Saturday July 21: Evolution of the V

For the weekend's post I thought I would give you a glimpse into my creative process, and show you how these Flying Vs came to be.

I started making hockey jersey in early 2011 (have I only been doing it that long!?!) the first ever design I made was an Ottawa Senators jersey which I posted to my facebook. Soon afterwards I posted a few Canucks concepts, and a my friend David said "Wanna make up a demo for the flying V in blue, green, and white? I still want to see the Canucks try that. With Johnny Canuck as the Shoulder patch."

I did and just that, and here is what I came up with. This is one of my very early designs, so please, go easy on me!

I was very happy with these at the time, but as my skills improved, I knew I would have to revisit these at some point. This was one of the reasons I started SOAC, so that I could revisit some of my old Canucks designs, and apply my improved skills and ideas to them. These were pretty good for having only been designing jerseys for a week or so, but still, there is a lot to be improved upon.

The next step in this process came a few weeks ago when I posted a trifecta of Flying V concepts on this blog from Stéphane, Justin, and myself. Truth be told, I really hated the designs I came up with. They were too busy. Here they are again, anyways.

These looked more like Ms than Vs, but there were elements there which I did like. They just needed some refining and simplifying. That was the next step to come. I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. here are the results of the refining and simplifying.

I was really starting to become comfortable with what I had created, but that is where some more help came along from regular reader and contributor Stéphane, who suggested I cut off the V at the sleeve stripe, and switch some of the colours around. I likes his suggestions, they made the jersey more balanced and logical, while still reminding me of the original Canucks flying V uniforms. Just for fun, I also made up a green version of this sweater. Here are the final versions, which are now posted in the final concepts page.

So there you have it. Those are the finalized flying Vs, and that is how they came to be.

Next weekend I will also have an "evolution" post where I look back at some of my VERY early Canucks jersey designs. This will be a very unique, and interesting post. I won't say more than that. check back for next Saturday for that.