By Country

Sunday 23 August 2009

Maccabi Tel-Aviv (מכבי תל-אביב) & Omonia Nicosia (Ομόνοια Λευκωσίας)

Today I bring you what I could call my Mediterranean template as the two teams I have produced with this template both come from this region or more specifically the Eastern Mediterranean. Maccabi Tel-Aviv of Israel and Omonia Nicosia of Cyprus two of the furthest south east outreaches of European football and relatively unknown histories to most Europeans not from the region.

Maccabi Tel-Aviv is one of the oldest sports clubs in Israel, the football part makes up a far larger organization which partakes in a lot of different sports such as Basketball, Volleyball, Swimming and Handball. In fact the basketball section of the organization is one of the most successful teams in Europe. Back to football though, Maccabi (which refers to one of the Maccabees, whose stories have become synonymous with courage, victory and success) have won the most league titles in Israel and as well as this have also won the Asian Champions Cup twice when Israel was once affiliated with the AFC rather than UEFA. Being the most succesful and most supported club in Israel, Maccabi has had some very good players in it ranks that are famous in the rest of Europe such as Eyal Berkovic (אייל ברקוביץ'), Tal Ben-Haim (טל בן-חיים) and John Paintsil, although Berkovic is more recognised as a Maccabi Haifa player, he did infact end his career with the Tel-Aviv club.

I am quite please with the design of the shirt, I intended to make something a bit adidas-y and I think I have achieved it without having to add three stripes. The collar is taken from Liverpool's 06-08 kit, well it is modelled from that and the lines from the collar down the sleeves are reminiscent of last years training kits. Maccabi Tel-Aviv tend to change the design of their kits very often, from stripes to plain yellow to even checkered kits so I thought by adding a blue chest band it would fit in well to that pattern of variation and also add a bit of an individual touch. While making the back of the shirt I didn't intend for it to look like the front of adidas' kits a few years ago but I thought it looked a bit plain so I added those flecks and I think it turned out well. The shorts as you know are not a strong point in design for me and I am not impressed by these, they are very much an after thought. The socks however I am quite pleased with, I tend to be getting better making original sock designs, this one is intended to have a different cut around the calf on the fold over being a more dynamic looking V shape instead of the conventional round style.


For the away kit I have gone for a colour scheme based around the national flag, using the Israeli white and blue colour scheme, it was tough to choose whether or not to add the two blue bars across the front of the chest (like the flag) and I sort of regret doing that now as the shirt is perhaps busy enough as it is. It was also a decision before even designing the template that I wanted the back to be a different colour to the front on the away shirts as I really liked it when Kappa did it for their kits a while back now.


Omonia Nicosia has traditionally been the most successful club in Cypriot football until this year where they were over taken in league titles by city rivals APOEL. During the 70's and 80's, Omonia were the dominant power in Cypriot title race capturing 14 out of 20 league titles in that period, the 90's and 00's have been barren in comparison, with only 3 titles with Anorthosis, APOEL and Apollon all overshadowing them. Although not being a force in European football or even Cypriot football at the present time them have managed to capture one big name player, that being former Wisła Kraków and Celtic striker Maciej Żurawski who has quite a good scoring record at both club and international levels, if they can build on this they are sure to recapture the glory that the 70's and 80's teams enjoyed.

For the kit I thought it pretty important to bring more green into the mix as that is said to represent hope and the team really need more of that so the shorts have been turned green as currently them play in white the shoulders and back are also almost entirely green just being broken up by little bits of white. I was also quite impressed by the look of their kits which had stripes and as I wanted to try these out on this template I obliged with them and think they have turned out pretty well although I did have to modify the back of the template to make them fit. The club crest has also been put inside a traditional shield which I think helps the shirt too, I toyed with just have the shamrock in the crest but it looked too Irish Rugby for my liking.


The away shirt is another play on the national flag, but this I really don't like looking at it now. I got the idea from Kappa's old Vitória Guimarães third kit which was white with a yellow back, but this really doesn't do that justice, maybe it is the black that lets it down, I don't know, I just know I find it hideous to look at now, although the map of Cyprus in the middle of the shirt is a redeeming feature. Oh and APOEL play in yellow...

Saturday 22 August 2009

And Yet More Kappa...

I think I must have made kits for every Kappa team going at the time, the amount of people that would complain if this was really the case. So nothing to explain here just more different colours of the previous template. There are still a few more but I will post some more original stuff before I post the rest, give you a bit of a respite.





Friday 21 August 2009

Some More Kappa...

Just noticed I had never posted these up so here you go, nothing special just a lot of different colour combinations from my 'Kappa' design for teams who played in Kappa at the time of making them.

Don't worry I do have more new designs to show off soon but I'll use these as a gap filler for now.





Thursday 20 August 2009

Dalian Shide (大连实德)

Sorry for neglecting my blog, I've been a little busy the past week with a little project of my own and also other personal matters which have needed to be sorted out. Hope people have still been looking at all the pretty pictures :D

Dalian Shide are the most successful team in China but have never really been considered big players in Asian continental competitions. They have also been known to produce some of China's most well known players such as Sun Jihai (孙继海) and Dong Fangzhou (董芳卓) who have both spent time in Manchester playing for both City and United respectively.

This kit uses the same style as the Akureyri and Burkinabé kits so not many shocks there, but what is different is that the different stripes which did feature on those two previous kits have been made a different colour from the rest of the kit giving a striking striped look to it but also with a clear central part. I thought that this would work better due to the chinese characters being used for the sponsorship logos, giving a busy look but with a purpose and I think it works pretty well. The logo features 8 stars around the logo which represent their 8 Chinese Premier League wins and also forms part of there nickname.


Nothing much to say about the away kit, just pretty much reversal of colours as is most traditional for the club and ditching the stripes down the sides.


(None of the Chinese characters on the shirt are players names, the one at the top on the back is a sponsor and the one below the number is the teams name.)

Friday 7 August 2009

Knattspyrnufélag Akureyrar (KA) & Burkina Faso

So quite a mouthful for the title today, hopefully you will have heard of either of these places but if not I will go into it in a sec. These two sets of kits are both using my newest template that I used for Saint Étienne, hopefully displaying a bit more of the versatility of the templates than was seen with the St. Étienne kits and also some different colours for you to be dazzled by.

So onto out first team, Knattspyrnufélag Akureyrar or as they're better known, KA. They are the second Icelandic team I've made kits for following on from what I have made for KR. I have quite an affinity with Iceland as I kind of went into last time but it's far too long a story to tell here. KA are from the second largest city in Iceland called Akureyri, it's a beautiful little place in the north of the country not many miles outside of the Arctic circle. They're quite a small club with limited success but have won the national league once back in 1989 since then they've struggled to maintain top flight football and currently lie in the country's first division. KA do also have a local rivalry with Þór Akureyri who share the local municipal stadium too as well as competing in the same league. As well as liking the city I also wanted to make kits for quite a small team with a bit of history and success but that no one outside of Iceland had heard of and I think I have chosen the perfect team.

For the home kit I have just used the clubs typical home colours of predominantly yellow with a blue trim. The Icelandic flag features on the back of the shirt above the players name as do the national colours on the socks. The team name also features on the back of the shirt beneath the players number an idea sort of taken from the German Bundesliga, I just think it adds an extra element of identity to the shirts.


The away I have used quite an ususual colour scheme a light slate blue with yellow trim. I chose this colour as it is pretty much the same colour as the skies and the land while I was there so thought it worked well. The yellow is a hangover from the home colours but I realise not it just doesn't work and would have been better off using the blue from the home instead of the yellow.


Now onto Burkina Faso poles apart from Iceland in near enough every aspect. Located in the West of Africa, it is a sub-saharan country and quite a poor one at that. Their football team has also had minimal impact on the world stage never qualifying for a world cup and a best performance of 4th in the African Nations Cup back in 1998. Players of the national team are begininning to penetrate into Europe's top league's now with players such as Jonathan Pitroipa playing in Germany, Charles Kaboré at Olympique Marseille and Yssouf Koné gaining Champions League experience last year with CFR Cluj. Things certainly are looking brighter football wise for the former French colony of Upper Volta as it was formerly known. Currently Burkina Faso are lying in 2nd in their World Cup 2010 group (which also acts as African Nations Cup qualifying) just behind heavyweights Côte d'Ivoire their chances for being at the 2010 World Cup seem pretty slim since being narrowly defeated in Ouagadougou 3-2 by the Ivory Coast, if they can somehow gain a win in the return leg in Abidjan they could yet still be set for a date in South Africa.

For the kit they traditionally play in all green with a red trim and yellow are a tertiary colour following suit with the national flag. I have stripped down the design a bit here to make sure it pretty much all green and striking as most African strips are and hopefully striking enough so that young Burkinabé who see their team play in it will want to follow in their foot steps.


The away I have made all white and personally I prefer this as, yes, it is busier than the home. Accompanying the white are both green and red as well as a dabbing of gold in their for good measure.

Wednesday 5 August 2009

A.S. Saint-Étienne Loire (Request)

A new design today, one I am pretty pleased with for being different but also true to what I like to see a football kit looking like. This kit came as a request from user OKT who also has a blog http://evolution-okt.blogspot.com/ some of the best kits around using a FM texture, very much worth a look if you're into your kit designs.

St. Étienne are the sleeping giant of French football, well OK, there are a few, following Lyon's tremendous run of Ligue 1 titles that it has kind of overshadowed previous acomplishments from other teams in the league. St. Étienne's teams over the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's managed to win a total of 10 Ligue 1 championships and 6 French cups, the most successful domestic French team and is the only one to be able to boast the 10 titles and wear a star above it's crest (although Marseille often does for their Champion's League victory in 1992). Although in recent years the only thing 'Les Vert' has to celebrate is a Ligue 2 victory, which shows just how hard they have fallen from the glory years.

My kit originally set out to honour the victories of previous seasons, where the team wore quite plain looking green shirts with the French tricolor playing a big part by featuring in wrap around collars and also on the shirt cuffs but as I tried this is just didn't anymore and look very dated and also quite weird to see blue, white and red mixed with a dark green so I changed that idea and made something which would feature the flag but not in an over bearing way, so I have just moved it to feature inside the collar and also around the top of the socks.

Now my shirt took on a more modern look, one which I always prefer to make and look at. Featuring the spiky shapes and parts which wrap around the body of the shirt. The collar has been inspired from both adidas and Nike designs, it's not to hard to see which when you think about it. I think it is different enough though to count as being original. Another kit design I have taken a bit of inspiration from albeit unintentionally is Reebok from their design for Liverpool many seasons ago, can't be sure on the exact season though. I say unintentionally because the inspiration actually came from the St. Étienne logo and the stripes there. The intention was to make the darker shade of green into white to mirror the stripes of the logo but in the end I opted out of that idea for a safer option.

For the socks I tried, yes I actually tried something for the socks this time! (sorry about the fragmented English, I thought it worked as a joke) For once I actually think they enhance the look of the rest of the kit wrapping around the back with A.S.S.E. printed there too, imitating the curves of the front of the shirt in the bottom spikes and also the back if you can make that out.


For the away I got a comment about the usage of green shorts taking the overall look of the kit down. Well my again my original intention was to create shorts which would fit in with the home kit to make it all green, but my idiocy made make the details black which would just look hideous mixed with the home shirt and socks. I do however think usage of black here may have been a good idea since their is a high level of green on the shirt to stop it looking boring overall.

Tuesday 4 August 2009

SV Werder Bremen

Today we're going to complete the set of what I started earlier this week and post the rest of what I have done in that poster/presentation style. The team I chose was Werder Bremen of the German Bundesliga as their colour scheme, as corporate the choice of orange is for the team, is one which is pretty unique in terms of football and only Club Atlético Banfield of Argentina have something similar.

With all that talk of orange I decided to totally abandon it in the home kit as it is what most Bremen fans want in their shirt as the campaign on several fan websites to abolish the orange from the shirt. The shirt features a diamond pattern to fit that of the Bremen logo, originally I had the different shade of green in the diamonds as white and was quite pleased with it but upon posting it wasn't greeted as warmly as I thought it might have been so changed it to green. Around the Bremen logo features the dates of the team's four Bundesliga championship victories, the star (which represents three Bundesliga titles each) is located to the left of the logo to be a little different from other teams and also it fits better within the design there than above the logo.


The player is Clemens Fritz.

The away is a bit of a weird concoction but that's usually what Bremen kits are all about aren't they? The main colour of the kit is a dark grey with the shoulders differing between green and orange. This asymmetry continues to the shorts. I personally like it but it was greeted with muted disapproval from other people.


The player is of course Torsten Frings.

Finally, for the third shirt of course it had to be orange. The home features zero, the away about 25% so the third just had to be nearly 100% orange. Their is of course some green to accompany it and white to break it up a wee bit too. For me it is a little too much even though I own an Ivory Coast home shirt with Arouna Koné printing :P


I got a bit bored of changing players so it is Mr. Frings again.