Ferencváros

Greetings yet again,

After yesterday's story about Timişoara's injustice, I'm starting to feel a bit Shakespearian as I am about to tell you yet another story of woe. This one including Ferencváros, or Fradi as is their nickname, from the Hungarian capital Budapest.

Long have they been known as Hungary's most successful football team, claiming 28 league titles, 20 cup titles and numerous other domestic awards as well as being the only team in the country to hold a European title thanks to their 1965 victory in the UEFA Inter-City Fairs Cup, the precursor to the UEFA Cup.

However due to financial troubles in the 2006 the club, for the first time in its history, was demoted from the first division. This was challenged by the club over the legality of this move by the Hungarian FA and the team won, and an out-of-court settlement was reached. Now three years on Fradi has finally managed promotion back to the top Hungarian league, Soproni Liga and hoping to contest for the title yet again with the help and financial backing of Sheffield United owner Kevin McCabe, constructing a brand new stadium, aswell as farming out young prospects to the team. The future is certainly looking a lot brighter for Ferencváros now.

Now down to the kit. I wanted to create something commemorative of Fradi's return to top flight football, so I created a motif logo instead of a sponsor, reading "FRADI VISSZA TÉRTÜNK!" which translates as "Ferencváros We Are Back!". I also added a green eagle landing to represent the touching down of the team back into the division, the green eagle is a very well known symbol of the team and used by many fan groups.

Fradi are quite well known for traditionally sporting green and white stripes but I wanted to break with the tradition a little to reflect this new start, so I added a large vertical white stripe down the centre of the kit with smaller stripes either side of it, I also made these lines curved as it looked more aesthetically pleasing to me. From reading earlier posts you may know I am quite fond of North American sports and this has influenced me slightly here. The collar and green horizontal stripe beneath are partly inspired from ice hockey uniforms, the socks are also inspired from that. The back of the shirt is divided between the name and number an idea again inspired from Nike's T90 range and a Fradi shirt I own! Although I have incorporated it slightly differently to their interpretation.

FC (Politechnica) Timişoara, FK Makedonija

Evening all,

I thought I'd lump these two teams in together as they do share some qualities in a design manner, I've pretty much given them the same as my previous Terek kit. Of course their are slight differences but we'll get to those.

I'll start with a quick message about FC Timişoara, a team from a city of the same name in the west of Romania, a beautiful place which I have had the pleasure of visiting. The football team is probably the most well supported in Romania outside of Bucharest of course. Until recently they were known as FC Politechnica Timişoara and prided themselves for playing in all purple, but due to a court ruling they had to drop the Politechnica part of their name, change the club colours from purple and also the team logo had to be changed. This was because all this was owned by a businessman who owned another team in the Romanian fourth division situated just outside of Bucharest. This ruling caused outrage in Timişoara that they had been robbed of their identity and promptly arranged for thousands of fans to march upon the city centre.

So as you can tell I had a bit of motivation to make something and give back a very small part of their identity if you want to learn more you can check out this webpage http://www.justiceforpoli.com.

FK Makedonija Gjorče Petrov to give them their full name are the current champions of Macedonia, and that's pretty much where my knowledge ends of them unfortunately. Little research however tells me that they're based in the captial Skopje, a place I've not been but would like to eventually. It is also the first time in the club's history that they have won the national title. The first part of the name obviously comes from the native latinized term for Macedonia, the Gjorče Petrov part of the name however comes from an important revolutionary figure in the formation of the Republic of Macedonia.

For Timişoara I obviously was going to restore the famous purple and bring back their previous logo, one of the prettiest looking in football in my opinon. The shirt uses the same collar as Terek but I have switched the focus on the colours so the previously 'missing' part can be seen. The other spike from the logo over the shoulder to the back remains however to give a visible design feature. I have added semi-visible stripes to the front also with the knight insignia of the logo worked in too, to give it a very personal Timişoara touch. The shorts are again pretty plain as are the socks just adding some tradional colours to the mix aswell as a dark double striped highlight on the shorts. Oh and the back of the collar, above the player name contains the city emblem and a logo reading 'Timişoara 1921'.


FK Makedonija uses a very obvious design feature, as the team is named after the country and has a revolutionary leader in its name I thought it only fitting to work the national flag into the shirt which isn't a stray from tradion, the team actually use red and yellow stripes normally. The infinite logo has been worked into the flag design to follow the stripe of the sun. I have made adequate room on the back for name and number, with a lion carefully selected from the teams previous logo above.Half of the front designs has been removed as to not conflict with the lines of the sun and I think the other still remaining half really suits the design.

Terek Grozny

Hello, what team do we have today? Aaah yes, Terek Grozny of the Russian Premier League, a league which I have a bit of a love affair with, well I have a great admiration for all Slavic countries but Russia is one I especially love, so you're bound to see a lot more stuff from there in the future posted on here.

Terek Grozny are a team from the Chechnya region of Russia in the south, bordering Georgia and other semi-autonomous republics such as Dagestan and Ingushetia of which I am sure you have heard of on the news due to the war and violence that has gone on there. Until only this season has the team returned to play in Grozny, the capital of the region, before they played in Pyatigorsk, Stavropol Krai.

Due to this I wanted to create something nice for a team and a region that deserve more than just being known for war.

Terek traditionally play in all green, a prominent colour in Chechnya as it is the main colour of the Chechen flag. I wanted to give the shirt a bit of regional pride so I threw caution to the wind and added some red which also features upon the flag. I know, I know, "red and green should never be seen..." but hopefully the amount of red is quite minute and not hugely noticable.

Since my last kit, Dynamo Kiev, was quite retro looking, I decided I wanted a return to my more preferred modern look to shirts so I have ditched the symetrical look which seems to usually give shirts a much more modern feel. I also made sure it had some shape angles which can be seen with the spikes on the back.

The collar was sort of inspired by an old umbro Everton (spits) shirt, the collar looked like it had a piece missing and I thought that looked really cool so wanted to try something similar.

The shorts and socks are very unimaginative, even I think so, I really lost my inspiration there just couldn't think of anything.

I have also added a little personal touch with Chechen writing around the collar, I can't exactly remember what it means now, but I am sure it says something quite inspirational!!!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, I can't say I am a huge fan of it though.

Dynamo Kiev («Динамо» Київ)

As previously post I wanted to make something for Dynamo Kiev but was a bit fed up with the Adidas look so tried doing something of my own with my own Infinite brand.

Now as you may have noticed I am not the biggest fan of the classical look in kits but I want to see if I could change this in myself and create something relatively 'classic' looking. First place of course to give that look is the collar and I just thought that your typical fold collar was a bit too cliché and has been done many times before, now I know my take isn't totally original but it is quite rarely done.

Second place I thought to invest my time in was the sleeves and to give the cuffs, like the collar a relatively big cut, well I think it is quite bit, I do tend to prefer cuffs to be really small, even non-existent.

One more theme running through the kit is the Ukrainian flag, as you'll see I have used quite a lot more yellow than is traditionally seen in Dynamo's past kits. The cuffs are blue-yellow (zhovto-blakytni), the collar has blue-yellow, the sash has a small element of blue-yellow all tending on replicating the national flag and instilling some pride in the nation and to highlight the teams history as being the nations most succesful and most well known team.

I've brought back the sash as I am not a huge fan of the current pinstripe look, although the template I do really like. Throughout the teams history I think one thing they are recognized for the world over is their blue diagonal stripe even though most years they have played without it.

Another nationalistic symbol on the back of the collar is the country's coat of arms althought in an inverted colour scheme to reflect well on the kit.

A little thing you may see in the background of the image is some text, this is a theme I am going to run with for the presentation for all my kits with my new branding. It is just text of the clubs history in the national language as I think it is a nice little touch.


The player on the back of the shirt is Artem Milevskiy/Артем Мілевський

Perspective Infinite

Well hello people today I am going to introduce you to something new, my own brand! Huzzah!

It is totally slapdash and was just a last minute after thought when I couldn't be bothered to make another Adidas template but still wanted to create something for Dynamo Kiev so I rushed the logo, the name pretty much everything but I was relatively happy with it, so I am now going to be trying to create a few original templates and I do have a few team names lined up so watch this space.

If you've not guess the brand name is "Perspective Infinite", it is totally meaningless!

St. Pauli

Hello! I see you're back for another instalment of my kits. Well I hope I won't disappoint. Today I have F.C. St. Pauli of Hamburg. The following season is their centenary year, something I was reminded about by MW FROM WIDEOPEN over on the Footballshirtculture fantasy kit board.

Seeing his version of the St. Pauli centenary shirt really inspired me to create something of my own. St. Pauli is a team which is quite close to me, I have been to Hamburg numerous times, it's a glorious city with lots going on there and I have always admire St. Pauli and of course the Reeperbahn ;-).

If you're wondering why I am banging on a lot about a 2. Bundesliga team so much, then I think it is time for a little bit of educating and if you don't you may aswell skip forward to the next paragraph. St. Pauli isn't an overly illustrious club, but what St. Pauli is, is an institution, a way of life for some people, to be different is to be St. Pauli or what is now defined as 'Kult'. St. Pauli is located near Hamburg's infamous red light district 'Reeperbahn' and from this nightlife evolved an alternate fanscene which the club was quick to adopt officialy. Soon after the skull and crossbones (Deutsch: Totenkopf) was adopted by the supporters as a symbol an unoffical symbol which can be seen all around their Millerntor stadium. One of the most important moves the club made was to ban all right-wing, nationalist activities at the stadium this has led to the many conflicts with opposing neo-nazi fan groups especailly at away games. As you can see St. Pauli isn't just like anyother club, they are the antithesis to most modern clubs especially fan base wise where their 20,000 stadium regularly sells out even whilst in the Regionalliga Nord. St. Pauli also boasts the biggest female following in the league and many other punks and skinheads, people who would be otherwise regarded as different in society regularly attend matches.

Well now that rant is over, it is down to the kit. For a 100 year celebration I really wanted to make some special and something that stands out for the right reasons. As you can guess St. Pauli's kit history is very checkered, it includes such kits as a brown camouflage kit, an all back with cow print and stenciled metal font. The majority of kits include brown so that was an obvious choice for me. The club also employs a good deal of red in their logo so I thought it would be wise to throw that in, aswell as being in quite famous (around the stadium anyway) flags. Another colour which is incorporated largely in the logo and flags is white. So that gave me my pallete to work with, brown-red-white, doesn't exactly sound the special but I tried to use it to my best effect and of course it would be unique.

One thing I knew I needed to have on the shirt is the skull and crossbones design and rather than just add one I added a load to the red band around the stomach which you can just about make out if you look carefully, their must be about 20 or something all in different sizes. To make the shirt stand out I decided to try something I can't remember seeing on anyother shirt, and that is to divide it horizontally into three colour sections, white shoulders and chest, red band around the middle as previously noted and brown as the bottom selection to blend into the rest of the brown of the kit.

One thing I am really pleased with is the font on the back of the shirt, I think it works really well and identifies itself as unique in football, it is supposed to be a take on the punk album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols" by, of course, The Sex Pistols. Of which St. Pauli made it's own t-shirt version based on the album art. I just decided to take this a little further and incorporate it into the actual shirt.

The shorts are pretty basic but do have a large white trim around the legs to space out the brown a little. Then the socks feature a Argyle diamond pattern in the red and white colour as another unique take kind of replicating grandpa socks. They also feature the Totenkopf at the top and the 1910-2010 at the back.

The sleeves of the shirt feature the Marian stars which can be found on top of the castle in the St. Pauli logo and Hamburg city crest, Another small detail is the coat of arms itself on the back of the shirt at the bottom. Finally to show that it is the clubs centenary year the words 100 Jahre (100 years) are located beneath the St. Pauli logo.

Stafford Rangers

Well it has been a long time since I posted here, quite sorry for that, but I just went through one of my phases where I just have no desire to make anything, but that changed a little bit with the challenge of making a Stafford Rangers kit for the competition on www.footballshirtculture.com/www.designfootball.com.

I left my entry rather late not to try and be stylishly late (ha!) still just because I had no design until I saw some certain designs on DesignFootball that just made me think something great can be done here and I want to see if I can do something just as good as the rest of the great entries there.

I had been working on a new template as I thought the one I am currently using is a bit boring but I just couldn't get a new one looking the way I wanted so I eventually reverted back to the style which you have often seen on here.

For this I didn't want to make an over elaborate design with lines going every etc. as I just don't think that would suit the Blue Square North league. A league I am quite familiar with actually, my local side Fleetwood Town F.C. plays in it and finished 8th this season (higher than Stafford ;) ). So I just concentrated on using the colours of the shirt to hopefully come out with something different.

The shirt obviously needed to contain black and white stripes which is easy enough to add in but then I needed to make those stripes individual enough to be recognized anywhere which was a tough job as stripes are stripes aren't they? For this I gave the stripes a bit of perspective meaning that they are wider at the bottom and gradually increase in width the further towards the shoulders. Great, but that has been done before with teams like Paraguay and to a lesser extent Dinamo Kiev and Liverpool. This needed to stand out though. I got my thinking cap on (a few strong caffine injections) and eventually came up with the singular half red stripe on the left shoulder with a diagonal cut hopefully giving a bit more of a dynamic look. As a little extra something I decided to give the stripes a bit of a pattern to them, nothing significant just a chequered pattern which is actually intended to contain the mesh strips, but these can hardly be seen.

The shorts are intended on looking quite inconspicuos with a white trim towards the bottom a little bit extra towards the rear. The socks again are intended to be quite inconspicuos also with a white trim and red accents around the rim and also highlighting the 'Rangers' text on the back of the socks.

For the away kit I had much more artistic license but I wanted to keep it simple as possible as I do sometimes tend to over design things. All I did was basically turn the home shirt completely red stripes included but hopefully looking a lot subtler. The red was chosen as it is an intimidating colour and also the sign of quality if you look at what colours the champions of England have worn on all but 3 occasions in the Premier League (Blackburn, Chelsea x2). Naturally I gave it black and white touches where possible, cuffs, shorts etc. I also mainted a simple round collar which as you look back over history has been a regular feature on many classic shirts.

Apple bogies...

(Apologies)

Sorry that I haven't added any new content here in a while, I have been a little busy recently, and will be for a few more days, but I will add something in the next week. I have also been trying to make a new model for my kits, as I think the one I have been using has become a bit stale. I am going to try something with more of a 3D perspective to it if it is even possible in photoshop 6.

I may also try a few teams in a bit more detail like my first few kits were. As well as being more original in their layout, see Borussia Dortmund, Valencia, Fluminense.

So keep your eyes open and hopefully I'll have something for you soon.

Errea

Good day to all, hope everyone is doing well since the last dosage of kits I gave you.

Well today is the turn of another Italian manufacturer, Errea, famous for, well not much really, maybe being one of the longest running sponsorships in the English premier league for sponsoring Middlesbrough but other than that I can't think of an awful lot that they are famous for.

For the following kits I was sort of inspired by the crescent shape, I would say the moon but that sounds too sad to say "I was inspired by the moon". Anyway crescent shape, I think it is something which looks really dynamic in the way it has two sharp edges and a smooth curves inbetween them. So as you can see this kit is just loaded with them, from the main shirt, to two on the shoulders, and three inter twined-ones on the shorts. I do realise that the front of the shorts looks a lot like an adidas design from a few years ago but this is purely coincidental.

I have given the kits a very plain ordinary looking v-neck collar as I think Errea do sometimes tend to overcomplicate things with theirs. I have used pinstipes on the socks just because I am a fan of the groovyness of them.

For the font I have used a pretty Americana font, again for not really anyother reason that I thought it looked good and went well with the design.

And that's pretty much all the bollocks I can come up with for now.

For the Parma shirt I am a big fan of their older blue and yellow hooped shirts, it was their identity when they were at their height so I have used that as the home design, if their are any protestations I will make a white and black cross one but I really think this looks classier.

Legea - again

As I promised you, a few more Legea kits.

Legea

Hello, today is the turn of Italian manufacturer Legea, a brand which I am not really a fan of, but they do manufacture a number of interesting teams so I thought I would have to make something.

I've tried to keep it looking typically Legea, but I was desperate to make the big brand markings on the sleeve disappear, so that doesn't feature anywhere but the back of the socks now. I took inspiration for the collar from an LA Lakers basketball jersey, I am not a basketball fan just a good thing to get you to sleep :D

I have also gone for a really simplistic look and not added any sponsor logos to these jerseys, to try and show off the design more than being distracted by garish looking sponsor logos, all that is on any of them is league logos where applicable. Something which I neglected from my previous Hummel kits as I thought it would make the sleeve area look far to busy.

I have tried to add personal touches of the club to the design where possible, bottom of the socks, top of the socks, bottom of the back, I think looking back I could have done more to make them individual, maybe some city crests etc.

I have also added a different colour waistband sort of emulating the look of a belt, this is something which I can't think of too many other designs having included other than on of my favourite Nike designs, think World Cup 2002. I think it gives a rather classy touch and breaks up the colour of the shirt from the shorts.

Opinions are welcome very much and requests taking for people who post here as always.

I have made a few more kits in this design already but I'll post them later to get you to return ;)

Hummel, the third and final

I just found one more which I neglected to upload, this is all now, I promise to you!

Hummel, the second coming

Here are a few more kits I made in the Hummel style which I didn't post before, mainly because they're not all that special.

Remember, just comment on a post if you have a request!

Hummel

Well welcome back for another helping of my kit designs. This time it is the turn of the Hummel brand.

So what can I say about these kits? Well, not much to be honest a lot of it was trial and error, the only part of the kit which I had planned in my head before I started was the shoulder panel and the shape of that, it was something I thought had never really been done before so would be quite original the only one close I could think of was the Adidas design a couple of years ago which nations like France, Germany and Greece carried.

The shirt sports the traditional Hummel chevrons on the sleeves and shorts and also wrapping around the socks. Every shirt has its own unique water mark one it with a symbol of the club or city that the team is from. I have done this not only to add something unique to the shirt but also just because I have a weird, sickening admiration for shirts with watermarks and have noticed that they seem to look dated quicker than normal shirts, and I saw this as a challenge that hopefully this won't be the case.

The striped shirts have been given a wavy makeover and then faded out as it proceeds to reach the hummel logo and team logo which I have both placed on the right hand side of the shirt, on thing that I did admire from Puma's most recent range and think it works equally as well here.

I'd also like to say I've changed my shadowing on the shirts as I was inspired by recent kits made by the user Meyer1 at DesignFootball.com, inside the collar has been changed to the same sort of style. I have also added some shadow onto the front of the shirt, adapted from the Valencia kit I made which is also a feature of his shirts.

Enough of my gabbing now, I'm not even sure most of it makes sense.

Of course as ever if you comment here I'll make any team you request in this Hummel style, or any of my previous styles where possible.

Something old...

Well as I've not created anything recently, not without a lack of try might I add, I thought I should show you some of the stuff I did for FIFA'07. When you think about it their isn't really a whole lot different between the two styles of now and then, just with the FIFA kits I had to make sure everything was in place under the arms and stuff you cant even see in the 2D version.

These are the first ones I found and as you can see I enjoyed making kits for the not so popular teams back then and even teams that were not in the game just the the follow St. Pauli and Dinamo Zagreb kits.

Not much else to saw other than here they are.

Ireland - Happy St. Patrick's Day

Top o' the mornin' to ya and all the other Irish stereotypes,

Well as it is St. Patrick's day today I thought I should extend the use of my Umbro template across to our Irish brothers as they will be sharing their fine brews with me today, can't wait to tuck into my first Guinness of the day.

As far as this goes for innovations it is pretty much see the England and Sweden kits, I can't say the template has been adjusted too much just the collar has been adapted to take in the tricolour of the Irish flag.

Aswell as this I have also made sure to have an original font as has been the case with the two previous Umbro kits I made, I tried to make it look a little bit traditional Irish too, not sure if I have achieved that though, I will leave it for you to decide.

I've thrown a clover on the back and wrote 'Éire' (Ireland) on the font, to try and spice it up a little on the traditional front, I did have the idea of adding a sort of Gaelic pattern to the whole thing, but I just didn't think it worked so well so I ditched it.

Right where is my sheleighley and Ireland shirt (I do own one, bought for this purpose), I'm up for some drunken shenanigens even on a Tuesday!


Oh and I also made something a little bit different, and I actually prefer this whole green version.

Sweden

Good day to all, hope that you're all in fine fettle and that I may treat you to a kit cuisine today.

OK so I've had too much lazy time watching cooking shows on TV recently but that's changing now, I'm putting my foot down and wiping the slate clean. From now on any lazy time will be transferred into kit time!

Recently I came up with an England kit design and by proxy and Umbro design and was asked by someone over on FootballShirtCulture.com to make another team in this design to which I am going to duly oblige. Of course with the layout being the way it is with a lot of extra details being pointed out I found it a torrid time and had to do a bit of research to find out what I can add into the foray.

The team I chose was Sweden, having never been there my knowledge of local symbols was pretty obscure but doing the research I found a symbol which has not been used to often in the past with Swedish shirt and that is the 'Tre Kronor' (Three Crowns) which I have used on the back of the shirt and also on a logo which I came up with.

I was looking at the Swedish logo and wanted to come up with something a bit more retro looking but nothing old school and the only way I could think of doing this was to redesign it, strip it to its basics, the basics being the Swedish flag background, I then set about adding on the crowns and circling it with 'Sverige' (Sweden) aswell. I am pretty happy with the results I just hope other people agree with me.

Oh and in the crowns look a little familiar then you'd be right in thinking so, I have used the crown from the Hallmark logo just because it was the most stylized looking crown I could find and didn't think it needed any adjustments for what I was looking for.

Puma

Well hello there people, long time no see.

Since nobody commented here as to to which teams I should make in the template I opened it up to random people on MSN telling them to choose whatever names they liked best, which proved interesting. As these people knew what I like they chose a couple of eastern European teams for me to make, these being Zorya Luhansk (Ukraine) and Widzew Łódź (Poland) to add to Tottenham, Italy and the already made Feyenoord.

So now for the unveiling, but first my blurb and reasoning behind what I have done with the design. Firstly for this kit I got my inspiration from trees, as weird as that sounds, I saw their branches and though maybe their is something I could do like that on a football strip, something that maybe looks like it wraps around the body which is where the bold lines on the front, back sleeves and shorts come in.

To give the kits a touch of class I made sure gold was used as a colour on each of them lust little sprinklings here and their whether it be for the puma logo and I constantly used it with the collar as a bit of a trademark effect.

The font is a new gothic font and thought it gave a modern touch with a twist of the past also consistantly outline with gold. I also have a watermark of either the clubs crest or something that represents the club on the back of the shirt (look closely), done in a faint mesh of dots, these for example range from the Feyenoord 'F' to the full crest for Widzew.

As an added touch to the eastern kits I added a skewed horizonal pinstripe just as a different look as I haven't seen it employed too much in kit design so thought it would make a change.

Well that's all the BS I am going to spout for now. Please feel free to give me feedback on them, and I will still accept requests for kits in this style from people who post here.

C'mooooooooooon!

I know this blog doesn't receive major views but I still notice the page view counter going up steadily. So even if you don't intend of ever visiting here again, just take a look at the list and give me the name of a Puma team. You're not signing a contract or anything that you need to come back here and see it, I just want some way to make the teams that I'm going to make automated as I feel I will probably make the same ones over and over again. Not that it's a bad thing for me, but that's not usually what other people want to see.

Their are 2 positions left, as I opened the voting on FootballShirtCulture.com and so far we have:

1. Italy
2. Tottenham Hotspurs

So come on and even if it does fill, I'll still allow whoever posts here to get whatever they want no matter if they're already made by Puma or not, hows about that for a deal?

I Want You!

Good evening people, after that thrilling night of football I am pretty much lost for words and that's not the alcohol talking, Madrid taking their biggest European shafting in their from Liverpool, Michael Ballack's controversial handling of the ball, Buffon's lucky escape, Bayern giving out the biggest beating in champions league history and Panathinaikos being dumped out at home by Villarreal. Just so many things to talk about!

As this is a kit blog however, I shall not be discussing any of the above, I will however be giving you the option to tell me what kit you want to see. I completed my new Puma template earlier today and want you to tell me which teams you want to see in the new design.

Rules are as follows, the team must already be being manufactured by Puma, so you can't go around pick Liverpool for example to wear it. Also I have already made Feyenoord in the new design so they're off the list.

That's it, they're all the rules.

A pretty concise list of what teams Puma manufacture can be found on Wikipedia, but do be warned the list looks a little out of date to me as I know a few teams are no longer made by Puma.