Faux-Back Friday

The first real Canucks jersey I ever owned is perhaps the ugliest Canucks jersey I own, and definitely one of the ugliest sweaters from Canucks history: the Canucks third jersey which they wore from 2001-2006. This jersey brings back many memories from my childhood. This jersey really sparked my interest in jersey design. Back then not all of the Canucks games were on TV, so on many nights I would sit at my desk colouring (designing hockey jerseys or copying pictures of Canucks players from magazines) and listening to Tom Larschied and John Shorthouse call the games on the radio.

These were really exciting tomes to be a Canucks fan. For 3 big reasons.

This was the time where I truly became a Canucks fan. They were a really exciting team, had very good players (Naslund is still my favourite Canuck of all time, and if Bertuzzi wanted to come back to Vancouver I would welcome him with open arms), and if they had have gotten a solid goaltender (eg. anyone but this guy) I think they would have had a really solid chance at a cup.

Anyways enough reminiscing. To honour this era from Canucks history I have made up a couple faux-back uniforms in an attempt to make this third jersey which I adore for sentimental reasons, but is overall hideous, fit better within the context of the Canucks brand.

Here they are

The first is fits better with the current Canucks brand, rather than my idealized brand identity for the Canucks. This does add some confusion to the identity as a whole with the use of the whale on the front, but it is the most direct parallel from that era to our current one.

the second one is designed to better fit the Canucks brand as a whole. It employs the full body Johnny Canuck logo as the main crest with the arched Vancouver wordmark (my favourite element of the current home and away sweaters) above. This adds a bit of balance to the logo; the skating Johnny Canuck image, although iconic, is awkward by itself as the main logo.

Both uniforms use an unused interlocking "VC" logo for the shoulder patches. This logo is clean and simple, and for this reason, the Canucks will probably never use it, except on merchandise.

Check back on monday as I start the process of designing Winter Classic uniforms for the Canucks.

Thanks for reading.