The Decision to Redesign the Club Gear
Due to the strong growth of the club and the celebration of the club’s 5th anniversary, the board has reevaluated many of its polices, which included the team’s club wear. A new design was necessary as some of the club sponsors had changed. The board felt that it was a great opportunity to have a new, fresh design while increasing the gear selection for the members so that we could all wear our colours with pride at events or in training.
The Designer
Andrew Perro works as a graphic designer for TMX Equicom, an investor relations firm owned by the Toronto Stock Exchange. Andrew works on projects such as logo and website design, corporate presentations and annual reports for some of
Canada
’s largest public companies. He also has worked on many side projects such as being selected to design Canada Post’s Christmas themed stamps for the past few years.
Partly due to his interest in cycling and partly because of the uniqueness of the project, Andrew generously donated his time to design our new club wear. Initially thought to only require two to three hours, the project design took over 10 hours.
The Vision
Using just the club logo and past designs for inspiration, Andrew wanted to come up with a design that took elements from the logo and colours that captured the feeling of speed and being aerodynamic while creating a modern, sleek, clean, cutting edge design that would turn heads and show off the club and its sponsors in the best possible light. We wanted to make the new design less busy and distracting so that we could better display our TTC logo, the logos of our sponsors and our website address.
The Process
We started with about 15 different designs in the first round and based on the board’s feedback and through seven rounds of revisions and adjustments we eventually narrowed it down and selected the prototype that we have unveiled.
We wanted to stay away from using too much white because of the translucency when wet. We went with tri shorts that were mainly black because we recognized that not everyone would want to purchase the club shorts based on the fact that those garments are such a personal comfort issue. We wanted members to have the option to wear their own tri shorts but yet still be able to match with the team gear.
When choosing the colour scheme for the tops we chose darker colours because we were sensitive to the fact that darker colours are more flattering to our figures. We may have the hearts of a teenager but not many of us still have the body of a teenager. We wanted our members to look their best and feel their best when wearing the club clothing. Based on the material of the clothing and the breathability of it, we were confident that members would stay cool in the summer months despite the darker colours.
Supplier
In the past we had used Sugoi as our clothing supplier. As part of our due diligence we looked at other clothing suppliers. Many people’s first introduction to the club will be seeing our clothing at events or out on the roads during training. Having a great looking product that is of the highest quality is key to not only evoking pride within our membership when wearing the clothing, but also projecting a positive image for the club to other prospect members and the triathlon community.
There were a number of criteria we considered which included quality, fit, brand recognition, and price. We felt that Sugoi was the leader in each category and we are happy to continue our relationship with them.
The Result
We are very proud of the design and we hope the membership is too and feels this is a design they can wear and be proud of, not just at races but in training as well.