The Provinces Project

[officeglenn]

THE PROVINCES PROJECT

PROLOGUE

While watching the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and the Tim Hortons Brier this year (the Canadian women's and men's curling championships, respectively), I took note of the fact that the teams from each province wore exactly the same shirt template, only with different colours. This intrigued me.

The first thing I set out to do was document the colours each province used. Each shirt, it seemed, had a primary colour, a secondary colour used mainly for the sleeves, and a tertiary colour used only for piping. This is my approximation of the colours worn:

You'll note that, in some cases, the tertiary colour is the same as one of the other colours, resulting in a simpler two-colour effect.

The colour combinations above are those for the 11 teams common to both tournaments. In the Brier, a team from Northern Ontario is added, while in the Scotties, the defending champions are invited back as "Team Canada":

I won't be using either of these colour schemes from here on out, but documented them as well.

In the first set, you'll also note that there is one combined team for the Yukon and Northwest Territories. I would also assume that, if there were a curling team from Nunavut, they'd also get lumped in here. So the first question that crossed my mind was, "What if those territories each had their own separate team? What colours would they use?"

This is my attempt to answer that question:

====================

EDIT: Forgot a very important part of this — the new territorial colour schemes on the curling template:

====================

The next question that came to mind, "What if these colours were ported to other sports?" ...

[officeglenn]

THE PROVINCES PROJECT

PHASE 1: HOCKEY

The first sport I tackled with these provincial colour schemes was the quintessential Canadian game: hockey. One thing to keep in mind is to think of these more as primary, clash and third jerseys, rather than traditional home and away. I tried to use the primary colour as a base colour for the "primary" jersey and the secondary colour for the clash jersey base. If one of those two wasn't white, I tended to make a white jersey as well ? per North American sports tradition ? and one of the others as an alternate.

MANITOBA

Up first is Manitoba. This was one of the first ideas that popped in my head, and spurred on to actually start the project.

The logo on the first two jerseys is a trace of a Manitoba provincial government logo that was used up until a couple of years ago. The bison is a symbol of Manitoba that has been used many times over.

The alternate logo uses another Manitoba bison logo that I remember seeing during curling tournaments in the ?80s. It had a great throwback feel to it, and I wanted to use it pretty badly on an alternate.

[officeglenn]

BRITISH COLUMBIA

The logo for British Columbia was a little tricky. In past years, curling teams from B.C. have used a patch on their shirts with a graphic of the province's flag ? formerly a government emblem, retired a few years ago ? with red "BC" lettering. I found the flag graphic fairly easily, and added on the "BC" from the B.C. Lions' logo, which was fairly similar.

I thought the pattern on the B.C. flag itself lended itself to some pretty unique striping opportunities. The number font is the old Seattle Supersonics' font, which gave a nice balance between curves and straight lines to go with the rest of the package.

[DelayedPenalty]

Love this idea! Can't wait to see what all you do with it.

Manitoba looks great. I think it fits the province perfectly. Uniform template is nice, and the balance of color is well done.

BC could use more red IMO, since it features quite prominently in the logo, and is absent in the rest of the uniform. If you're replicating the wave of the flag, then red could easily be incorporated. But I see the waves as waves in water, which wouldnt make a lot of sense if red was added...

Great work so far Glenn! Can't wait to see what else you have to show us!

[Xodius]

I love Manitoba, especially the alternate logo. Something about it is so great.

BC is off. The jerseys need a lot more contrast as they look plain. My personal preference would be to get rid of the waves. I get what you're going for, but it's way too distracting.

[officeglenn]

BC could use more red IMO, since it features quite prominently in the logo, and is absent in the rest of the uniform. If you're replicating the wave of the flag, then red could easily be incorporated. But I see the waves as waves in water, which wouldnt make a lot of sense if red was added...

Great work so far Glenn! Can't wait to see what else you have to show us!

Thanks, DP. I was going for water waves in the striping, so yeah, red wouldn't work so well. There'll be a few instances in the series where colours will appear only in the logo. I was trying really hard to stick to the colours in the schemes from the curling shirts, especially for the jerseys and striping. It's one of those cases of creativity within constraints, which I feel makes one more creative. Like writing sonnets (as opposed to free verse) or the White Stripes recording Elephant using only analog equipment.

[officeglenn]

I want to try and space these out a little more, but I've been working on them for a month, and I'm antsy to get them out there, so please bear with me...

ALBERTA

I debated between a conservative and a modern look for Alberta, with the latter eventually winning out. I wanted to keep the shield on the blue background on the primary, to mimic the provincial flag. The striping patterns are meant to follow the same shape as the shield as well. I initially did just blue and white jerseys, but later added a gold alternate.

[officeglenn]

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

I created a fairly simple logo for Newfoundland and Labrador, mainly with an eye toward doing concepts for other sports (which I haven't started yet, but may constitute other phases in this project).

I'm a big fan of the Canadiens-like chest stripe on hockey jerseys, but I had to be careful not to overuse it over the course of this project. But it works in this case, I think. There are also hints of the All-Star Game jerseys from Minnesota 2004 in there.

[NEW.ERA]

Love this series Glenn. Keep up the good work!

[officeglenn]

BTW, bonus points for whoever can figure out why I put the numbers I did on the backs of the jerseys.

[joshhockey]

They represent the year each province joined the country. How many points do I get?

[TimEOBrien]

BTW, bonus points for whoever can figure out why I put the numbers I did on the backs of the jerseys.

Confederation date.

[Raymie]

Is it me or do the reds not match? Otherwise, great series!

[officeglenn]

Is it me or do the reds not match? Otherwise, great series!

Yeah, I have no idea how that happened in the process of rasterizing the files.

[B@ltim0r3R@v3n5]

The bc logo looks amazing and I love the Manitoba jersesys

[Whittier S]

LOVE the Newfoundland and Labrador jerseys!

[officeglenn]

Trying to remember the order I did these in ... these middle ones sort of run together ...

NEW BRUNSWICK

Definitely wanted to go modern with this one. At the time I was doing this, that The Dark Knight Rises trailer with the scene inside the football stadium was in heavy rotation, so I kind of had the Gotham Rogues' uniforms on my brain since it was the same colour scheme as New Brunswick. I also wanted to make sure there was no text on the front of the jersey, since New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province.

[officeglenn]

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

I know that, in planning out the logo for PEI, I was thinking of something similar to the New York Islanders. Didn't quite turn out that way in the end, but tried to keep it nice and simple.

[sc49erfan15]

Glenn, awesome idea. Very cool in the first place that each province/territory gets its own color for the curling championships - very interested in seeing this continued onto other sports after you're done with hockey.

So far:

Manitoba - jersey design is very clean, I like the flag on the shoulder and think that's something you could continue on the other jerseys as well for some continuity - either on the shoulder, back hem, above the name, etc. I'm not feeling the weird white shapes inside of the bison, unless they have a connotation I'm not getting. Maybe take them out and replace with a gold or white M? The alternate is fantastic. Maybe this would be a good place to use a tie-down collar, for a more throwback feel?

BC - jerseys are another winner. The Sonics font works well. I'd use a different BC for the logo though - maybe the Sonics font for that as well. Also, I feel like the jerseys need a very small splash of red somewhere other than the logo... a small, thin stripe in the middle of the central white waved stripe?

Alberta - overall, looks good. Numbers look a little big, but that could just be the striping making them look that way.

Newfoundland & Labrador - the only one I'm not a really big fan of. The "NL" logo is a solid idea overall, but the multiple outlines get lost in the striping on the jersey. Move the N down (or the L up) a smidge so the white outline meshes on both letters. I'd also get rid of the multiple outlines on the jersey crest, it would clean things up a TON.

New Brunswick - Love it. Like the "bilingualism"/"no text" treatment. It's clean... it's cold... that's some high quality jersey concepts.

PEI - a little confused on the colors. Your swatch from the curling teams looks like a hunter green, but these jerseys look black. From a design standpoint, the jerseys are good and clean, but the logo looks cluttered. I'd simplify the PEI silhouette and remove the outline - the jaggedness of the island makes it look very complicated, and the outline adds to that. You could maybe even do a medallion-style crest with the island silhouette in the middle and "PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND" surrounding it. Just a thought.

Good work overall, love the idea. Keep 'em coming!

[officeglenn]

"Keep 'em coming," you say? Don't mind if I do ...

QUEBEC

Here's one where I ran into a bit of trouble with the colour scheme. As you can see in the early post, Quebec had a powder blue and white colour scheme in this year's Brier and Scotties. It looks nice, but the two just didn't have enough contrast with each other on a larger scale like a hockey set. So I added a second, darker blue, as a trim/equipment colour. Quebec teams have done so in the past, so it's not like it's without precedent.

I didn't feel a fleur-de-lis on its own worked great, so I added the collegiate-style arched wordmark above. Also did the Red Wings style sleeves with a little added flair.