Saturday, July 28: A flash back to my earliest ever jersey designs.

Hey everyone, I really appreciate you stopping by to the site. Running this blog has been a lot of fun for me, and it has been really good to share ideas and receive feedback on my designs. I feel that as a concept designer I have only improved since starting up this blog. But it has not been as easy as I thought. I am constantly challenged to create fresh and creative concepts o a regular basis to post on SOAC. I guess this is to say, I have been getting a lot of practice with designing hockey sweaters. The old saying practice makes perfect does not apply to me and my designs, but practice certainly makes better.

Last month I won my first COTW on HJC, and this concept went on to beat out some fantastic designs to claim the COTM for June. Since submitting this concept I actually worked with some more suggestions and improved the road sweater (you can check out what the finished product looks like on the final concepts page).

I have been designing jerseys on my computer for about a year and a half now, and have been drawing hockey players and hockey jerseys in notebooks for many years before I realized people actually did this on their computers, and posted their work online. This has become such a fun hobby for me, but I want to look backwards today and encourage anybody who is just starting off, by looking back at some of my early jersey designs.

Many of the designs you have seen me post here on SOAC have been incubating for years. You may remember this design from one of the very first concept posts from this site. It wen through many evolutions before the final product was complete. I tried many different templates, and many different ideas for arm striping. I also made many errors along the way.

My most recent Canucks concept which I made up before working on the designs which would wind up on SOAC, was this one. I concept which I polished up in February 2012 and printed off to take to a David Booth signing (I don't like to get jerseys signed, because, then I feel like I can't ever wear them again... and I didn't have a Booth card, so I made up and printed off a custom Booth concept!). I wanted to make sure it was polished, but I still made the error of not putting the hem stripes over top of the jersey stitching.

Here is another version of the home concept which I made in June 2012. It is essentially the same sort of concept as the previous one, but lacks polish, and does not have the skills applied to it that I learned and applied to the previous concept. I don't have shoulder patches properly applied to both sides of the sweater, and I make the same mistake with the hem striping. Also, the experimentation in the sleeve striping just doesn't look good, it doesn't even compare with the finished product.

Taking an even bigger step back we arrive at some of the earliest Canucks designs I did during my first month of concept designing in February 2011. For the away sweater, note how the striping has basically stayed the same all throughout the process of designing this sweater. Also look at the TV numbers... they are drawn freehand! I didn't know how to rotate numbers by a few degrees, and hadn't found a template where I could apply them horizontally, so I drew them on. Interestingly, I didn't make the mistake with the hem striping not going over top of the jersey stitching on these concepts. I can assure you I did not get this right consciously.

I guess the point of this post is everyone has to start somewhere. I am not saying I am the best designer in the world (I am clearly not), but I am saying that I have improved with practice. There is still a long way for me to go, and may things for me to learn, but I will keep doing this as long as I enjoy it, because that is the main thing.

I started doing this just for fun, while I listened to the radio broadcast of Canucks games in the late 90's/early 2000's. I started by just colouring jerseys, and it has evolved into something much more sophisticated than that. Recently, I dug up some of my very jersey designs (which were made on index cards which I cut into the shape of a hockey sweater, and coloured with pencil crayon). I made these up and hung them from a string to decorate my bedroom.

    

    

   

    

    

As you can tell, the ideas which show up on these concepts have influenced designs I have posted on SOAC. I also want to point out that a twelve year old came up with the idea for a blue and green orca uniform 5 years before the Canucks did. That fact puts how awful our current uniforms are in perspective, eh?  :)

Anyways, thanks for  stopping by. I'm sorry that I have had to scrap one of my posts next week. I just haven't had time to write it between packing and finishing up course work for summer term. There will be a post on wednesday (which will be well worth stopping by to read), and a contributors concept post on friday. I get back on thursday night, so will probably have time to write the post which was intended for monday then, and will probably post it on the weekend.

Thanks for reading!