Arsenal F.C.

I will get down to the requests soon, I have been a little busy with other commitments recently, job and people visiting mainly but I have got a design half baked and I think it works half decently with Saint Etienné but still a long way to go as of yet. Not had many ideas for designs and this one as it stands is just an hours worth of moving shapes around but lets not talk about that for now.

Here's a team which needs no introduction whatsoever, Arsenal F.C. For this I reverted back to the template I used for the Valencia kit which is just ages ago now, I updated it a bit too by drawing in actual finger shapes and changing hair around to represent actual players rather than just a default model.

The kit design itself is the same as Coritiba, Bielefeld and Santander but with this view you can see how it would appear if it was worn as one, of course there have been minor adjustments to it but I feel it still displays the design how I would wish it to look.

I have been asked what is the pattern on the home kit and I am sure I will again if I don't say anything now. It is actually the Fleur-de-lis pattern taken from Arsenal's previous logo, I have searched and searched for it's meaning and purpose in being these but have come up short, but hopefully it is something really interesting :P

The player in question is of course Emmanuel Adebayor (now of Manchester City) but at the time he was pretty much Arsenal's most recognized player from his hair, boots, number and of course his Togolese motifs. I got the idea for this style of presentation, from pictures I saw of Nike's kit launch for Atletico Madrid, with a team name and logo on a wall behind the players and tried to put this in place here.


For the away and third kits I asked people what they think would be best and just used the first two responses I got. I think the third works quite well, been a bit of a mystery why Arsenal have never used a black shirt but thats just the way it has been. I tried to keep quite a good portion of grey on the shirt so it's not too dark and with the symmetrical look it actually appears quite classical with the collar being a thin V. The player here is Theo Walcott but the only thing I could really show was his straight fringe and number 14 logo I guess skin colour helps to recognize him too.


The away (Cesc Fabregas, which actually looks noting like him, the hair is just pish) is a green and dark blue number which was rumoured to be a third or away kit for the new season but never came to fruition, I'm not overly keen on it, I think I could maybe have used a nicer shade of green the compliment the blue but it never came out like that.

Requests?

If you want me to make a shirt just post a comment and I'll get it done ASAP, I'm running out of teams I actually want to make stuff for so it will help me out to get ideas from other people.

It can be in a previous design if you wish, other wise i will try and do something totally original. If I get bombarded with requests (which I doubt I will) I'll say when requests stop.

Thanks people and get REQUESTING!

COXA!

Today is the turn of my favourite Brazilian team, the reason they are my favourite team is very loose, it's basically a case of not having a favourite Brazilian team meeting someone who did and adopting them as my own. I must say though I am the worst fan in the world as I always forget to see how they are doing etc. I've been a Coritiba 'fan' for a fair few years now, roughly 5 and as it is their centenary year in 86 days time I decided to try something to commemorate it.

I hope that they're acceptable to all Coritiba fans. I have put as many little details into it as possible, I think you can go two ways with a centenary kit, one to reflect the teams early history by making it as simple and reflective as possible and the other which I have chosen is to keep it with a modern look but throw lots of historical details and other things to make it special to the team.

For the home I have kept the double horizontal chest band but if you look carefully it has the names of the original Coritiba XI printed on it in a faint green colour not trying to be too intrusive. The Coritiba logo is also bigger than I usually like but it is showing the importance of the team so it has to be the centre point of the shirt. On the white mesh detail on the shirt I have repeated the word 'COXA' all around the it, which is the teams nickname. Over the heart of the shirt is the '100 anos' logo from http://www.coxa100anos.com.br/ which is the official logo to celebrate their anniversary. There are also several more details but going into them all would just be boring, as a rundown, odd socks, Paraná state flag... OK so their wasn't that many more.


For the away I wanted to try something different with my very versatile design. So I went with a green away shirt with a sort of sun effect around the Coritiba logo in a darker shade of green. It also has a unique gold side panel on the side and back of the shirt which is the first time I have featured this in the design.


Also got to feature this wonderful piece of work by 'menoia' http://www.menoia.com/2009/06/coritiba-football-clube.html all his works are spectacular as you will see if you check out the rest of his works but I just think this looks awesome and was completed at the same time as my version.

Racing Santander, Arminia Bielefeld

Right so I got bored with just making the shirts, well not bored but their wasn't really anything to them was their? So I have slightly adjusted the and picked things from my older shirt templates, the socks are a completely new addition though as I thought all my previous ones looked quite pish.

May I just say I am really quite pleased with this design, I had been thinking about it for quite a while and then when I made it I thought it came out looking really good. To show it off properly I needed to pick a team which used three colours on their home strip, so Santander was quite ideal using white-green-black and also Bielefeld using pretty much the same but blue instead of green.

The main concept was the cross over at the back of the collar, umbro have already used a similar notion on it's kits and leisure wear a few years ago with it's 'X-static' but they never really incorporated an actual X shape into their shirts so in my mind it is still original.

As you know lines wrapping themselves around shirts in an interesting way is pretty much what I am into when designing and this is no different, I have also mixed this in with a healthy dose of spikes (sounds like bondage :S) something I also like to include quite a bit of in my designs. I think what actually makes this on of my best designs is that it is adaptable to any sort of shirt whether it contains stripes, hoops, different colour shoulders or whatever.

Enough of my BS though onto the strips themselves. Santander seem to be the perpetual bottom half of the table team in La Liga with only a few top half finishes in their 41 seasons of top flight football. The team have never really harboured any world class players either, which may be a reason behind this but they have had Yossi Benayoun, which is good enough for me :D

That wasn't really about the kit was it? Well now it is. I have used all of Santander's three main colours on this home kit, three colours which fit very well together in my opinion and make me think that they are part of a long footballing history, I really can't explain what I mean properly, just I think that the colours would be well suited to a black and white photo in a newspaper of a player with exuberant hair stood with hands on hips looking serious. The 'castle' on the shirt is the Torro del Oro which features on both Cantabrian and Santander's coat of arms which (apparantly) symbolizes regional power. The collar itself is a plain wrap over collar but with two different colours that wrap around into a mesh design on the actual shirt. The shorts also incorporate this X design but the socks are a bit more traditional looking, I did toy with making the socks into the same style but it just looked too much when I tried it.


The away does away with the different coloured shoulders that featured on the home kit and replaces with a black number but has a trim of green and white which again uses the X design to a good effect I think. The font is a pretty plain one, I forget the name of it, but I jazzed it up by slicing through it, I maybe could have personalised it a bit more but I was quite happy with this look.



Arminia Bielefeld are a recently relegated team from the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany. Who, like Santander, have never really won anything except from 2nd division titles, so they are possibly the perfect accompaniment for them. I have been quite a fan of Bielefeld's bold usage of both white and black on top of royal blue on the shirt, and especially the usage of a chest band. I tried to reinvent this with my design, using the bridge featured in their 'Stadtwappen' city coat of arms. I am still undecided as to whether this works or not so your comments will help here. I have again opted for differing colour shoulders, not that my template isn't versatile or anything :P


On the away kit I went with an orange colour that they have worn before with black as the trim colour but I have tried it with white and the chest band again, I was to lazy to change it really.

And a visitor from the Maldives!!! Thank you very much indeed.

Thank You

Just want to say thanks to everyone who is visiting my blog I really do appreciate it when I see all the flags popup on that counter over there >>>>>

As you know I am a bit of a sad bastard and enjoy some odd things, well ok you don't know me that well but it has been known. I am trying to get all the flags possible over on the flag counter and I want to complete Europe first. Thanks to the Bosnian user yesterday I crossed off another country which was nice, but there are still a few more to go. Moldova, Belarus, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Faroe Islands and San Marino. If you know anybody in those countries please can you try and get them to visit here. Or anyother country not accounted for yet. I was shocked to find I had a visitor from Madagascar the the other day and I want to continue those feelings of surprise!

If anyone has ideas how I can entice people from such places please let me know and I'll try my best to do it, maybe make some kits from there is all I can think of :P

Thanks again all.

From Sweden to Italy

Good day,

Today we start in Sweden then migrate across to Italy, Stockholm to Palermo, north to south, if only it was real life eh?

We start with AIK (Allmänna Idrottsklubben) which is located in Solna which in turn is a district of Stockholm, very interesting I am sure you'll agree. AIK are also considered part of the big three teams in Sweden along with Göteborg and fellow Stockholmers Malmö. They are also one of only a handful of teams to reach the Champions League group stage. I know a handful of football teams, you need pretty big hands.

One of the more interesting things about AIK, for me anyway, is that they are one of only a few teams in the world who wear black as their home colours, for reasons I do not know (it's not on Wikipedia), the only other teams I can think of that use black as their primary home colour is DC United and off course theirs are a more modern creation rather than the history which lays behind AIK's choosing of black. Actually now I have thought about it, and I really did think! Their is also Excelsior Rotterdam, if you know anymore, anywhere in the world please let me know, and it must just be plain black and not black striped with something.

Now onto my creation. I started making this with some inspiration from a Boca Juniors shirt I own, inparticular the shape on the sleeves and the cuffs, the collar is partially drawn from it, but I consider that more my idea, so there. I have also added the style of mesh from 2002 adidas kits which had the double layers with a different colour beneath which I though was awesome. The kit also has some wavy lines on it which is just something I tried out and like which fades out towards the top only to reappear and pass through the logo, possibly more suited to training wear, but my ideas are very sparse so allow me this one. I have also included all the sponsors that were included in their 2008/09 kit just simply because I wanted to highlight it's Swedishness and what better way than a bucket load of sponsors.


The away is exactly the same but in AIK's typical away colour scheme of white-yellow and a black tertiary colour.


Now onto the Italian team in this wee saga, Città di Palermo from the Sicilian region of Italy, never have they won a major title but they are becoming more of a force to be reckoned with in Italy and Europe with respectably high finishes and also atrracting many high profile players. Of course though they are another kit colour anomaly being one of only a few teams in the world to wear pink for their home colour and this time I really can't think of any others. A few have tried it for away kits but never for a home. For me Palermo are one of the most stylish teams in Italy thanks to this garish colour, even though I am not big on wearing pinks, I still think their training wear and casual wear from Lotto has been some of the best around incorporating their eagle motif.

My shirt is pretty much the same as AIK, using the same template, just this has the gradient of the fade reversed so that the chest band is bordered, I did try the chest stripe with gold instead of white but trust me it looked worse. To be honest I don't really think this does the team much justice at all style wise.


The away is just a reversal in black, pink with a gold trim and also with an asymmetrical style. I actually think this works quite well, with the colours fitting a lot better and the asymmetrical design owing a lot to the aestethic value.

Wigan Athletic and Girondins de Bordeaux

Today we have the same designs as last time, boring I know but just thought you should see these too, nothing overly special.

Wigan as a town is really close to me, geographically that it, actually I'm pretty lucky to live in a place where 8 teams of the best league in the world are all located within about an hours drive from me. If Preston and Blackpool can win promotion next season I'll be properly set for my footballing needs, Blackpool especially only being down the road, but that is a huge ask for them.

Wigan's is a pretty well known story, rapid rise up through the football league, they played in the same league as my town, which isn't that impressive any more as they (Fleetwood) have had a very rapid promotions of their own. At one point though it was the 9th level in English football. They are also from a very staunch rugby town which means they have had to fight for their share of fans as well as from the high population of other top flight football teams. Now they're quickly becoming an established team themselves with a garnish of foreign talent as well as northern grit with players such as Antonio Valencia and Jimmy Bullard making their names there.

For their kit, well I won't lie to you it is pretty much just Porto, only without the stripes on the sleeves. One crucial thing I have changed though is I have got rid of their nasty gold which they seem to have adopted and taken them back to the days when they had a green trim which was far more unique I thought and also fits in well with the tree in their new logo.


For the away kit I made it a bright orange as i have been told they're due to be getting an orange kit for the 2009/10 season, but don't tell anyone I said so. I think this colour scheme shows off the straight-ish lines and sharp edges I was going for pretty well too.


Now on to Bordeaux, champions of France and what seemed to be the perennial runners-up in French football for many seasons. They are of course famous for producing Zinedine Zidane, wine, neolithic fossils and of course their shirts emblazioned with a V for reasons I don't actually now. I actually am a fan of Puma's new kit with the white shoulders, I know Bordeaux traditionalists will probably be unhappy with it, but somethings it's good to try new things and build new traditions.

But that's not what I have done here. The design was actually made around Bordeaux so it would fit them well, with a V fold collar and also a lesser noticable V with the white side panels descending into a lesser V.


For the away I took a little inspiration from Puma's kit and left the shoulders Bordeaux blue, and made the main body of the kit burgundy red like past away kits and representing the famous wine the region produces.

A Portuguese Twist

Well OK not exactly, but both countries these clubs represent speak Portuguese so the title does work on that level. Yes of course I am talking about Brazil and Portugal or more specifically FC Porto and São Paulo FC.

FC Porto 2 time Champions League winners, 24 Portuguese league and 18 cup titles to their name, are one of the most successful teams in European football and I'm now proud to announce they have signed with the Infinite brand, yeah, I wish, but I am building quite a number of teams I have produced kits for under the brand now and still there will be more to come, but back to FC Porto. They don't need too much of an introduction with their international credentials and international force of players, present and past.

For their kit I produced something in the traditional blue and white stripes of the team and the more modern touch of an orange trim brought in by Nike as a tertiary colour. The design is a new one which just came to me, I've had thoughts about something which pretty much just uses straight lines and a big chunk of mesh behind the logo, so this is what happened. Even though the shoulders and plain blue the sleeves still have a hint of Porto's stripes. All the rest is pretty self explanatory, stylized Porto dragon at the bottom of the back of the shirt, Quinas in the centre of the chest, all sponsor and league logos included.


I've also started making away shirts again, so here is Porto's. I've gone for a striking orange away with the hint of stripes a bit like what they had with their Nike T90 away shirt, their is also a blue and white trim featureing all the logos that are on the home.


Now we have São Paulo FC, one of the most succesful Brazilian clubs nationally and internationally, a team with great tradition in their football kits, always (as far as I know) featuring the tricolor of red-white-black band across their chests. so this is what I have applied here. a large São Paulo logo has been placed on the tricolor area with the 5 stars, three red for their Copa Libertadores sucesses and the other two for the Olympic success of an athlete who also represented São Paulo. On the sleeves is a feature of the tricolor again, red stripes on the left sleeve black on the right, both with white as the seperator. On the sleeve is the 'O PRIMEIRO E ÚNICO TRI-HEXACAMPEÃO BRASILEIRO' symbol, which, I believe is a statement that they are the only Brazilian team to win three Copa Libertadores titles.


The away kit also features São Paulo's tricolor only with more on an emphasis on the red and black on the kit in striped form another kit which is steeped in history and tradition with São Paulo.

Hrvatska & NEC Nijmegen

I've done it again haven't I? Taken a while to post something new that is, I do have my reasons though, been swamped with work recently so not even been able to manage some middle of the day browsing of websites as you do when you get tired the tediousness of work.

Well today I have Croatian kits or more specifically those of the national team. Also I have kits of NEC Nijmegen to show.

First we'll start off with the Croatia kits, I'm sure you all know who they are or you wouldn't of found this page otherwise. It uses the exact same design as I used for Beşiktaş so I don't even need to explain that! My job here just gets easier and easier. Not really mush to explain anyway just red and white checks with a blue and gold trim in places. The away is pretty much typical Croatia too, I did start off trying to make an away Croatia kit with out using blue but I found this really hard to do making it both aesthetically pleasing and also representative of Croatia. So in the end I just reverted back to a blue kit, I'm a coward.

Oh by the way, it has been pointed out to me previously I have used the wrong diacritic above the 'c' in Modrić that'll teach me to write Croatian names without checking first.


Now I got a few complaints about the home kit that it was a bit too much of an eyesore with almost totally checkered design so I came up with this, which is inspired from Lotto's 98 Croatia design which I thought was great being mainly white.


Now time for Nijmegen Eendracht Combinatie or NEC as they're more oftenly called, so by calling them NEC Nijmegen I have made a bit of a fool of myself, oh well shit happens. They have one of the more unique coloured home kits in world football which makes them a prime target for me as I like the uniqueness. The design itself you may recognize if you have looked further back in my blog, as it is actually taken and adapted from the 'Kappa' design. I've kept it pretty traditional to the team, with the red and green halves, I have also continued onto this sleeves, I don't have much of a memory of NEC kits but I think this is unique (have I said that enough already?). On the back of the shirt is the crest of Nijmegen just as a nice uniq... individual feature.