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NWSL Concepts (Bay FC tweak added)


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2020 Entries:

CarolinaWestern New YorkUtahPortland

OrlandoHoustonSky BlueChicago

Seattle Reign (v1)SacramentoWashingtonBoston Breakers

FC Kansas CityLouisvilleSt LouisToronto

AlbuquerqueAtlantaMadison (v2)Angel City FC (v1)

 

2020 Alternate Takes:

Olympique Reign (v1)FCB LAmsn.png

 

2022 Additions/Updates:

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sj_b.pngcin.pngatx.pngnsh.png

orl_2.pngsea_olympique.png

 

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Hey folks! I've had some NWSL concepts cooking for a while now, and after some free time spent improving them, I wanted to start sharing them!

I plan to do kits for the current league, as well as bringing back some old teams and creating a couple new expansion teams.

 

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

 

Starting things out with Carolina:

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The Courage have a pretty good look already, but I wanted to get rid of their monochrome uniforms, so I added a pale Carolina blue to the color scheme.

 

The home jersey's design includes blueprints from Raleign inventor Beulah Louise Henry, sometimes called the Edison of her time. Click the square below for a closeup of the pattern:

car_closeup.png

 

The away jersey is inspired by famous North Carolinian civil rights activist and singer Nina Simone. The colors are based on her outfit on her first album cover, while the stripes are waveforms generated from her songs "Old Jim Crow," "Feeling Good," "Four Women," "I Loves You Porgy," and "Mississippi Goddam," from top to bottom.

I'm not very familiar with her work, so if any of you are fans of hers, please let me know if you think a different album cover would be better inspiration or if there are better songs to use.

 

Finally, the third jersey is a 2002 fauxback to the Courage's WUSA days.

 

C&C appreciated! Thanks for checking it out and I'll post more soon!

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The concept itself is pretty good, especially the away jersey with the "music vibes". Is great to see a well-thought concept on these boards.

 

Maybe this is me being sexist, but I think this isn't different of a male jersey. Have you thought about make the uniform more fitting? Shorter sleeves and thinner waistline would be a good start, just like Nike does.

 

Last but not least, I'd make the "North Carolina" part in the fauxback white instead of red, just for contrast's sake.

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On 3/8/2020 at 9:34 PM, JohnnyRfl said:

The concept itself is pretty good, especially the away jersey with the "music vibes". Is great to see a well-thought concept on these boards.

 

Maybe this is me being sexist, but I think this isn't different of a male jersey. Have you thought about make the uniform more fitting? Shorter sleeves and thinner waistline would be a good start, just like Nike does.

 

Last but not least, I'd make the "North Carolina" part in the fauxback white instead of red, just for contrast's sake.

Thank you for the feedback! I've updated the fauxback text; definitely more legible. I didn't think to edit the template for a slightly different cut... Maybe I can try to mess around with it so I can implement it for some future jerseys.

 

Next up is the return of the Western New York Flash:

wny_display_edited.png

 

I've created a new logo for them, using their excellent script from their old look and placing it in a NY state outline.

 

The home has a lightning bolt pattern on a center stripe.

 

The away is inspired by Rochester's "Flour City" nickname from its once-flourishing milling industry, with the sash representing the Erie Canal, which once traveled through Rochester until its reroute in the 1910s. I wanted to capture an old-timey feel with the jersey, so it's not super ornate. The jocktag is the municipal symbol of Rochester.

 

EDITED 03-12: switched to different jersey cut, added collar to away jersey. See the original version here.

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Here's Utah:

ut_display.png

The logo is already really nice; I just got rid of the unnecessary soccer balls on each side.

The home incorporates the Arch from the logo.

The away is a topographic map of Utah made up of smaller Utah silhouettes:

ut_closeup.png

 

Let me know if you have any comments!

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On 3/10/2020 at 8:10 PM, JMtexan09 said:

Mannn..... the home kits for Utah Royals FC is gorgeous and i would want to buy one for my kid who loves playing soccer.

Thanks for the kind words!

 

On 3/11/2020 at 9:18 PM, mcrosby said:

Can I ask how you made the topographic map? Just lots of time? 

Inkscape has a cool feature to do just this! I used a grayscale topographic map of Utah, then selected a vector icon (in my case the little silhouettes), then went to Tiled Clones > Trace. Then I set it to pick the lightness "L" from the drawing, and "apply the value to the clones'" size. That left the map design!

 

Speaking of maps, here's my take on the infamous Portland Thorns:

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I wanted to see the return of red & green as the primary colors for the Thorns, so black is limited to the crest.

 

The home jersey turns the rivers of the Willamette Basin into thorny vines, with the crest right over Portland:

por_closeup.png

 

The away is a recolored version of the old iconic PDX airport carpet.

 

Your feedback is appreciated!

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Thanks for the positive response, everybody!

 

And now, Orlando!

orl_display.png

The home builds on their current Lake Eola design, adding some color and the fountain from the crest to reference both the Pride flag and the Orlando flag.

The away turns the Florida horse conch, the state's official shell, into the exhaust of the Saturn V rockets launched from nearby Cape Canaveral.

 

Also, I've been kind of stuck on ideas for Sky Blue, so if anyone has any suggestions, that'd be appreciated. Thanks!

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So far these are all very impressive. As someone else said, it's great too see so much thought put into concepts. (I think soccer lends itself so much more than other popular sports to these kinds of patterns and exploration. The NBA seems like it's trying to get there--if clumsily in fits and starts--but I'd love to see more sports go this way, especially with the way HD broadcasts allow us to see and enjoy subtleties.)

 

NC, Utah, and Orlando (purple) are particular standouts in a great field. Keep it up.

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HURRICANES | PANTHERS | WHITE SOX | WOLFPACK

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7 hours ago, dgnmrwrw said:

So far these are all very impressive. As someone else said, it's great too see so much thought put into concepts. (I think soccer lends itself so much more than other popular sports to these kinds of patterns and exploration. The NBA seems like it's trying to get there--if clumsily in fits and starts--but I'd love to see more sports go this way, especially with the way HD broadcasts allow us to see and enjoy subtleties.)

 

NC, Utah, and Orlando (purple) are particular standouts in a great field. Keep it up.

Thank you! Yeah, I'm just tired of Nike and Adidas releasing bland jerseys all the time, so it's fun that we can show them up here on the boards :P 

 

Next up is Houston, who gets a rebrand:

hou_display.png

So the Houston Dash have a kinda generic, forgettable brand. That's why I renamed them the Frontier, showcasing Houston's historical role as a city of pioneers. The train is inspired the one on the city seal (which apparently signifies the "spirit of progress"). The moon reflects Houston's significance in space travel, and I use it in the monogram.

 

No research went into the home jersey, but I knew from the start I wanted this chevron pattern and nothing says Houston like Tequila Sunrise.

 

The away, on the other hand, is an homage to the fallen crew of the Challenger space shuttle. The colors match the mission uniform, and the pattern places the HF monogram in Resnik Crater, the memorial for astronaut Judith Resnik (who lived in the Houston area during her time at NASA) and one of few lunar craters named for women.

 

C&C appreciated!

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  • vtgco changed the title to NWSL Kit Concepts (HOU rebrand added)
5 hours ago, dgnmrwrw said:

Houston looks great and I love the name. Only issue is on the orange shirt, how the angles on the stripe don't quite line up with those on the crest. Just looks a bit off.

Thank you for the feedback! The big stripe angles matched the sublimated chevrons before, but here it is matching the crest's shape:

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I can't decide if I like the matching angles better or if the small chevrons feel awkward now, but it feels subtle either way.

I also added some chevrons to spice up the shorts stripe.

 

2 hours ago, raysox said:

Loving these all, really unique work across the board.

Only criticism is that Orlando is nowhere near a beach and a shell kit doesn't particularly work in this situation.

Thanks! Your criticism is fair, but I figured I could get away with a shell & rocket themed jersey given the precedence of the Apollos claiming Cape Canaveral... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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On 3/19/2020 at 11:27 AM, jaytavo305 said:

These are really awesome, every team has a unique and creative design with patterns, local references, and more. Love seeing the time you put into these. I would love to see your take on the MLS, not sure if you've ever done it before?

Thank you! The research can be tedious, but it helps me to avoid the blank t-shirts we see all too often IRL :)

As for MLS, I've posted some concepts here, but I haven't done a league-wide series yet mostly because logos take a while and MLS could use some rebrands, IMO. I certainly hope to get that going in the future.

 

And now, an unorthodox take on Sky Blue:

nj_display.png

Because the team just moved to Red Bull Arena, likely as an appeal to fans in NYC, I tried to create designs that can rep both New Jersey and New York at once.

 

The home jersey has a sunset sky and a silhouette of the George Washington Bridge, which connects Manhattan to the Jersey suburbs. The kit is in NYC blue and orange.

 

The away might be a bit polarizing, but I wanted to capture multiple aspects of the region's history in broadcast. Centered around the crest is a vintage TV test pattern (often seen as a technical difficulties screen.) This is meant to reflect NYC's role as a TV filming & broadcasting hub.

That design is combined with radio waves emanating from a stylized depiction of the Armstrong Tower, the New Jersey site where FM radio was developed.

All of this is done in the official NJ state colors of blue and buff, as seen on its flag and old license plates.

 

Let me know if you have any advice for the execution here, because it's feeling a bit off to me.

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  • vtgco changed the title to NWSL Kit Concepts (Sky Blue added)

Time for Chicago:

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So I had no expectation of outdoing one of the best soccer jerseys I've ever seen, but hopefully my home jersey, which depicts the skyline reflecting on Lake Michigan, is solid.

 

The away uses the neon Chicago Municipal Device on the iconic Chicago Theater marquee.

 

Thanks for checking it out!

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  • vtgco changed the title to NWSL Kit Concepts (Chicago added)
  • 2 weeks later...

Next is up is version 1 for the Reign.

 

I am pretty peeved about the team's rebrand. It was hard enough to see them leave Seattle for Tacoma, but now to add insult to injury the new owners have replaced the classy, locally-relevant brand with an awkward name and generic logo that represents Lyon more than the Pacific Northwest.

 

While I'd rather they kept the old logo, I wanted to try to find a better way to combine the Lyon and Reign brands than the actual design.

sea_olympique_w_lyon.png

The new crest takes the shape and colors of the OL logo, but adds the Reign crown, and incorporates the "Olympique" moniker by showcasing the nearby Olympic Mountains.

 

sea_olympique_display.png

 

The home's vertical stripe is inspired by Lyonnais's '70s designs, and uses a sublimated Mount Olympus design.

The away is black (one of the Reign's old colors) and has a simple diagonal design in a map of Puget Sound:

sea_olympique_closeup.png

 

I think this is a tad more palatable. Let me know what you think!

Coming up soon, my personal preference for the Reign.

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