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.