As you all probably know by now we work (what seems like continuously) on a little project called World Beach Rugby. Twice a year we design a range of clothing which is sold online through the UK’s no. 1 rugby retailer, Lovell Rugby.
However this summer they wanted something a little different, rather than the usual t-shirt designs, they wanted us to create some designs to be sublimated onto fitted style rugby shirts. The designs would be dyed directly into the fabric so we were therefore able to utilise the whole shirt for the design rather than just the front. We were also asked to make the t-shirt designs as bold and wild as possible, so they would really (I mean really) stand out from the crowd. When usually working on screen printed t-shirt designs, we have to work with limited amount of colours within the design as each extra colour means a new print plate. However, due to the new sublimated format there were certain design constraints which were lifted. We were therefore able to use gradients and colour blends to create different effects.
Lovell Rugby chose the three most popular teams which were - Queenstown Knights, Wellington Warriors and Bali Sharks. It made sense to theme each of the shirts, so the Bali shirt would have a tropical theme to it and the Queenstown and Wellington designs would both utilise maori elements. Each of the shirts had to accommodate various sponsors logos so we needed to make sure the designs worked around these.
Wellington Warriors
Like the Wellington Warrior t-shirt we decided to use the maori traditional tattoo style pattern. However we wanted the pattern to flow from the front of the garment to the back of the garment in one seamless design, as if the wearer had an actual tattoo which wrapped around their upper body. This proved a little difficult as we wanted the design to flow continuously from the front to the reverse and sleeve. This meant obtaining manufacturing templates from the factory in order for us to make sure each seam would have the design flow over it. We wanted the design to emphasise the muscular shape of the torso, so we made sure the design hugged the breast bone and flowed down the body. We started by designing for the front and reverse of the garment and then finding a way of making these two link. Then, once happy we moved on to including the sleeves in the design. This did take some time and several strong coffees, but we got there eventually.
We weren’t sure which colours we should use for this design and after some experimentation we felt various colours worked well.
We decided upon pink, white and navy as it fitted the clients brief of being as bold and bright as possible!
Bali Sharks
We liked the surfer and sun ray imagery from the previous Bali t-shirt design and knew we wanted to retain this theme for the new design. We wanted Bali to be the ‘craziest’ of the t-shirts as we felt the tropical theme could carry a large range of colours and gradients more so than the other two themes. We certainly went for it, we have never used so many blending modes in illustrator, not to mention mixture of patterns and swatches!
The reverse of the shirt was a left a little simpler than the front adding a dark gradient enabling the wearer to personalise the shirts which there own number and name.
Queens Town Knights
We knew that we wanted to utilise the maori face previously used on the Queenstown Knights t-shirts but in a bolder and more dramatic way. The latest Queenstown Knights t-shirt was in black with silver detail, which sold really well so we thought it would be also good to carry these colours across.
We applied different styles to the maori face. We experimented with a grungy style, tried gradients and of course left it nice and simple. We eventually decided we liked the simple design silver and black colourway the best.
Again, the reverse of the shirt was left slight simpler enabling customer personalisation. We loved how the orange colour from the Speights logo looked against the black base colour of the shirt so used this colour for the WBR and Queens Town Knights logos as well.
Feedback
Lovell Rugby were exceptionally pleased with the designs we produced and sent them straight to the manufacturer for sampling. Soon after we received some 3D modeling to give us a better idea of what to expect!
Several weeks later we were presented with some physical samples of the rugby shorts which we were all very pleased with. The garments have been for sale for the last few weeks now and they are selling quicker than any other WBR garment, particularly the Bali Sharks t-shirt!
It would be great to hear your feedback so please do tell us what you think of the designs? Would you wear the Bali Sharks shirt?
Posted by Lu
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Posted
on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Posted In News, Portfolio, T-shirt / Clothing design | Tags: Clothing Design, Portfolio
