Thursday, July 19: The Red-Headed League, and Vancouver Brand Blending

As you may know, from reading this blog, although I am first and foremost a Canucks hockey fan, the other teams in Vancouver do occupy a piece of my heart. There is a really interesting trend happening with all of the top level sports teams in Vancouver these days. They are all being led by gingers. This only lead me to like these teams, and the players who lead them even more, as I share the same hair colour (which generations from now will no longer naturally exist). There is a Classic Sherlock Holmes story which includes a large congregation of red-heads which acts as a cover up for a bank robbery. With all the gingers leading Vancouver's sports teams right now, the red-headed league seems to be taking another form. I may have to do up a poster making use of this Classic Sherlock holmes title, and all these red-headed Vancouver athletes (if and when I get around to it, it will be posted in the Canucks Design section of the blog... if you haven't visited it, check it out!)

The Canucks gingers are now well known around the NHL, and are obviously vital to the team's success. When walking around town (especially if I have a Canucks shirt or jersey on) I often get called "Sedin" or "Schneids."



But these are not the only high profile
ginger athletes in Vancouver these days. Travis Lulay the quarterback for the BC Lions, and the CFL's reigning Most Outstanding Player, the guy who led an 0-5 team all the way to winning the Grey Cup, is also a ginger.


The latest Ginger to arrive on the Vancouver sports scene is Barry Robson. A Scottish international midfielder, who has played for some high profile football (soccer) clubs in Britain, including one of my favourites Celtic FC. Last night Robson scored his first goal (a stunning header) as a Whitecap against David Beckham's LA Galaxy. Unfortunately the Caps blew their 2-0 lead (in the last 10 minutes of the match), and the game ended in a 2-2 draw.


I have wanted to do a Whitecaps inspired Canucks jersey for a while, and figured now was the time.

The Caps white jersey has some really unique elements, but if transferred straight to a hockey sweater, they wouldn't necessarily work as well as they do on the Cap's jerseys.

I really like the unique striping pattern on the front of the jersey. It is a look that works really well on a soccer kit, but I am sure would never fly for hockey.

I also really like the Caps colour scheme, and it has worked on hockey uniforms in the past (especially Pittsburgh Penguins sweaters).

I also like some of the small details on the jersey which reference the club's history, and identity (like the "since 1974" on the neck, and the WFC inside the collar.

HOWEVER, there are things which needed to be altered slightly for me to work within the parameters of a Canucks hockey sweater.

First off was the main crest. I couldn't use a whitecaps logo on a Canucks uniform. But I wanted to keep the colour scheme, and clean classic feel of the kit. There is really only one clean and classic Canucks logo which slightly resembles this crest, and would look decent enough in this place on a sweater. The VC logo (clearly one of my favourites right now!) I recoloured it to fit the double blue colour scheme, and added a silver outline, like the Whitecaps main crest.

There are other logos on the front of the Caps kit which just wouldn't jive with the Canucks. First off the Adidas logo. As the NHL has a contract with Reebok to make their jerseys, an adidas logo would NEVER show up on the front of a current NHL sweater. Secondly the Canucks play at ROGERS arena, and would likely never display a BELL jersey sponsorship on the front of their sweaters (for international readers Rogers and Bell are two of the top telecom companies in Canada, and are always competing). The solution to these problems was simple, switch Adidas for Reebok, and Bell for Rogers.

I also subbed the MLS patch for a recoloured stich in the rink patch, and left the Canadian flag as is.

Then Came the most challenging bit filling out the jersey. This jersey is white and, especially with removing all traces of Adidas (the arm stripes included), it can look very empty when transferred directly to a hockey sweater. I altered the striping on the chest slightly to make it make a little more sense on a hockey sweater, and added vertical arm striping (thinner than usual) to make up for the void left when the three Adidas stripes were removed. I also included the light blue in these stripes, because I think it is overall underused in these kits.


The equipment was simple. I could really do whatever I wanted, because the Caps wear all white shorts and socks (aside from the Adidas stripes and branding) so I just made up some stuff that I thought worked well. The pants have three stripes on them (which hint at the Adidas styling) and the socks feature navy and light blue hoops (I really hope the Whitecaps introduce hooped uniforms sometime in the future. I think they always look sharp). 


hope you enjoy this concept!