The Diaries Of A Freelance Football Kit Designer

Starting The Process

2012-01-14T05:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I was a little bit disappointed not to have been involved with the home top last year, especially since it's rancid. I had some good ideas. The away top I designed for 09-10 had been such a big flop in the shop that they were keeping it on a season in order to shift more units.

For the past few months, I'd just been emailing 1869 with some thoughts and ideas about good kits, colour combinations etc. Just letting them know I'm still here. I decided to give the guy in charge a call today, just too see how things were (and to see how my freebies for the League Cup semi were coming along.) We started talking about the kits for next season. Nothing had been planned as yet. Good news for me. He said that they are changing the way in which the colour on the material is printed, so there would be a lot more room for manoeuvre in terms of design. Good, good, good.

I had sent over a few pictures of shirts I'd seen where I'd liked the colour schemes or other little design details. There were a few that we both liked and we talked about how we might take those aspects and make them more "Killie."

Now, I'd love to tell you what tops we were looking at and what specific ideas we have, but unfortunately, I can't. If you follow football shirt design at all you'll know that designs are a closely guarded secret. A lot of the excitement for a new football top rests on the tension and anticipation of seeing that new shirt. So, I'll talk about design as much as I can, but I won't be giving too much away.

Back to the phone call though. We chatted a bit about ideas, problems that have been coming up etc. We decided on a few central ideas for the shirts, home and away, and now I'll go and doodle some ideas.

I have a nice little template for Adobe Illustrator that I use. I'll draw out some rough ideas there and send them away to 1869. At this stage, the feedback and comment will only be between me and 1869. Once we have decided on a few concrete ideas, then we show them to the club.

The factory that actually produce the kits also send over some ideas. It was a factory idea that this seasons top was based on. Usually, they are very... interesting. A few wild ideas mixed in with some copies of Nike/Adidas kits. They get shown to the club as well. I usually try and make sure that 1869 are suggesting the club ignore these.

The process of making the top for Kilmarnock is a fast one. I've had a wee chat with somebody at Umbro and they spend a year and a half sorting out a clubs kit. They'll just be finalising the designs for the 2013/14 season. They person at Umbro was shocked that we sort out the Killie tops in around 6 months. But we manage it!

So I'm off now. Going to have a scan through some old ideas and trawl the internet for ideas.

My Background

2012-01-14T05:04:00.001-08:00

So, I'm going to give this a go. If nobody reads it, then nevermind. I want to just have written down my little story about how I go about designing a football shirt for a professional football team.

Bit of background I suppose:

I'm a student physics teacher at Newcastle Uni. I graduated from Glasgow Uni with a degree in Avionics in 2009. I've always been an arty so-and-so since I was a kid. I focus on more design sorta things though. I almost did Architecture at uni but couldn't be arsed with the 7 years.

As a kid, my main two things I doodled were stadiums and football kits. These days, I doodle stadiums on Google SketchUp and I design football kits for Kilmarnock Football Club.

They way I got in to designing kits involved a very fortunate series of events:

In early 2009, I was just doing my usual thing of photoshopping up some ideas and sticking them up on the Kilmarnock fan's forum. The club had just taken the unusual step of starting to manufacture their own kits under their own brand, "1869". The kits themselves are actually manufactured by a 3rd party company called "Vision." It was them who got in touch with me after seeing my ideas on the fan''s forum.

They dropped me an email saying that they had seen my designs and were very impressed. They had already sorted out the home kit for the 2009-2010 season so couldn't use my ideas, but asked me if I could come up with a few designs for t-shirts and stuff for the club shop. I was obviously delighted and said yes. I met up with the owner of Vision a few days after where he brought along loads of fabric samples and a few prototype shirts for me to have a look at and give my input. I showed him my ideas for the t-shirts I'd designed and he was really pleased with what I'd done.

The next bit had my knees all wobbly. He said that the club had just started on the away top for the next season. They had a colour scheme and some rough ideas, but they wanted me to take that and come up with some concepts for the away shirt. They had said to me "white, with some blue detailing and gold piping." Easy enough, I went home and knocked up a few ideas within a couple of hours. Some were a bit more experimental than others, but I had a nice safe one that I thought they might pick. And they did.

So, for the 2009-10 season. They Kilmarnock away top was designed by me. A proper childhood fantasy come true.

Next season, home and away shirts. Both my ideas, my designs. That away top is still the away shirt for this season. The home top, I had nothing to do with. I had moved down to Derby and was a bit busy, and so, out of the loop a bit.

But anyway, that takes us up until about now. It seems as if I am going to be involved with next seasons shirts, so, my intention is to keep a blog of what happens during the process of designing a top.