British and Irish Quidditch League (13/13 Wanderers and Wasps added, series complete)

[BigRed618]

As some of you are aware, aside from the main Harry Potter books, a number of other books were released to expand upon the Wizarding World. One of these was Quidditch Through the Ages, explaining the game of Quidditch, a fast-paced sport where players take to the skies on broomsticks and try to throw a red ball, called a Quaffle, through one of three hoops to score, while avoiding two black balls, called Bludgers, all while two other players hunt down a small, golden, winged ball called a Golden Snitch. The game ends when the Snitch is caught, and whichever Seeker (the name of the position for the player whose sole job is to chase down the Snitch) catches it gets a ton of points for their team, usually resulting in a win.

 

The book also talks about the culture around the sport, which is at least as popular in the wizarding community as soccer is in Britain, or baseball in the USA. It talks about a major Quidditch league in the Home Countries called the British and Irish Quidditch League (BIQL.) It went in depth about the league's 13 teams including history, trivia, and a general idea of what their uniforms looked like.

 

I decided to make a series creating concepts for the entire BIQL. 
 

LEAGUE LOGO

 

The league logo is shaped like the playing field, with a Golden Snitch making up the central partition line. The colors represent England, Ireland (including Northern Ireland,) Scotland, and Wales in that order.

 

APPLEBY ARROWS

 

As a precaution against Muggle (non-magical person) interference, all BIQL teams are situated in smaller locales with low population density. In the Arrows case, they represent the West English county of Cumbria, known as a mostly rural region. In actual HP canon, there seems to not be much in the way of standardization on what a Quidditch uniform consists of beyond protective gear for the arms, legs, head, and eyes, so I went ahead and created a template that includes a helmet, jersey, shorts, socks, and a cape. The cape and helmet will be where the numbers will go since those are the parts of the player a spectator will see the most.

 

That should be about everything. Sorry for all the words

[BigRed618]

18 minutes ago, BigRed618 said:

 

[BigRed618]

BALLYCASTLE BATS

The Bats are Northern Ireland's only team. For this concept, I try to keep the design close to how it was described in QTTA, that is, black with a big bat on the front. The book and the wiki mention nothing about clash uniforms, but I decided to make ones for the whole league for this series because I figured there are teams here that have similar coloring that could use an alternate uniform to avoid color confusion.

 

CAERPHILLY CATAPULTS

The Catapults are a Welsh team known for their unique color scheme of light green and scarlet stripes. I added black as sort of a stabilizing element to the brand.

[Bomba Tomba]

Your Bats home has no gray, why not replace all the white with it?

[BigRed618]

5 hours ago, Bomba Tomba said:

Your Bats home has no gray, why not replace all the white with it?

Simply put, it was a personal choice. Like in soccer, some of these teams will not always use only club colors in their clash uniforms.

[BigRed618]

CHUDLEY CANNONS

Most HP fans were introduced to the BIQL through the Cannons, being loveable underdogs and Ron Weasley's favorite team. The primary I made combines their iconic CC monogram with some cannonballs, as well as a hand with crossed fingers, alluding to the club's motto, "Let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the best."

 

FALMOUTH FALCONS

 

 

The Falcons fave a motto too, part of which you can see on their capes here. The full saying goes, "Let us win, but if we can’t win, let us break a few heads," referring to their famous ferocity and violence in their style of play. According to Quidditch Through The Ages, the Falcons traditionally play in dark grey and white robes with a falcon emblem on the chest. I decided to include yellow for a more attractive look.

[Bomba Tomba]

Think a flaming cannonball logo would look good on the Cannons, but the flames are in the shape of the fingers

[BigRed618]

HOLYHEAD HARPIES

The Harpies are Wales' second team, famous for hiring only women athletes. Their official club colors are dark green and yellow, but I used red instead of green for their clash robes. These colors are taken from the Welsh county of Anglesey, where the Harpies call home.

 

KENMARE KESTRELS

The Kestrels are the lone representative of the Republic of Ireland, headquartered somewhere in County Kerry. I make a modernized version their classic logo, two Ks back to back, and drop their yellow in favor of dark blue, so they can more easily differentiate themselves from the Harpies. 

[BigRed618]

MONTROSE MAGPIES

The Magpies are the league's most successful team, having won the League Cup 32 times and the European Cup twice. Their home colors are, of course, black and white, but I came up with a burgundy and pink uniform for them on road games.

 

PRIDE OF PORTREE

The Pride plays in the Hebrides, a group of islands in the northern edge of Scotland. The star is an important part of the Prides' identity, so I provided plenty of them on their robes.

[Bomba Tomba]

Numbers inside the front star, maybe?

[BigRed618]

17 hours ago, Bomba Tomba said:

Numbers inside the front star, maybe?

I thought about doing that, but decided that numbers would be best served where a spectator is most likely to see them on a player in flight on their broomstick, namely their helmet and cape.

 

PUDDLEMERE UNITED

PUQC is considered the league's oldest club, having dated back all the way to the 12th century. Their main colors are dark blue and gold, but prior to the late 1990s, United wore brown instead. I decided to bring back the brown in the form of clash robes.

 

TUTSHILL TORNADOES

The Tornadoes are based in Tutshill, a small village on England's western coast where JK Rowling herself spent much of her childhood. Their colors are navy blue and light blue, but I tried to come up with a unique shade for the light blue that looks different than the blue worn by the Arrows. The TT monogram on the capes are supposed to be like a throwback logo. According to Quidditch Through the Ages, the Tornadoes traditionally wore a "TT" monogram on the fronts of their jerseys. I decided they needed a logo with a little more substance.

[BigRed618]

WIGTOWN WANDERERS

The Wigtown Wanderers play in southwest Scotland. Their famous emblem is a meat cleaver, a tribute to Walter Parkin, a butcher whose seven children made up the entirety of the Wanderers team in their inaugural season. It was said that Walter would go to all his kids' matches, and he'd always have a meat cleaver with him. 
 

WIMBOURNE WASPS

Finally we have the Wasps. QTTA describes their robes as "black and yellow horizontal stripes with a wasp on the chest," and I found no reason to deviate from that. The primary features a wasp perched atop a quaffle, a ball used for scoring. While not as famous as the golden snitch, it’s still considered an important piece of Quidditch equipment.

 

That does it for this series. I know it wasn’t my most popular work, being fictional teams playing a fictional sport in a story that is, as far as we know, quite fictional, but these ideas were swimming around in my head for a while and I wanted to put them out there is all. Thanks for your time.

[vtgco]

I must admit I haven't gotten into Harry Potter any deeper than the movies, but I do think this is a really fun idea for a series, and it's cool to see someone play around with how you might design a sports uniform cape :P

 

The league logo is a really solid design! I would say it, as do the teams in your league, have a fun '70s aesthetic to them, which is cool.

If you did want to it feel more current, the same general idea could probably work, with a smaller oval so that the snitch extends outside of it, the BIQL as a wordmark outside of the logo, and/or some gradiented shadows/highlights, but that's perhaps not necessary.

 

I really love your Magpies logo; the composition of the goals with the bird is quite nice. The jerseys are solid, and I like the red and pink clash idea, though I'm curious if you tried vertical stripes with it.

 

Your Wasps logo is really well executed; doesn't seem an easy thing to get a wasp right but you've nailed it! The away uniform striping is super classy, especially on the cape

 

I think the Bats have the best use of helmet here by a fair amount, cuz the bat ears in the front work really well with the Rams/Vikings approach to the wings... though I do wonder how it would look with the numbers either below the wings or with a wing-colored outline. I might suggest red shorts at home but IDK.

 

I'm not really crazy about red & neon green as a color scheme but you pull it off fairly well with the Catapults.  Definitely that away looks really good. Not sure how to make it work with the helmet numbers paradigm, but I do kinda want to see that catapult stand alone from the roundel somewhere...

 

I like the shoulder yoke and striping with that color scheme for the Falcons, though I wonder if the logo could be reworked so the top bar of the F defines the top of the head?

 

Really like that Kestrels logo! The helmet works well as-is but I'd be curious to see a helmet with just the numbers superposed on top of a shamrock.

 

I love your logo for the Wanderers; I'm really impressed with the quality execution of the heraldic tradition in a modern style! The whole lion deserves to go on the jersey, especially since the floating meat cleaver is kinda awkward on its own. Barring that, two crossed cleavers a la Portland Timbers secondary would work too. I like the shoulder stripes on the away, maybe bring it to the home as well for a retro Calgary Stampeders vibe!

 

Your drawing of the snitch for the Tutshill logo is so adorable; it just conveys so much emotion as it frantically is flying to escape the vortex! Altogether the logo is a *touch* busy, but it's too charming to change too drastically, so I wonder if ditching the top part of the ribbon would help with that.

 

As cool as the abstract '70s style talon logo is for the Harpies, I'm really not feeling the single upward claw as the jersey design. IMO it mostly reads as a modified Orthodox church cross or something like that. Not sure, maybe it would work on the sleeve as the end of a vertical shoulder yoke, or as two of them sticking out diagonally from the collar onto the chest? Idk, it's messing around some more with that.

 

Anyways, really fun series here! Good work!