The Sports Design Blog » Uniform Concept

Jan

9

Uniform Concept – Georgia Tech Basketball

I recently began what will be a regular series on Garb Athletics’ blog, Uni-Forum, where I design a uniform concept and write about the research and process involved. For my first post of the series, I finished a project I had started before and added a Georgia Tech basketball uniform design to the football uniforms I had already designed to give Georgia Tech a consistent, unique athletics brand.

~~I’ll let my post on Uni-Forum do the explaining, but here’s the design:~~

UPDATE: Since the Garb Athletics blog no longer exists, here’s the article:

I am both a sports uniform enthusiast and a graphic designer, so BLOG NAME asked me to begin a series of uniform design concepts and write about the process. If you’ve ever read my blog, The Sports Design Blog, you know I’m a huge Georgia Tech fan. I recently designed a Georgia Tech football uniform concept, so when Garb Athletics asked me to design and write about a new uniform idea, I wanted to finish the project and design Georgia Tech a basketball uniform as well.

The first step I took was to look back at the history of Georgia Tech basketball uniforms because all good design is informed by what came before it.

Throughout Georgia Tech’s basketball history, the Yellow Jackets have had two basic jersey styles: “TECH” across the top and an arched “GEORGIA” above the number with “TECH” below. The type has almost always been a very traditional, collegiate typeface with the serifs being removed in recent years. There are certainly exceptions through the years, though. The rest of the uniform’s design has changed frequently with the times.

This is just a snapshot of the many jerseys the team has had throughout the years, highlighting the main styles. One thing to note is that the images I’ve chosen are from some of the better years of Georgia Tech basketball. Fair or not, fans have fond memories of a particular uniform based on the on-court results. When teams wear throwback uniforms for a game, you don’t usually see them honoring a team that went 13-18.

While the home jerseys have always been white, gold has been the road color most years with navy blue replacing it in a few seasons. One of my goals in this football/basketball joint project was to create consistency, which is important in any brand, and the first step was establishing the colors. You can read a lot more about it in my football uniform design post, but I made two main decisions with regards to color: I would showcase the school’s main colors, old gold and white, while treating navy blue as a tertiary color and I would use the school’s official metallic gold, Pantone 874, instead of the more yellow-gold on the team’s mascot, Buzz.

Aside from the proper gold, other elements that I decided to carry over from the football uniforms were the solid navy blue collar and the side stripes, which were inspired by the shape of a stinger because of the school’s nickname, the Yellow Jackets. It’s not often you see a school carry elements over from sport to sport other than colors and logo, and I thought something unique to the Yellow Jackets made sense to reuse.

From there, I used the elements I liked from Georgia Tech’s uniform history and gave them a modern update. One of my favorite trends happening in uniform design is the (well-done) modern update to vintage uniform designs and elements.

(Click to see full size)

For the home and away uniforms (left and center), I combined the styles of type the Yellow Jackets have had before — I used the bolder text with single strokes of recent years, but brought back the serifs of the past, which I liked and thought matched the GT logo better. On the football uniforms, I included the mascot, Buzz, on the collar since the helmet displays the primary GT logo. Here, since it doesn’t appear elsewhere, I used the primary mark.

For the alternate jersey (right), I made a modern version of the oldest uniform in the history images above. I love the simplicity of these uniforms — saying only “TECH” and using nothing but white and gold. Georgia Tech did a version of these a couple of seasons ago, and I really liked them, but I’ve made some updates. In addition to using Pantone 874 instead of the more yellow-gold, I imitated the old shorts’ cut with stripes and placed the GT logo in that space since “Georgia Tech” or the logo don’t appear anywhere else.

Along with the new, more unique colors, the matching style of the football and basketball uniforms created by elements pulled from Georgia Tech’s history and new, Yellow-Jacket-specific elements would create a strong, consistent brand for Georgia Tech athletics. I just wish they would actually use them.

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