nba NBA x NIKE Concepts | Portland Trail Blazers 03.02.21

[Tore]

@Ukyo I will certainly do it one day. Appreciate the kind words!


@QCS Thank you so very much for your kind words. A lot of people prefer the second set and I have to say I do too. The mashup of colours and style are great - not that my concept is great, but the Hornets classics are just beautiful. 
When it comes to the CLT versus CHA - I understand. Im far away from Charlotte, far away from the United States anyhow. I just hopped on the abbreviation the Hornets has established as I feared using CLT. 
I will certainly match the colour of the waistband "buckle" to the rest of the shorts - thanks for the suggestion! - added and updated now!
My reasoning behind the Tar Heel uniform is multifaceted. To be honest I dont know that much about North Carolina or Charlotte, so I kinda used tunnel vision, in a sense.
The fact that Michael Jordan owns the Charlotte Hornets and played for UNC was a big factor in me going in this direction. I did some googling and the nickname of the state of North Carolina is Tar Heel. So I just added these together and made a very simplified and easy city edition concept. I should've done more research, without a doubt. I must mention that I love powdered blue and the carolina blue is just such a beautiful colour that it sealed the deal for me. A I can definitely understand what you are saying and I am taking it into consideration.
Thank you again for your kind words! 

@Chawls Thanks for your feedback - I really appreciate it and I definitely agree with you! I made some alternates with white wordmarks and coloured outlines, however twitter decided it for me. Could you elaborate more about the numeral situation? You want multicolored numerals? Sorry about this, sometimes my grip on the english language escapes me. 

[sky1324]

14 minutes ago, Tore said:

@QCS Thank you so very much for your kind words. A lot of people prefer the second set and I have to say I do too. The mashup of colours and style are great - not that my concept is great, but the Hornets classics are just beautiful. 
When it comes to the CLT versus CHA - I understand. Im far away from Charlotte, far away from the United States anyhow. I just hopped on the abbreviation the Hornets has established as I feared using CLT. 
I will certainly match the colour of the waistband "buckle" to the rest of the shorts - thanks for the suggestion! - added now!
My reasoning behind the Tar Heel uniform is multifaceted. To be honest I dont know that much about North Carolina or Charlotte, so I kinda used tunnel vision, in a sense.
The fact that Michael Jordan owns the Charlotte Hornets and played for UNC was a big factor in me going in this direction. I did some googling and the nickname of the state of North Carolina is Tar Heel. So I just added these together and made a very simplified and easy city edition concept. I should've done more research, without a doubt. I must mention that I love powdered blue and the carolina blue is just such a beautiful colour that it sealed the deal for me. A I can definitely understand what you are saying and I am taking it into consideration.
Thank you again for your kind words! 

No problem, your concept is great! I figured I should elaborate a bit more on the UNC thing, because while Jordan did play for UNC and does own the Hornets, the UNC vs. Duke (and vs NC State) is a big deal in North Carolina and actually played into both the Hornets' and Panthers' designs. The Panthers chose that shade of blue because it's between UNC's and Duke's blue, and the Hornets used different colored pinstripes to represent different colleges: purple for the Hornets, light blue for UNC, royal blue for Duke, and green for UNC Charlotte. North Carolina is the Tar Heel State, which is where UNC gets its nickname, but there is a reason that something like that hasn't been done, and it's because of the high rivalry between UNC and Duke. 

[Tore]

I knew about the rivalry between Duke and UNC but I never knew about the reasons behinds the colouring choices and that NC State was involved as well! Thats really cool! I will definitely try explore some different versions that includes all of these different factors. Thank you so much for the clear elaboration - I really appreciate it! 

[Ukyo]

CHARLOTTE SHOULD PICK THIS CONCEPTS AND UPDATE THE JERSEY!

 

that's really good and cool!

[Ukyo]

What happened? 

[Tore]

Been alot going the last two months. I was hoping to get ready more Halloween Editions but unfortunately there was too little time - maybe next year! I got ten half-finished team concepts and some are finished, but I'm going to post the Jazz this time. Excuse the modified template as there's probably some lines I've not cleaned up.

The Utah Jazz has a very understated identity and it's perhaps one of my favourites in the NBA. It's clean, crisp and recognizable.
I have been dabbling with concepts for the Jazz ever since I started this project of mine, but never settled on a set. One set is leaning more on the yellow aspect, another with the 04 to 10 colours, others I've exchanged yellow with orange and kept it very much blackwatch.

As with the lot of you, I cannot seem to escape the 90's nostalgia. When the Jazz brought back the beloved Purple Mountain uniform I had to use it as inspiration. The colours are so unique, especially in todays association where everything is basically blue, red and yellow.
However, it’s not the 90s anymore. Nike’s minimalistic direction is in stark contrast to the maximalist interpretation of the 90s. My main goal was to bring the zeitgeist of the classic edition into today age.
 

White-to-purple gradient mountain range is gone. So is the 90s wordmark, but it’s replaced by the primary logo, drenched in the trimming colours of purple, teal, white and copper. The quadruple piping was kept. The numerals are now one colour instead of copper and teal.
I retained the mountain range on the left leg, however the secondary mark had to go. The snowflake basketball logo on the waistband is replaced by the current basketball logo. The piping on waistband and edge of the shorts follows now the same direction as on the collars. NOB is in copper on both, just add some more copper into the mix. The differences between association and icon edition is white and purple as primary colour, that’s it.

I am not a fan of teams using both city and team name simultaneous, however it looked cooler in this instance. The colours were hard to track down. I usually use trucolor as reference, but, as mentioned before, I have sometimes noticed differences between the team’s media guide and the site. In this instance I used the media guide as reference.
 

For the statement edition I almost made the mistake of going with black as the primary. Even though I kinda like the late Jazz alternates, but I am weary of BFBS. I was looking a lot at 90s slopestyle snowboarding/skiing and wanted to make the statement different. Black was out of the question, it would be too easy, too generic and simple. What I did might be controversial and tacky, even contradiction the minimalistic approach I am trying to emulate. The word bold comes up in Nike’s definition of the statement edition and I tried to go bold. With the slopestyle look in mind and knowing the success of the city edition, I wanted to reverse it with going for a sunrise effect. Back is the gradient mountain range, saturated in magenta red and copper gold. The uniform as a whole used the primary blue from the 04 to 10 uniforms in hope to give the effect of the sky, while the jersey itself has a gradient of copper gold-white-to blue with the Utah wordmark. This time around I have doubled the mountain range for the shorts, with the sunrise gradient. The gradient on the statement edition might look like a sunset to be honest, but I did try to imitate sunrise(!) And yeah, its too noisy, too much going on and I kinda like it.

All comments and criticisms are greatly appreciated! As always I sincerely hope you guys stay safe during these unprecedented and strange times! 

Utah Jazz Association Edition Uniform Concept


Utah Jazz Icon Edition Uniform Concept


Utah Jazz Statement Edition Uniform Concept

[Indigo]

@Tore Absolutely beautiful!! Well done combining era's on the Jazz uni's.

[Tore]

@LA Fakers+ LA Snippers - Thank you, I appreciate the kind words! 

[Tore]

Been busy with other projects, work in general and Christmas then came. I started working on a new template a little while ago and I have only recently had the time to start converting older and unpublished concepts onto the newest template. My first "successful" template-transition is the Denver Nuggets, which is keeping in tune with the Rocky Mountain theme of late. 

First things first – I have abandoned the disgusting wishbone for the superior V-neck. The wishbone is arguably the absolute worst collar of all time. I know some like it and I must admit that it works "fine" for some teams with minimal piping but that just does not change the fact that it is bulky, too large and the exact opposite of streamlined. 
I must also mention that I have not included the beautiful, powdered blue. It is a fan favourite for a reason; however, it is not representative of the Nuggets current direction and was sadly left out.

I almost never post concepts without commenting on my detestation of the white/yellow, blue and red colour saturation of todays NBA, and this post is no exception. The Nuggets is no exception; however, I do think the horrid colour combination works for this team. The navy, red and gold is representative of the city of Denver. The flag contains the same colours, navy (dubbed midnight blue), red(dubbed flatiron red), sunshine yellow which I converted into gold instead, and skyline blue which is the traditional blue the Nuggets used in the 70s.

Tom O’Grady has been adamant about several teams needing to return to their roots (he means his designs) and the Nuggets needs to adopt the whole goldrush and mining aspect of the brand. Usually, I disagree with O’Grady, however I do agree with him to a certain extent when it comes to this team. Gold is underused in the NBA and I am talking about the metallic colour.
The thing about gold is that it is very shiny and can be intrusive. To minimize it dragging the uniforms back to the mid 00’s, I only used it as piping and outline for the wordmarks for the association and icon. For the City edition I wanted to go all in on the Denver city flag and I thought it worked nicely, though a bit shiny.

I have noticed a lot of Nuggets and general NBA fans does not like the colour red for the Nuggets. I do understand their reasoning as the powdered blue is an iconic colour for the Nuggets, with many fans associating the colour with Carmelo Anthony’s Nuggets run back during mid 00s.
The usage of red is very justified in my mind, being that the state was named for the Colorado River and the very name Colorado is supposed to mean “colored red”. You also got the flatirons too. I did not know this previously, being a foreigner to the US and never been to the great state of Colorado nor the city of Denver.

For the Nuggets I just wanted to simplify the whole uniform ambience in the sense of tweaking certain parts of the uniform, reducing the uniforms it into a more sleek design. So I removed what I dont like and replaced it with what I think looks cleaner.
The association and icon editions are as usual just reversed uniforms of eachother. Gone is the wishbone and the awkward numerals, replaced with gold and red piping with navy being the main colour of the trimming. Gold outline on the mountain side panels on the shorts, gold outline on the numerals. I could not track down the right wordmark and being lazy and horrible at recreating wordmarks, I found a different font which I think fit quite nicely.
 

Now, there are only a handful of NBA teams that have certain design elements that is so unmistakably theirs that one could argue there is no need of using team or city name on the uniform. The Nuggets surely falls into this category with the iconic rainbow skyline.
So, for the statement edition I really wanted to showcase this aspect by only using the rainbow skyline, no team and/or city name at all. I do not think this would be legal in the NBA, but it always looked cluttered to me with the numeral above and team name below the skyline.

I used the “skyline blue” as the main colour and sunshine yellow for accent. I added rainbows side panels for the shorts, and their old font for the numerals. I tracked down the Aachen font for the wordmark and numerals to add to the retro aspect. 
I do understand why they use it for their city editions, but the graphic is so iconic that they should change it into being an alternate uniform. It is just too good to only be used 14 times (white and black – two years/regular season). This is excluding the current red one, which I do not care about. Seems to me like the Nuggets have just gone full Utah Jazz which is very strange.

I almost never do city editions as they are very hard for me. For the Nuggets it was kinda easy as I knew I would just emulate the flag of Denver. Navy to flatiron red, the white mountain outline and golden logo of the Nuggets with golden numerals and NOB. Majority of this uniform is in flatiron red, which I think is a nice contrast to the previous editions as red has mainly been used as accent colour. This is not a revolutionary design concept and others have done it before me, just like Hoopladawg87 a while back. He helped me out with some minor details on this one.

All comments and criticisms are greatly appreciated! As always I sincerely hope you guys stay safe during these unprecedented and strange times! Lets hope for a better 2021 - wishing you a happy new year in advance!

Denver Nuggets Association Edition Uniform Concept


Denver Nuggets Icon Edition Uniform Concept


Denver Nuggets Statement Edition Uniform Concept


Denver Nuggets City Edition Uniform Concept

[Ukyo]

Nice! 

[Tore]

16 hours ago, Ukyo said:

Nice! 

Glad you liked it! Anything you would want different for the Nuggets?

[Indigo]

10 hours ago, Tore said:

Glad you liked it! Anything you would want different for the Nuggets?

Could you lighten the navy? The city flag has a royal-navy hue, but yours is more navy. 

[Tore]

@LA Fakers+ LA Snippers

Thanks you for your request! Sorry about the late response - different time zones, you know.

While I was at it I decided to recolour the the city edition three times as it was a fun exercise. 
For the V2 I recoloured with the exact blue colour found in the flag, as you requested.
For the V3 I kept the new blue and added the red from the flag. Finally for V4 I kept both the new red and blue while adding the yellow from the sun. 

 

The new blue and red definitely made the concept pop more. 

Of the three I think I prefer V3 as of this moment, what do you think?
 

Denver Nuggets City Edition Uniform Concept V2

Denver Nuggets City Edition Uniform Concept V3

Denver Nuggets City Edition Uniform Concept V4

 

[jaytavo305]

Its either 3 or 4 for me

[Indigo]

@Tore Great work! V4 Definitely matches the flag and would easily be recognized there, but the gold on V3 screams “Denver” to me (that shade is also fitting for a team named “Nuggets”).

[Tore]

@jaytavo305 - Yeah, its between those two for me as well.

@LA Fakers+ LA Snippers Thank you for your kind words! I wholeheartedly agree with you on the usage of gold as I too think its a good fit the Nuggets, however I wonder how it would look in real life. Being a minimalist when it comes to NBA concepts, I did not want the gold to take too much presence and thats the main reason for my caution while applying it.  

[Indigo]

42 minutes ago, Tore said:

@jaytavo305 - Yeah, its between those two for me as well.

@LA Fakers+ LA Snippers Thank you for your kind words! I wholeheartedly agree with you on the usage of gold as I too think its a good fit the Nuggets, however I wonder how it would look in real life. Being a minimalist when it comes to NBA concepts, I did not want the gold to take too much presence and thats the main reason for my caution while applying it.  

The most recent application of that shade of gold that I can find is the LeBron era Cavs

[DrJack]

As much as I like the metallic gold for the Nuggets (so appropriate), the medallion logo at the center of the chest in this particular uniform design makes me think Jokic is a chain and a Kangol away from being featured in a T-Pain video.

[Tore]

@DrJack That is simply one of the greatest things I've ever seen on this site!! I do not think I've ever laughed this hard at a response before! I definitely see what you mean but that was not my intention. I did try out a version with the logo reversed but I just didnt like it as much as this one. Anyway, thank you so much for the greatest response ever mate! Ill never forget this one lol

[Ukyo]

On 1/14/2021 at 10:46 AM, Tore said:

Glad you liked it! Anything you would want different for the Nuggets?

 

I'm not sure exactly, but i think that Christmas Special would be similiar a City Edition Nuggets, but with color of Christmas (Green, Red and White or just Red and White) 

 

To be honest, this design you made with Denver Nuggets is very good. I really loved the Icon and City Edition. Statement is very good either, since you made it a "classic but modern".