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.

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.

England

Another day another dollar, but it's not that bad is it, the sun is shining, even though it's the first time it's done that in over a year and I've only just woken up, perfect. Today I'm having a dead day off see here for cultural reference, so that means for me having a beer, going for a strole, eating disgustingly fatty foods, watching some football and other boring stuff inbetween.

As I am sure you've heard the launch of the new England shirt is imminent, so I thought I'd get in the act in creating something which I'd like seeing England wear. Believe me making something cool looking for England is really hard, their isn't much to work with at all, using the red cross in the design is difficult to make look good as the garish red looks very bad concentrated in one place. White with a dark blue trim look relatively boring also, and don't get me started on using light blue as a substitute for them.

So for my first attempt I used what I define in my head as being typically England and that is white with a red trim, even though this is a more modern association I still prefer it to the previous white/dark blue strips from the 90's.

The whole design basically came up just from drawing a few shapes and working from that, and in this case I started on the back and worked my way from there. First to make it typically Umbro I took what they've been using as a base design and flipped it vertically so their is a sort of arrow pointing up to the collar, yeah I stole their idea, shame on me. I also stole the idea for the layout of the kit too, I have just been really impressed with a few other kit makers recently such as Azmie aka Switch image and also Amadeus Angelillo for kits like this, I like how they show enlarged parts of the kit to show off the detail, I am not a fan of the blurb that goes with it, but it was something that had to be done to explain why that part had been enlarged, also it means the compostion of the image is far better.


I then waited to see what comments I receieved which were all quite positive and constructive, so I took all of them on board, "England kit should have less red", "try with the new logo", "I don't like the position of the Umbro logo on the shorts", "I'd like to see it with the light shade of blue". All of which I obliged and added an extra bit of red trim to the shirt and shorts and this ammalgamation came out.


Personally I am more of a fan of the dark blue version and it turns out that everyone else was too, get that?

Anyway, if you want to see any Umbro team in this template post up a comment with the request and I'll try and get it done, maybe a bit harder since I have to find details to highlight etc. but I'll try my best to get it done.