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afaik some kits (movistar, astana, liquigas, htc, euskatel, francaise des jeux, cofidis) are designed by nalini. their design more friendly, but look similar.
nike design in my opinion stands out: astana kit 2008, 2009 and shack 2009, 2010. team leopard? it's just their first year
adidas design for sky? some say that it is nalini anyway.
santini lampre. i wouldn't wear that
vermarc: omega, ag2r, quickstep. not my choice.
castelli: garmin-cervelo. one of the many: sky, team leopard
though i prefer adidas, when it comes to kits design nike rulez.
nike design in my opinion stands out: astana kit 2008, 2009 and shack 2009, 2010. team leopard? it's just their first year
adidas design for sky? some say that it is nalini anyway.
santini lampre. i wouldn't wear that
vermarc: omega, ag2r, quickstep. not my choice.
castelli: garmin-cervelo. one of the many: sky, team leopard
though i prefer adidas, when it comes to kits design nike rulez.
- Feb 23, 2010
- 2,114
- 19
- 11,510
Big thanks la.margna for posting the evolution images and I found it particularly interesting, to the extent that I wanted to offer some thoughts about evaluating these kits.
Visual identity designers face a lot of difficulties when road-testing their designs, especially when working with focus groups, directly with clients or the public.
When asked what they think of a design, critics drawn from these groups will frequently resort to subjective criteria - nasty colours, 'clutter' from too many sponsors, bad logos - because they can't really find a way to explain why the design doesn't work for them. To find an answer to the question, they will cite such criteria because these are the most obvious distinctions from other brands.
So it follows that a kit won't automatically fail because the team is obliged to satisfy lots of sponsors or because the colours are nasty.
If I said "let's use dayglo yellow or hot pink in 2011", for example, you might laugh me out of the office. Yet we're not all heaping scorn on last year's ISD-Neri, or nearly twenty years of Lampre tradition.
A kit design that fails - like any design that fails - comes from either the wrong solution to the right problem or the right solution to the wrong problem.
The problem
Let's start with the problem. How do we drive revenue and awareness on this:
Yes, folks. This is Lampre's headquarters.
The sponsor wants to be involved in cycling for a reason. Let's first understand why.
Then we examine the subject: on what surfaces is it represented? Bikes, kits, cars, sundry items... etc.
Who comprises our target audience? How will they see our subject? From a helicopter, from moto cameras, from magazine photos etc.
What are the constraints we face? Weather, competing surfaces (i.e. other teams), sponsorship obligations, materials... etc.
And so it goes on like this.
The solution
It sounds obvious but the design solution must flow directly from the problem. Anything "extraneous" is not relevant and may harm the quality of the solution. The solution must satisfy each aspect of the problem as completely as possible. Nothing should be added to the design unless it can be shown to solve an aspect of the problem without conflict with other aspects.
In this way we arrive at a kind of design harmony. So when most of us criticise a bad kit, it's because there's something going on at a certain level but perhaps we're not entirely clear why - that's because we have a strong sense of that missing harmony.
The single biggest reason for kit fail: overstatement
Of the kits that fail, most of them do so because they overstate their communication. This is the result of not understanding the problem as described above.
Many of the subtleties that we find in designs such as Liquigas 2008, Silence-Lotto 2009, HTC-Columbia 2010 and Saxo 2010 are practically invisible in all still or moving images except static close-ups or a victory salute in good weather. Plus there's also a significant risk that this sort of detail won't be properly understood.
For example, I have often read criticisms the "Robocoppy" look of last year's HTC-Columbia kit but the root of the problem is probably that none of us are quite sure what the designer was trying to tell us. Is it an HTC phone keypad? Is it some sort of riff on protection against the elements afforded by Columbia clothing? As Hitchcock said, "an audience that's confused isn't emoting".
In the case of Silence-Lotto and Saxo 2010, what immediate communication value are we adding with carefully crafted sweeping stripes or mountain ranges? When I saw the jerseys as posted above, I must confess it was the first time I noticed that mountain range.
Equally, many of us appreciated 2010 QuickStep, not because it was "retro" as we might have thought, but rather because it did not add on layer after layer of noise to the design: an encouraging trend that Vermarc seems unfortunately to have dropped for 2011.
Astana meanwhile has progressively simplified its kits over the years, learning from the mistakes of seasons past: illegible typography and the fact that the darker sidebar accents were detracting from the central message. In 2011, the simplification has reached its zenith but the overall success is tempered by a new typographic aberration.
Garmin toned down the argyle just enough to remain distinctive between 2009 and 2010, clarifying and simplifying what was still one of the best "ideas" in jersey design in years. With the team merger, we have lost the originality of the idea and I would say that many of us with an inner conflict over the 2011 design (me included) will agree that we are torn because Garmin-Cervé] is a very effective design on the one hand, yet we have lost the virtuosity of Garmin-Transitions on the other.
Conclusion
I hope that in writing this I've explained one way to evaluate the success of team kits - to look at whether they solve problems - and to show how I've used that approach to comment on a few of the jerseys posted above.
And finally, sorry for the long post!
Visual identity designers face a lot of difficulties when road-testing their designs, especially when working with focus groups, directly with clients or the public.
When asked what they think of a design, critics drawn from these groups will frequently resort to subjective criteria - nasty colours, 'clutter' from too many sponsors, bad logos - because they can't really find a way to explain why the design doesn't work for them. To find an answer to the question, they will cite such criteria because these are the most obvious distinctions from other brands.
So it follows that a kit won't automatically fail because the team is obliged to satisfy lots of sponsors or because the colours are nasty.
If I said "let's use dayglo yellow or hot pink in 2011", for example, you might laugh me out of the office. Yet we're not all heaping scorn on last year's ISD-Neri, or nearly twenty years of Lampre tradition.
A kit design that fails - like any design that fails - comes from either the wrong solution to the right problem or the right solution to the wrong problem.
The problem
Let's start with the problem. How do we drive revenue and awareness on this:
Yes, folks. This is Lampre's headquarters.
The sponsor wants to be involved in cycling for a reason. Let's first understand why.
Lampre website said:
Then we examine the subject: on what surfaces is it represented? Bikes, kits, cars, sundry items... etc.
Who comprises our target audience? How will they see our subject? From a helicopter, from moto cameras, from magazine photos etc.
What are the constraints we face? Weather, competing surfaces (i.e. other teams), sponsorship obligations, materials... etc.
And so it goes on like this.
The solution
It sounds obvious but the design solution must flow directly from the problem. Anything "extraneous" is not relevant and may harm the quality of the solution. The solution must satisfy each aspect of the problem as completely as possible. Nothing should be added to the design unless it can be shown to solve an aspect of the problem without conflict with other aspects.
In this way we arrive at a kind of design harmony. So when most of us criticise a bad kit, it's because there's something going on at a certain level but perhaps we're not entirely clear why - that's because we have a strong sense of that missing harmony.
The single biggest reason for kit fail: overstatement
Of the kits that fail, most of them do so because they overstate their communication. This is the result of not understanding the problem as described above.
Many of the subtleties that we find in designs such as Liquigas 2008, Silence-Lotto 2009, HTC-Columbia 2010 and Saxo 2010 are practically invisible in all still or moving images except static close-ups or a victory salute in good weather. Plus there's also a significant risk that this sort of detail won't be properly understood.
For example, I have often read criticisms the "Robocoppy" look of last year's HTC-Columbia kit but the root of the problem is probably that none of us are quite sure what the designer was trying to tell us. Is it an HTC phone keypad? Is it some sort of riff on protection against the elements afforded by Columbia clothing? As Hitchcock said, "an audience that's confused isn't emoting".
In the case of Silence-Lotto and Saxo 2010, what immediate communication value are we adding with carefully crafted sweeping stripes or mountain ranges? When I saw the jerseys as posted above, I must confess it was the first time I noticed that mountain range.
Equally, many of us appreciated 2010 QuickStep, not because it was "retro" as we might have thought, but rather because it did not add on layer after layer of noise to the design: an encouraging trend that Vermarc seems unfortunately to have dropped for 2011.
Astana meanwhile has progressively simplified its kits over the years, learning from the mistakes of seasons past: illegible typography and the fact that the darker sidebar accents were detracting from the central message. In 2011, the simplification has reached its zenith but the overall success is tempered by a new typographic aberration.
Garmin toned down the argyle just enough to remain distinctive between 2009 and 2010, clarifying and simplifying what was still one of the best "ideas" in jersey design in years. With the team merger, we have lost the originality of the idea and I would say that many of us with an inner conflict over the 2011 design (me included) will agree that we are torn because Garmin-Cervé] is a very effective design on the one hand, yet we have lost the virtuosity of Garmin-Transitions on the other.
Conclusion
I hope that in writing this I've explained one way to evaluate the success of team kits - to look at whether they solve problems - and to show how I've used that approach to comment on a few of the jerseys posted above.
And finally, sorry for the long post!
- Jan 11, 2010
- 15,159
- 3,945
- 28,180
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