattle's weather reputation. Both are shown below.
The vector image was created by tracing over distinctive segments of the mountain. While this process is painstaking, it is, for me, one of the most rewarding aspects of design.
Lightning vectors were created in photoshop with a filter, to make the outlines clearer, then transferred to Illustrator & traced
font changes
The Sundodgers had never had a distinct or unique font before. Below are the iterations I took to create a modified font that the would be used for the team's jerseys. The design modifies the 'Richardson Brand Revolution Block' with overlapping edges and sharp extrusions to give a feel of connection and explosion, two traits that team members used to describe the team on a whole.
Progression of variations (left to right; top to bottom) i.e, bottom right is the final iteration.
putting it together
'Darks' in the frisbee community refer to any jersey not white. Generally speaking, this is also the more distinctive of a team's two uniforms. Combining the previous three elements, the design below is my first run at a distinct UW jersey. It features the new font, vectorized mountain & lightning, and logo.
Revising Color Schemes & Fonts
Below are the revised jerseys with a different color schemes. It carries a more defined Rainier summit and lightning vectors and space holders that represent space the team requested be dedicated to sponsors.
