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[m-willis]

The States, Vol. 2: Michigan, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Kansas, Idaho

Clean Sheet Co.'s The States project is off and running, and the response has been fantastic. Thanks for ordering shirts, giving feedback, and asking - quite loudly at times - when your state was coming. I promise you: it's coming! There are a lot of states, and Clean Sheet Co.'s going to get to them all (and then some).

Starting today, we check five new states off the list. Michigan, South Carolina, Rhode Island, Kansas and Idaho get the Clean Sheet Co. treatment. I'm also pleased to announce a new way in which we're structuring the debut and ordering of each State shirt. Beginning with Volume 2, each State design will be a Clean Sheet Co. Lab project - which means we'll be asking folks to support the design(s) they are interested in.

We've used The Lab for a few previous projects - including our popular Gadsden Black design - and it's been a fantastic way to make sure we're producing exactly the right amount of each shirt, and to reward our core supporters with the best pricing. The Lab works on the 'Kickstarter' model: when you support a shirt in the Lab, you don't actually get charged, but you commit to buying the shirt as long as enough other folks support it too. You also lock in a lower price than the shirt will cost at retail. If support for a given design doesn't reach a low threshold (20 shirts) you'll never get charged (and we'll probably take the shirt's design back to the drawing board).

Oh yeah: and for or those first 20 shirts supported across each design? Shipping to anywhere in the U.S. is free, courtesty of Clean Sheet Co. - so if you’re one of those crucial early supporters, you get a really fantastic deal.

Ready? Let's dive in.

Michigan

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“If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.” With a state motto like that, I knew I had an fascinating task ahead of me. Michigan - a place I’ve never been - seemed complex and nuanced in comparison to other states, where colors and themes practically announce themselves right away. I knew Michigan was big, has both industrial and pastorial components, and of course has the funky two-part geography wrapping around the Great Lakes. I also suspected that the state had a very down-the-middle American vibe; unlike, say, Texas or Minnesota - places that seem to have cultural brands all their own - Michigan just seemed like the good ol’ U.S. of A.

As I dug in, I found some great material, all of it in beautiful balance. I learned about Michigan’s connection to water, and also to it’s sprawling interior. I learned about its history of industry and engineering prowess (Detroit needs no introduction), but also about its natural charms. This balance created a basis for the Clean Sheet design to emerge. In particular, I called on two important state symbols: one natural (the antlers of a decorated white-tailed buck - the state animal, and a sight Michigan outdoorsmen know well) and one engineered (the sprawling, symbolic Mackinac Bridge, which connects Michigan’s two land masses). The antler design created wonderful curved spaces, perfect to house very modest, minimal nod to the bridge and its distinctive paired cables. For the shirt’s colors, I went with a dominant indigo blue and white scheme, with a bit of sunset orange-red. This takes the state’s primary color motif (blue and white), adds splash of bright color (mirroring the look found on certain popular state license plates). I thought the combination ended up capturing the natural, engineered, and even human sides of complex Michigan in a very simple and honest way.

South Carolina

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If Michigan seemed to offer a variety of symbolic options, South Carolina was very straightforward. I’ve been a fan of South Carolina’s state flag for years, and I knew I’d use its unique trope - a palmetto and a crescent moon - along with its perfectly stark colors (midnight blue and full-moon white) - in the Clean Sheet design. Everything came together quickly; while reading up on the flag and its history, I learned some wonderful detail. This flag has serious history on its side.

Its origins date back to the Moultrie flag - a stylized waxing crescent moon on a blue field, the moon holding the slogan “LIBERTY” - which was first flown during the Revolutionary era. During an early skirmish in the War for Independence on Sullivan’s Island, it was shot down by the British, only to be commandeered and charged back into combat by a South Carolinian soldier - an act credited with inspiring the local troops, winning the battle at hand, and protecting Charleston. (As flag origin stories go, that’s a great one.) The tree was later added to symbolize the state’s abundant palmetto population, and also specifically to reference the island, defended that day from British cannons that could not penetrate defensive sand walls protected by palmettos laid atop them. Even when somebody tried to mess with perfection - adding a white halo around the tree, and colorizing it - it was quickly corrected. (Incredibly quickly - the state reverted to the old flag within 48 hours, and the imposter was ignominiously dubbed the “Two Day” flag).

The Clean Sheet Co. interpretation hues closely to the venerable state flag for inspiration. Dark navy ink on a mindnight blue shirt just barely delineates the stylized palmetto tree and the Clean Sheet crest, through which the blazing moon passes. And a final touch: the tree is bent in wind in deference to the costal storms that often batter the South Carolina coast, but never break its spirit.

Rhode Island

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As far as visual language goes, Rhode Island shares some unique qualities with South Carolina. First, the singular power of its chosen symbol: whereas South Carolina has the iconic palmetto/moon scene, Rhode Island relies on the mighty anchor. There’s also the matter of simple sloganeering - South Carolina’s historic use of “LIBERTY” is matched by Rhode Island’s “HOPE”, which still graces its flag. As with South Carolina, I’ve always been drawn to Rhode Island’s direct graphic language, and I knew Clean Sheet’s design would inevitably be based around an anchor motif.

There are some differences, of course, between the states; one that struck me was just how interestingly Rhode Island’s two components - symbol and slogan - played together. South Carolina placed it’s LIBERTY mark against the moon, where one might expect to gaze and congure dreams about a flight to freedom. The phrase and the visual match. Rhode Island, however, is a bit more wily. It places its HOPE banner beneath an anchor - a stunning, or maybe subversively cunning - bit of symbolism. Hope, the combination seems to be saying, is present even when burderened; or perhaps that the very things that weigh us down also inspire us. Or maybe it’s just a sly, ironic jab from a state that’s always punching above it’s weight class. Whatever it is, it works. The juxtaposition creates visual emotion.

I worked with several anchor shapes until I found one I liked - it has has traditional features (like a rounded version of flag’s icon) but has some modern flair as well. The anchor’s ring, stock (crossbar) and shank (neck) are offset against the Clean Sheet crest, creating negative space within the shield shape. As I worked with the components, I was able to realize a wonderful secondary meaning: the negative space within the crest roughly corresponds to a stylized map of the southern Narragansett Bay.

It’s a bit wistful, but it’s there: the dark blue is Narragansett water; the lighter blue is land (Conanicut Island, home of Jamestown, on the left; Prudence Island to the top, and the actual Rhode Island - née Aquidneck - on the right). The “ball” within the Clean Sheet Co. shield happens to precisely mark a very important geographic spot: it’s Newport, perhaps the state’s most famous city, and home to momentous acheivements in business, sport and culture. No particular event, in fact, merges those three categories like the America’s Cup yacht races, which were ably defended by American skippers in and around the waters of Newport for more than five decades. In honor of Newport’s nautical patriotism, a disc of antique white and red stripes notes its costal location. The shirt itself is that same antique-white color, in homage to the white base of the state flag.

Kansas

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I had a few objectives with Kansas. First, not to get into the Wizard of Oz. Nobody needs more of that. Second, not to conflate Kansas with the Kansas City metro identity. Yes, the larger region does spill over into the state, but a) KC is really Missouri’s deal, and b) Kansas is much bigger than any one city.

With those paramaters in place, I started searching for some beautiful visuals that symbolized Kansas. I began, as usual, with the state flag. I’ve found there are really two types of U.S. state flags: those with specific symbols and definite ideas (see: South Carolina, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Alaska, etc.), and those who put a very detailed seal on a solid-color background and call it a flag (see: Michigan, New York, Wisconsin,etc.).1 These seals are usually heraldic still-lifes, with figures (normally ideals personified, or Native Americans, or Lewis and Clark types, or elk) standing astride an oval that contains a pastoral American landscape. Nice, but visually complicated, kind of boring - in that way museum diaramas are boring - and unoriginal.

Kansas is mostly in category 2, with the addition of some interesting details. First, they get points for clarity in slogan choice; where South Carolina uses LIBERTY, and Rhode Island, HOPE, Kansas goes with KANSAS. I mean, absolutely no confusion there.

“Hey Kansas: what do you guys believe in?” “KANSAS.” “Ok, then.” “…KANSAS.” “Dude, ok.”

I kid, of course; this quirk actually goes back to an interesting moment in state flag history. For a period, Kansas had a state banner instead of a state flag - it consisted primarily of the word KANSAS and a giant, stylized sunflower. The banner was intended to be hung horizontally, not flown on a vertical staff. And while this brief non-conformity flourished (during the heart of Prohibition - draw your own conclusions), it created problems for the US government (who had to display a few dozen flags and one horizontal banner) but nonetheless was probably pretty cool. The banner was derived from a speculative sunflower flag comissioned by the state and brought to life by a Topeka-based artist named Albert Reid which I happen to think would have made for one amazing flag, banner, pennant, or any other official Kansas textile. Sadly, the look didn't stick - not exactly, anyway. Back to modernity, and yes, the second interesting thing about the current Kansas flag: there’s an added component above their seal. The beautiful, simple, and completely appropriate sunflower has persevered, albeit in a diminished fashion, and is still represented on the Kansas flag.

Sunflowers naturally grace the Kansas landscape, are now the official state flower, and yet were and are so abundant in Kansas that at one point the state deemed them a weed and wanted them eradicated. This was quickly corrected; the state government reversed that edict and began to celebrate the flower in due course. And why wouldn’t you - the flower is stunning, bold, colorful, optimistic and broadly popular.

Clean Sheet Co.’s Kansas shirt is based on that simple idea: a resplendent sunflower against a blue-violet background. A note on the shirt's color: in some states - it happens that they’re mostly large, midwester land-grand states, which makes sense - colors can carry a lot of weight. At Cleas Sheet Co., we have no intention to pit rivalrous intra-state collegiate factions against one another with color choice; where possible, we’ll try to stay above the fray. (See: Michigan.) However, when it comes to Kansas, tones of blue are a key state identifier. Instead of going full on Kansas U. royal blue, or K-State purple, we split the difference with a fabric color called “lapis” - a bright, purplish blue - and a crest color that’s a bluish purple. As a wise bumper sticker once said: coexist. And really: it’s all about the sunflower anyway.

Idaho

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Like Kansas, I had a few initial rules for Idaho, too. One rule, really: this isn't about potatoes. Potatoes are honorable, they’re prolific, they’re tasty - yes. But even though potatoes are a core component of Idaho’s identity, I just coudn’t see basing a shirt design on them. I didn’t know much about Idaho coming in to this endeavor, and didn’t want to end it by knowing a few more ways to make au gratin. I wanted something different from Idaho. And, as one might guess, Idaho delivered.

It turns out, Idaho is a natural paradise. Beautiful, fertile plains; winding rivers, breathtaking mountains. A particularly famous set of those mountains - the Sawtooth range - was so visually intersting, I decided they had to be a part of the Idaho shirt’s deisgn. Their jagged spikes and steep inclines were a perfect visual to start designing with. I was still figuring out how, exactly, to integrate the mountain idea when I stumbled onto something even cooler.

Star garnets.

Are they pieces of art? Something an alchemist might have stirred up? Of extra-terrestrial origin? Implausibly, no - star garnets are natural, earthly gems found in the Idaho mountains that only look like something from another realm. Here’s a quick explanantion:

Star garnets are a type of garnet referred to as ‘almandine’ (a deep red garnet consisting of an iron aluminum silicate) which displays an ‘asterism’ (star-shaped figure exhibited by some crystals by reflected light). The color of the star garnet can range from deep red to brownish red.2

They are amazing - almost cosmic. Oh - and they’re found in only two places on earth: India, and Idaho. Perfect.

As I learned more about the garnets, I came to notice that most of the “star” effects were four-pointed stars created when two lines of rutile crystals intersected within the stone. Even more impressive were the much rarer six-pointed stars, created by three perfectly-spaced intersecting lines. Some say that Idaho is, in fact, the only place in the world to find the six-pointed variety. In a state known as the Gem State, the star garnet is the official state gem.

That settled it. I had the elements (the Sawtooth range, and the star garnet). And I had the colors (deep blue, tones of garnet red, and crystal white). The result is the design you see: the Sawtooth Mountains in slate blue and garnet, stretching across the front of the shirt; the Clean Sheet crest becomes a star garnet, with bright rays stretching out in a six-pointed star from the shield’s center. The asterism effect stretches past the logo and across the shirt to complement the mountain design. The result is a toned, layered design that I hope reflects some of Idaho’s unique beauty.

–

And there you have it: Clean Sheet Co.'s The States, volume 2.

I hope it was an interesting read and a worthwhile visual journey. Remember: if you'd like one of these shirts, make sure to support them - early supporters get the best deal, and for the first 20 shirts supported in each design, shipping to anywhere in the US is on Clean Sheet Co. - you can't beat that.

See you back here for Volume 3!

The States is a joint project by M.Willis and Clean Sheet Co. about designing expressive shirts for every U.S. state. Questions, comments, etc.? I'm on Twitter at @m_willis. You can check out Clean Sheet Co. at cleansheet.co. If you want to know a little more about me, check out the features at the top of the page, or check out my brief bio. Thanks for reading!

There’s a separate category for clearly insane Ohio that we’ll cover in a future volume. ↩

source: examiner.com ↩

[m-willis]

The States, Vol. 1: California, Vermont, Louisiana, South Dakota, Maryland

Two years ago, I took a crack at giving major league baseball teams their own soccer jerseys. I had a blast – so much so that last year, I started Clean Sheet Co. to work on ambitious apparel design ideaslike that one. Our first big project? Designing t-shirts for every World Cup team. It was a fantastic success.

It’s that time of year again. I’m ready. Clean Sheet Co. is ready.

And the project? Here’s what I’m thinking.

• While 32 Nations was a blast, this time I wanted design around something a little more timeless than a month-long event. (We’ll dive back into the world of big international competition soon enough – there are loads of interesting tournaments coming up, starting with the Women’s World Cup this summer, and Clean Sheet Co. will be there.) I also wanted to stretch out the time frame a little bit – instead of dropping a ton of designs over a short period, I wanted to have the freedom to introduce and produce designs every week or so for a good while.

• I wanted to keep the ambitious nature of these projects intact - 30 MLB identies, 32 World Cup teams… if anything, I'd like to keep trying for bigger and bigger payoffs.

• I wanted to bring the focus of my work back to the good old U.S. of A. after spending so much time thinking about international identities.

Everything led to one place.

Over the next several months, I’ll be creating and releasing t-shirt designs for each of the 50 U.S. States – and quite possibly a few bonus designs as well. Each one will be made available for purchase at the Clean Sheet Co. website. I’m starting with five shirts today – more on those in a second – and batches of future designs will be released every few weeks. If you need a primer on my design technique, check out “The Rules”, a piece that walks through the Clean Sheet Co. design process.

There’s obviously a ton of ground to cover. As you have probably surmised, the first five states are an eclectic bunch. Let’s dive in.

California

As soon as I determined that I’d be creating a collection centered around the states, I immediately decided on California as my “first” design. I still haven’t figured out how I want to go about organizing the collection, or how, exactly, I want to go about ordering the states as we go. (I may actually ask you guys to play a role; stay tuned.) But California seemed like the perfect place to start.

Why? Well, it’s a huge canvas, for one thing. California is a state so big that it just actively considered splitting itself apart (into regions, I might add, that each would make for interesting design projects). Beyond the physical size, though, California is a kaleidoscope of sensory and evocative ideas. It invents modern industry in the north, and perfects modern storytelling in the south. It eagerly tries big new things - and introduces them to America – all the while holding fast to cherished traditions. It’s a magnet for the aimless and ambitious alike, a place where people arrive to connect with dreams. It’s fiercely independent - often calling itself a Republic - but it seems to cherish its role in our collective society. All together, it captures something quintessentially American.

Also, its got a kick-ass grizzly bear on its flag.

The flag’s story is pretty cool; it was created by the very revolutionaries that liberated California from Mexico - exactly as they took command of their first town, in the skirmish that would spark California’s secession and ultimately, its freedom. The flag’s bold visual statement - equal parts optimism and obstinance - has obviously served the state well. It’s the perfect inspiration for the California Shirt.

The California Shirt is a rich, earthy brown, with a golden-tan Grizzly lumbering across the face of the shirt. He moves, appropriately, both upwards and towards the west. The bear is a simplified version of the beast found on the state flag (which is actually quite detailed) and where he crosses the Clean Sheet crest, the green, white and red stripes of the flag bleed through. The flag’s lone red star doubles as the star atop the crest.

The shirt ends up simple, defiant, and beautiful. A fitting start, I hope, to this undertaking.

Vermont

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I grew up only a couple minutes from the Vermont state line. In my experience, there are a few states that just “feel” different as soon as you cross the border, and Vermont is one of them. The roads look different. The landscape changes in subtle ways. Things really do seem a little more quaint, a little more pastoral, and a little more communal. Upstate New York does grey-and-dreary quite well; cross over into Vermont and that same weather immediately feels like “let’s get a campfire going!” weather. I’ve never been able to figure it out.

So, we have a bit of a theme going here; kind of like California, Vermont has the “state of mind” thing happening in spades. Also like California, bands of roving revolutionaries shaped the state’s history. Vermont’s, of course, go back a few generations before California’s do, all the way to the American struggle for independence. As far as Revolutionary celebrities go, you have your inner circle – the Founding Fathers, Betsy Ross, Benedict Arnold, etc. – that everybody learns about in school. But then there’s another tier: a mix of meteoric figures, local legends, and fondly-remembered b-listers that comprised the bulk of the heroic citizen response to the British threat. At the top of this list: Vermont’s Ethan Allen, a key American Revolutionary who is well-celebrated regionally but doesn’t always get top billing in history books.

I’ve always loved the image of the hardscrabble American revolutionary soldier, hiding in bushes and scurrying over rocks, fighting against lines of regimented, over-disciplined, over-dressed British infantry. Some of that is fairy tale, sure – the official Continental Army was pretty kitted out itself – but it was most true in remote outposts like Vermont. Ethan Allen and his band of Green Mountain Boys were the essence of this American image: they were a roughly-organized, roving, carousing posse of troublemakers. I can't help but think of Allen in the Tyler Durden role and the Boys, his Project Mayhem. The Green Mountain Boys were actually formed well before the Revolution, to protect their land (not yet called Vermont) from interests in New York, New Hampshire and Canada. From Wiki:

With several hundred members, the Green Mountain Boys effectively controlled the area where New Hampshire grants had been issued. They were led by Ethan Allen, his brother Ira Allen, and their cousins Seth Warner and Remember Baker. They were based at the Catamount Tavern in Bennington. By the 1770s, the Green Mountain Boys had become an armed military force and de facto government that prevented New York from exercising its authority in the northeast.

Catamount Tavern? De facto government? Remember Baker? Somebody’s got to make this movie. As they were an established force by the time the war for independence arrived, the Green Mountain Boys were well-suited for action. They defended their land. They captured important forts from the British, and then plundered them for liquor instead of handing them to American forces. For the hell of it, they invaded Canada. (Why not?) And when all was said and done, they helped establish the Vermont Republic - an independent country that lasted 14 years before Vermont decided to join the Union. Quite a legacy.

The Green Mountain Boys congregated under their own colors: a beautiful green and blue design that looks like a determined Vermont interpretation of the Colonial flag. I’ve used the colors and shapes from the Green Mountain Boys’ flag as the basis for the Vermont Shirt’s design; the green field becomes the green base of the shirt, and the deep blue star field - complete with patchwork stars - is rendered as a sky stretching across the shirt’s body. The stars rise, of course, above a depiction of green mountains.

That’s my tribute to Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boys, and the fiercely different state of Vermont.

Louisiana

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…Good Pelican, wash me clean with your blood, One drop of which can free the entire world of all its sins. – Adoro te Devote, by St. Thomas Aquinas

When I set out to make a Louisiana t-shirt, I did not expect to learn about the mythological aspects of the pelican. But then, this is kind of why I love these projects – it’s impossible not to learn weird stuff. The last wild grizzly in California, Monarch, died in 1911 and is taxidermied in a flag-inspired diarama. Ethan Allen once had a healthy tooth pulled just to show a nervous woman that the procedure wouldn’t hurt. And the pelican, come to find out, has deep symbolic significance to several cultures. The bird has been worshipped by native people in Australia and South America. It's nature has been referenced by Shakespeare and Keats. When the Spanish contolled California, they named the island of Alcatraz after an arabic phrase for “water vessel” - a nod to the many pouch-beaked pelicans who nested there. 

And then there’s Christianity – a religion which never mingles more easily with mythology and native lore than in the manner by which it’s practiced in Louisiana. In Christian myth, the bird has special meaning; along the pelican-rich Gulf Coast, it is especially revered. Most Christian pelican myths center on a particular trait - the bird's devotion to its young, and its willingness to sacrifice itself for their nourishment and care. There is even a specific trope, “the pelican in her piety”, which depicts a mother pelican wounding itself – piercing it’s own breast – so that its young can feed in times of famine. It’s this exceptional image that’s featured on the Louisiana state flag. The power granted to pelican makes it a powerful local symbol (witness the name of the NBA team) and references to it can be found prominently around the costal region.

I took this arresting pelican imagery and streamlined it. For The Louisiana Shirt, pelican is simplified into a series of waves and casual lines; a lone eye peers out from the hole in the Clean Sheet crest. The three drops of blood drawn from its breast form a small but discernible fleur-de-lis - another important Louisiana symbol. The shirt’s dominant tones, golden yellow, violet blue and white, are both the state’s official colors and are familiar to anyone who has spent a celebratory occasion in that part of the country.

For a a spiritual state, a beautiful, spiritual (if slightly surprising) symbol.

South Dakota

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I really wanted to make my initial selection of states diverse. Regionally, I think I’ve accomplished that - the initial five hail from every corner of the country. I also wanted to take on a mix of states that I had some knowledge of (like Vermont), some that seemed “fun” (like California) and some that I knew very little about. Enter: South Dakota.

I’ve never been to the Mt. Rushmore State. I’ve never even been close, unless flying past counts. My preconceptions were stock: rusty, brown dirt, lots of open space and sky, no people, little culture. A chill, and maybe a barely detectable lonliness, in the air.

As I learned more about South Dakota, I grew to want to visit it. No for tourist attractions, but to get a sense of the psyche of the place. The more I read, the more South Dakota seemed like home to a certain soulfulness – a mecca for natural, creative, resourceful, spiritual people.

Take Dick Termes, resident of Spearfish. He's a beloved local artist – but his art isn’t simply distinctive. He’s a vanguard; a practioner of a form of art that virtually no one else can make, or even attempt. Dick Termes paints Termespheres. His canvases are literally spherical, and his output is painted, perspective-imbued artwork. A typical flat painting uses only one or two vanishing points; Termespheres use six-point perspective. They are both real and surreal representations of the beauty Termes finds around him. They are perfect illustrations of one man’s search for truth and beauty.

How did I start learning about Dick Termes? As is often the case, it all comes back to flags. A few years back, Termes proposed and designed a new South Dakota flag to replace the current model, which has history on its side, but doesn’t read so well as a vexilogical document. It turns out Termes is a pretty good two-dimensional artist and designer when he’s not contemplating spheres, because his flag design is beautiful. It depicted a traditional Native American medicine wheel – a potent symbol in the upper midwest – combined with a stylized verion of the blue and yellow sunburst found on the current flag. (Fun fact: South Dakota used to lay claim to being the Sunshine State before Florida boxed them out; Mt. Rushmore has filled sunshine’s place in the state’s official motto.)

The Termes flag got farther than most private flag proposals; it even had some support in state government. In the end, it wasn’t to be. As I looked to design the South Dakota Shirt, I knew I wanted to incorporate elements of both the existing flag and the Termes design. It also became appartent just how important Native American culture is in South Dakota, and also just how singular and defining Mt. Rushmore is to the state’s identity. I tried to honor each of these ideas.

The South Dakota Shirt features an iconic medicine wheel in leathery, natural brown against a slate rock grey base. Stylized feathers hang from the wheel to honor native culture that continues to shape the state. The brown hues speak to the earthiness of the state, and the grey, the granite rock of Mt. Rushmore, as well as the in-progress Crazy Horse memorial and other beautiful, natural formations in the Black Hills. The Clean Sheet crest is sky blue, and features a sunburst that references the state’s official flag.

Maryland

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When a state has pre-existing visual language as strong and beautiful as Maryland already does, it’s almost a problem for a project like this one. Where can one go from something this striking? You’d think starting with a attractive flag would make things easier; in fact, it means that the bar is already set quite high for visual expression. 

The distinctive pattern is where I had to begin, though; it’s everywhere in Maryland. The state is the only one in the country to base its design on European-style heraldry, and Maryland residents don't miss a chance to show it off. You'll find the pattern flying on the unmissable state flag, of course, but it's also heavily integrated into cultural institutions. It's featured on the uniforms of major local sports teams, the state university system, and on highly visible branches of government like the state police.

The flag’s present incarnation, in fact, is a bit of a metaphor for our nation's history of complicated conflict. Maryland originally flew just the yellow and black segment of the flag - based on colonizer Lord Baltimore’s family crest – as the full design. On the threshold between north and south, Maryland's citizenry was drastically split during the Civil War. Though Maryland officially remained part of the Union during the Civil War, many of its residents sided with the South - and the secessionists indicated their preferece by flying a different flag: the one based on the Crosslands crest featuring crimson and white panels and a trefoil cross design.

After the war ended, Maryland realized that re-incorporating the factions that tore it apart would be aided by visual compromise. So the state flag became half Union and half Confederate, alternating the symbols over four panels. Legend has it that the victorious Union colors got the all-important upper-left quadrant. 

I played with several visual ideas for Maryland, but nothing clicked until I separated the color families and had them play in different spaces on the shirt. The crimson and white space takes over the Clean Sheet crest; the yellow and black checkerboard banner is wrapped around the crest like a scarf. Where the corners of the banner crease, the familiar counter-charged shapes show up to honor the “reversed” look that makes the Maryland state flag and state seal so unique.

Happily, another connection revealed itself as I kept moving pieces around - the very rough, heavily stylized outline of the state’s geography. The yellow and black banner cascades from left to right across the shirt, approximating Maryland’s skinny northern inland border, and then zig-zags south across the crest to represent the seaboard, and east again to capture Maryland’s piece of the Delmarva peninsula.

I love the idea that a visual compromise helped knit a diverse group of opinionated people back together afer a terrible split. Anecdotes like that underscore the importance and power of visual language, and they’re the reason I’m doing this project.

–

And that's our first five. I don't mind saying: I think this was a good start. I'm at @m_willis if you want to leave a comment or give me a piece of your mind. Our mailing list (see the very bottom of this page) is a good way to make sure you get notified about future installments.  Check back soon for volume 2, and until then check out these shirts and more over at the Clean Sheet Co. website.

The States is a joint project by M.Willis and Clean Sheet Co. about designing expressive shirts for every U.S. state. Questions, comments, etc.? I'm on Twitter at @m_willis. You can check out Clean Sheet Co. at cleansheet.co. If you want to know a little more about me, check out the features at the top of the page, or check out my brief bio. Thanks for reading!

[m-willis]

Identity Sketches for Louisville City FC

Author’s note: Interested in more American soccer identity work? I’ve published pieces on several teams. Feel free to read on. San Jose Earthquakes New England Revolution New York City F.C. Columbus Crew Thanks for reading!

Soccer continues to gain ground on the American sporting landscape in a manner almost unimaginable even a few years ago. Pro teams are being founded in cities where fans are banding together–before they even have a team to root for–and demonstrating the strength of their potential market. The success stories have gotten almost too frequent to count; the most recent is Louisville City FC, who announced that they’ll soon begin play in a lower-tier US league. This decision was based in no small part on the work of the passionate Louisville Coopers supporters’ group, who rallied soccer fans under colors, a logo and a frame of mind, and who are sure to support the new club well.

The thing is, once passionate fans are involved, their passion extends to every avenue of fandom. Good fans demand first-rate treatment–and why shouldn’t they get it, after paving the way for a potential team? Groups like the Coopers want a club who’s worthy of they way they put themselves out there; they want something worth rooting passionately for.

Design, of course, is often read as a shorthand for intention. (In the realm of sports, this usually a good instinct.) A club that takes the time to put forth good design work is judged to care about difference-making things like front-office competence and fan relations. Clubs who don’t–who slap together something off the shelf, or who neglect the issue altogether–are often perceived to be obtuse, out of the loop, or not good at the details that breed success.

All that is to say: Louisville City FC premiered their crest earlier this week. It was not, to be kind, a landmark piece of design work. It included odd shading, bulging backgrounds, un-cared-for typography, and perhaps worst of all, off-the-shelf, unmodified clip art.

(It should also be mentioned that the Coopers supporters’ group, whose founding and graphic identity predated LCFC’s, had long been rallying behind their own quite competent soccer crest-style logo. The bar had already been set; sadly, it was not met.)

What happened next is familiar to anyone who pays attention to the power of social media. Fans, including many Coopers members who would be expected to care about the team, buy its merchandise, and embrace its identity, were vocally negative. This quickly led to alternative designs being submitted for consideration, a hashtag, and pretty soon after, the club’s owner declaring that he would accept proposals for a new crest.

The reaction was justifiable. But in all the tumult, it’s easy to miss one thing: there are good ideas buried in the logo nobody wanted to love. First of all, clip art aside, Louisville has a strong association with the fleur-de-lis symbol, which has appeared on its flag and civic marks for more than a century. It deserves to be there.

The longest-tenured flag of Louisville, Kentucky, featuring the fleur-de-lis.

And then, of course, the barrel. Louisville City attempted to show the wooden panels and metal hoops of a barrel on its crest, and though the execution was lacking, the idea was solid. Kentucky is bourbon country, of course, and Louisville is the proud world capital of bourbon whiskey. Bourbon is aged in barrels, and the barrel idea has a lot of good graphic traction among potential supporters. The Louisville Coopers themselves were named after real coopers, those who partake in the age-old profession of barrel-making; they also feature a barrel on their logo. Most of the subsequent community submissions did as well. It’s a good idea.

The trusty bourbon barrel.

Here’s where every crest idea, from LCFC’s to the community submissions, falls short for me. The barrel is a perfectly fine visual idea for a Louisville logo - recognizable, proportionate, and unique to the region. Unfortunately, though, a single barrel is a pretty stereotypical thing to design with. Either you need to use a same-y, clip-art-esque vector with slats and hoops, or you can try to make it a little more visually interesting, which invariably ends up making a fancy-looking barrel. Fancy just doesn’t work; I mean, it’s a barrel. It’s a pretty plain thing.

This left me with the kind of design problem I love to contemplate: how best to represent a barrel on a unique Louisville City FC crest? When I figured out the answer (after some sketching and some coffee; bourbon would have surely helped) I knew I wanted to flesh out the design for the club, just to see the idea to fruition.

So, what was that answer?

It hit me like a ton of, well, barrels, I guess. A single barrel isn’t evocative enough, and it’s hard to design with. It’s plain, and also a little lonely. Plus, you never see a bourbon barrel by itself; it’s always in a group, stacked up and aging in a distillery. Eureka; pass the Maker’s Mark. Barrels belonged together, not left alone in solitary! A group of barrels–like those on shelves, aging away to perfection in the secret bourbon-filled lairs of Louisville–was a perfect symbol for togetherness, teamwork, and community.

Plus, it looks really cool.

Bourbon barrels, doing their thing.

Shelves or racks of bourbon barrels made for an interesting starting point. From there, I used a version of the teams’ colors (more on that in a second), worked in a focal fleur-de-lis, and I had it.

My version of a Louisville City FC crest. It’s strong, simple, and universally adaptable–yet still interesting. It’s also pretty dang unique, as soccer crests go. What went into it?

• A roundel-style crest, easy to reproduce and echoing the shapes it contains. • A blue-ish/purple background, striking a compromise between the purple the club wants to use (for affiliation reasons) and the blue of the Coopers and of traditional civic symbols. • Three rows of golden barrels–the gold also a compromise between the shade LCFC had debuted and the more direct yellow used by supporters and the city. Why three golden yellow rows? To honor the three yellow fleur-de-lis symbols on the original city flag, itself adapted from one of the personal flags that George Rogers Clark (founding father of Louisville and American revolutionary) would fly as he rode into battle.  • Ten barrels in all (3-4-3), a number that works for a variety of reasons; no least of which is that when paired with the final piece… • A single white fleur-de-lis, it creates a crest containing 11 elements, the number of players on a soccer field. (Which player does the fleur-de-lis symbolize? Perhaps the club’s future captain could wear a fleur-de-lis armband on the pitch.) • Finally, the crest is framed with the words “Louisville City FC" atop and below.

Simple, traditional, but pretty fresh at the same time. Here are some cool things it can do.

Mono

You can render this crest in one color if necessary - an absolute foundational element of good identity design. It looks bad-ass in one color, too.

Alternates

Why not go brighter sometimes? Within this system, it can be done; here, using just two colors brightens up the look. Of course, when called for, a darker look can be useful too.

The dark look is one of my favorites, because it really allows the fleur-de-lis element to pop. Also–this look helps you see a hidden element to the logo - a figure clutching and embracing the fleur-de-lis (Do you see it? His head is the middle barrel on the top row, and his arms are the two barrels on either side of the white fleur-de-lis.) This is an fun little easter egg and a great way to evoke Louisville City supporters’ love for their city and their team.

You can also get quite minimal with the logo; here, it’s stripped of its containing circle, again rendered in inverse mono colors, and it works perfectly. This version of the logo could pair well with a very colorful jersey, for instance.

Finally, it’s very flexible. Here’s one simple example of extending the logo into new color spaces. As far as sporting allegiances go, Louisville is often depicted as divided into red and blue factions; this club should bring both them together. Perhaps, for a special occasion (like honoring existing Louisville and Kentucky fans) a special logo is in order?

That’s just one of an infinite amount of approaches to adapting this particular identity.

Variations

You could also extend the mark by playing with its elements. Here, we have a slogan (“Welcome to bourbon country”) replacing the LCFC tagline, and flour-de-lis elements repeating for emphasis. This mark could symbolize fan support - the casks almost look like heads in a crowd. Next to that, the round barrels are rendered by themselves, containing the letters that spell Louisville.

These are just playful ways to extend the brand; again, many more could be developed in time.

Apparel

What’s a mark without some apparel? First, a simple t-shirt.

Pretty nice; I’d wear it. And of course, the crest is nothing if it doesn’t look good on a jersey.

In Sum

Louisville City FC has its work cut out for it. It has fans who demand strong management, and it’s now in the public position of committing to good design.

This exercise - like all of the design work I feature on this site - is fun and instructive for me to do. I hope the designer who ends up working with Louisville City has as much respect for the passion of American soccer supporters as I do, and has as much fun on the project as I did.

Good luck, Coopers!

This piece was written and produced, and the marks within designed, by Mark Willis. For questions or comment, find Mark at (@M_Willis). If you like this design work, check out Clean Sheet Co., Mark’s apparel design company, and the 32 Nations Project, about designing expressive shirts for every single 2014 World Cup team. If you want to know a little more about Mark, check out the features at the top of the page, or check out his brief bio. Thanks for reading!

[m-willis]

Stuff I Like

From time to time I find stuff worth sharing and commenting on that doesn't fit here. I also like to publish my own photography, artwork, and other media when I can, but I don't want to overload this spot. Enter: Stuff I Like (stuff.mwillis.com), a place to throw links, creative stuff and ephemera. Expect a mix of design, web, soccer, photography, art and mascot videos, roughly in that order.

Or, in brief:

Stuff I'm making, finding and enjoying. Images, sounds, videos, links and what have you, from M.Willis.

[m-willis]

32 Nations, Group F: Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran, Nigeria

Our penultimate group has a lot to love: nations from four different confederations, and four very different parts of the globe. Argentina is a strong favorite, of course - they seem incredibly likely to move on from this group of four - but the other spot is anyone's guess. Bosnia-Herzegovina are making their World Cup debut as an independent nation, and strong qualifying play notwithstanding, it's tough to know just how the world stage will suit them. Iran haven't had much success, yet, in a World Cup, but are always one of Asia's toughest sides. And Nigeria have the talent and experience to make things interesting for the higher seeds, but their form next summer is far from certain.

I say Argentina (with confidence) and Nigeria (with hesitation) pull it off. From a visual perspective, Group F is unique - it's the group the fewest fiery red/orange/yellow colors, almost none at all to speak of. Cool colors (blues, whites and greens) dominate. Will that give the matches in the group a distinctive tenor? And what does that mean for their 32 Nations designs? Let's check it out.

Argentina

Author’s note: This is part of a recurring series on designing beautiful graphic identities for the 32 Nations in 2014 World Cup. When you’re done here, feel free to read on: Introducing: 32 Nations The Rules Group A Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon Group B Spain, The Netherlands, Chile, Australia Group C Colombia, Greece, Côte d'Ivoire, Japan Group D Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy Group E Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras Group F Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran, Nigeria Group G Germany, Portugal, Ghana, USA Group H Belgium, Algeria, Russia, Korea Republic Epilogue All of the 32 Nations designs are available to order over at Clean Sheet Co., my apparel shop. We make shirts in batches, so pre-order now! All shirts ship later this winter. Click here to see & order all 32 Nations shirts! Finally, if you're interested in discussing this article, getting updates, etc., you can find me at @m_willis on Twitter, or leave your email at the very bottom of this page. Thanks for reading!

Inspired by their country's flag and its coat of arms, the Albiceleste have a simple, timeless look. Beyond being a unique, iconic design (and downright beautiful to boot) the Argentina jersey has a history of success and acheivement backing it. I kept The Argentina Shirt quite simple; the visual identity is so entrenched, it's almost impossible to make clever additions to the simple vertical white and sky-blue stripes.

I did throw in a few small references.  The Clean Sheet crest is rendered minimally, reversing the polarity of the stripes, so as not to break the shirt's simple order.  This has the happy effect of creating a small, vertical Argentinian flag inside the crest, with the shield's center circle filled gold to represent the flag's Sun of May.  The star on top is given a black treatment, to honor the black shorts that normally complete the Argentinian look and give the white-blue combination an extra punch.  (Though the team has paired the famous shirt with royal blue shorts in years past, and will use white at the 2014 World Cup, black is the color that resonates with the club's long sartorial history.)  

Given their roster, their group opponents and their ambition, Argentina will be disappointed not to lift a trophy next summer. (A final against Brazil might content for the title of most-hyped matchup of all time.) How far will sky blue and white take this years' Argentina squad? Messi, Agüero and company might take a cue from the visual design language they'll be wearing - there's no reason to over-complicate something successful and beautiful. 

Bosnia-Herzegovina

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Honestly, Bosnia and Herzegovina took me a minute to wrap my head around. They’re a relative newcomer on the world stage; they’ve only been independent since 1992 and a Fifa memeber since ’96. This is their first World Cup. There’s not a lot of off-the-shelf cultural or visual heritage to pull from, as you might find with countries that have global football brands; that meant it was time to do some digging. And when I started to research visual inspiration for B&H, I made up my mind quickly about two things: a) their uniforms were fairly plain, and b) their flag was incredibly unique.

Bosnia plays in blue - a desaturated shade, not unattractive, but not radiant either. This is inspired by their flag, which uses darker blue, bright yellow and white; and while the uniform is somewhat nondescript, the flag is a real head-turner. Here’s a description:

A wide medium blue vertical band on the fly side with a yellow right triangle abutting the band and the top of the flag; the remainder of the flag is medium blue with seven full five-pointed white stars and two half stars top and bottom along the hypotenuse of the triangle.

Got that? If you need to reference a hypotenuse while describing your flag, you know the design is going to be interesting. The flag is essentially a deep blue field with a yellow upside-down triangle stuck in the middle of it, and a line of white stars underneath that. If the flag was just a diagonally-divided field of yellow and blue with stars in the middle, it would make perfect sense; instead the yellow stops a few inches from the right edge, and more blue is tacked on! (This, incidentally, gives the flag an incredibly wide ratio for seamingly arbitrary reasons. It’s like the IMAX screen of flags.) Meanwhile, it looks like somebody forgot to measure the vertical dimensions correctly and the flag factory took a guess where to cut, becasue the stars are sliced off at the top and bottom! (I realize that this symbolizes the stars continuing on into infinity, but honestly: it’s enough to drive a designer batty. Obviously the flag should never change, and quirky things make life intersting. You could give the flag a boring corporate haircut - I couldn’t resist doing so myself - but really: what fun is that?)

Anyway, the flag was too interesting not to use as the centerpiece of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Shirt. It’s depicted in windowed detail, the row of stars cascading diagonally across the negative-space Clean Sheet crest. A bright yellow corner finishes the look. The dueling blues (the flag’s darker tone and the shirt’s lighter, kit-inspired color) play well against one another.

Good luck, Bosnia and Herzegovina! Here’s hoping your World Cup run is, well, as long as your flag.

Iran

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Since Iran was qualified for the World Cup before almost anyone, they were one of the first countries I started to look at when this project began. To be clear: I know very, very little about Iranian soccer. Here’s what I found out.

• Their fans, generally, want the team playing in white. Green and red are nice, but white is the color associated with national success.

• The squad is known as Team Melli, (“the national team” in Farsi), and countrymen in foreign leagues get the pretty bad-ass moniker of “Legionnaires.” Beats “Yanks Abroad”, no?

• Iran is currently coached by Carlos Quieroz. This guy pops up just about anywhere soccer is played, and eventually gets fired for his trouble. He’s had relationships with Real Madrid, Manchester United, Sporting (Lisbon), the MetroStars and Nagoya Grampus in Japan; he’s managed the Portuguese, South African and now Iranian national teams (and he flirted with the USMNT back before the Bob Bradley appointment). I don’t know much about him, or if he makes Iran better, but don’t be surprised if you see his name in the program of your local semi-pro club team come 2015. Carlos gets around.

• In exploring the Iranian flag, I learned a bit about the country’s symbolism. Versions of their flag have used a lion brandishing a sword with the sun rising behind him; at some point this symbol was judged to be too awesome, and it was changed to a stylized emblem. Well, ok: the emblem is pretty cool too. It’s a gemetric script that creates the word “Allah”, built from Persian crescent moons, all while creating the shape of a tulip (a flower with national meaning). That’s a lot of symbolic lifting for one symbol; I tip my cap.

• Finally, along the tri-colored flag’s internal borders, one finds tidy Islamic caligraphy running across its width. This is called Kufic script, and it’s absolutely beautiful. The idea is that each character set can be set in a perfect square form; from this simple idea, amazing patterns and designs emerge. The script decorating the Iranian flag repeats the phrase “God is Great”; and as interesting as it is, scripts like this can become even more complex and impressive when they are placed in grids of square tiles and used for architectural decoration. There is no western equivalent to the beauty that can be created with Kufic caligraphy; even if we non-natives can appreciate the design and the visual prowess that goes into creating the perfect Kufic mark, we’re still missing a whole dimension of it’s power - to those that can read it, Kufic decoration actually conveys language - stories - with each tile or rendering.

I chose to use the Kufic-style script from Iran’s flag to fill up the inside of Clean Sheet crest. Small strands - one green, one red - escape to the left and right, creating a modest chest-spanning design. The entire shirt is white - it’s Iran at it’s strongest - and I hope it all comes together with simple, beautiful splashes of color.

Nigeria

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Who has traditionally controlled the Wold Cup? Europe and South America. No countries from outside those two confederations have even made the final, let alone won the whole thing. The natural question follows: what country, and what region, will produce the first non-traditional winner?

My money is on Nigeria.

Why? Let’s take a quick look at each confederation, and the most likely candidates to break through:

North America (Concacaf): The United States and Mexico. The US is building slowly right now - slowly enough that other teams will probably get there first. It’s debatable that Mexico is even moving forward at all.

Asia and Oceania (AFC+OFC): Korea Republic, Japan, Iran, Australia. None of these teams is winning it all in the near future. Korea, the strongest of the bunch, has an outside shot to make a final, as they almost did on home soil in 2002. I suppose China could go on a developmental bender, but I’m not ready to predict that yet.

Africa (CAF): Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon. Any of these three could make a semifinal quite plausibly; that deep into a tournament, who progresses is almost down to breaks, lucky or otherwise (as Ghana found out in 2010). I’d give Nigeria a slight edge over its rivals; it holds the African championship and has acheived the highest global ranking ever for any African side (5th in 1994). (The squad’s biggest obstacle would appear to be its own government, which meddles with the team and, during this last World Cup cycle, put it at risk of being suspended by FIFA during crucial qualification matches.)

A technical analysis, this is not, but I stand by it: Nigeria will be the first “outsider” to win the World Cup. It may not happen in 2014 - that would be require a string of unlikely events, to say the least - but I could see it happening before the tournament makes another cycle through the continents again (by the mid 2030s at the latest).

For a US fan paying attenting during the ’94 World Cup, Nigeria’s greatest successes are still easy to recall. They topped a group that featured Argentina, Bulgaria and Greece, beating the latter pair outright. They played bounding, buyant soccer that contrasted the deliberate European model, the exuberant South American style or the somewhat plodding stuff the US was putting together at the time. And the jerseys - splashed with two shades of green (verdant and pastel), and decorated with a checkerboard native textile pattern - sound ugly, but were actually kind of charming. Adidas later moved this design into an ingeniously simple template, isolating the textile pattern in a wide oval around the collar, and draping the rest of the jersey in plain green. The result is one of may favorite international jerseys of all time.

The Nigeria Shirt plays off of this 1994/95 design, tracing the arc of that wide neck pattern across the chest. A native, fabric-inspired pattern is used in dark green (atop the rich green base) to evoke that older look. Instead of continuing all the way around, however, the design stops in angled ends. This last touch references the team’s wonderful nickname - the Super Eagles - and gives the appearance of a pair of outstretched wings across the breadth of the shirt. The Clean Sheet crest is finished in white, with a dot of pastel green/grey to evoke a time when Nigeria was among the best in the world.

My hunch is that they’ll be back there again, and sooner than later.

And that's Group F. All shirts are available for pre-order over at Clean Sheet; find me on Twitter for comments, and I'll see you back here on Monday for our final group - that was fast, huh? - Group H.

32 Nations is a joint project by M.Willis and Clean Sheet Co. about designing expressive shirts for every single 2014 World Cup team. Questions, comments, etc.? I'm on Twitter at @m_willis. You can check out Clean Sheet Co. at cleansheet.co. If you want to know a little more about me, check out the features at the top of the page, or check out my brief bio. Thanks for reading!

[m-willis]

32 Nations, Group D: Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy

There's nowhere to hide in Group D.  With three clubs in the world's top 15, and a fourth who can beat anyone (just ask Concacaf).  Uruguay will feel a little pressure playing as a seed, close to home, and with Luis Suarez at the absolute apex of his career.  England will feel pressure because they're English.  Italy will feel pressure, but they've built their entire footballing strategy about turning pressure in on itself.  It's going to get dicey; my picks: Uruguay and England (somehow). 

And as far as the design implications, there's a lot to tackle. Let's go:

Uruguay

Author’s note: This is part of a recurring series on designing beautiful graphic identities for the 32 Nations in 2014 World Cup. When you’re done here, feel free to read on: Introducing: 32 Nations The Rules Group A Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon Group B Spain, The Netherlands, Chile, Australia Group C Colombia, Greece, Côte d'Ivoire, Japan Group D Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy Group E Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras Group F Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran, Nigeria Group G Germany, Portugal, Ghana, USA Group H Belgium, Algeria, Russia, Korea Republic Epilogue All of the 32 Nations designs are available to order over at Clean Sheet Co., my apparel shop. We make shirts in batches, so pre-order now! All shirts ship later this winter. Click here to see & order all 32 Nations shirts! Finally, if you're interested in discussing this article, getting updates, etc., you can find me at @m_willis on Twitter, or leave your email at the very bottom of this page. Thanks for reading!

Could Uruguay spoil their neighbor’s victory party? They did it before, in 1950, beating hosts Brazil at the Maracanã to lift the World Cup. (I’m guessing the aftermath of that match is about as quiet as a Brazilian stadium can get.) This hasn’t been forgotten in Brazil; they’re still talking about the “ghosts of 1950 ” and the disappointment that the national side hopes to avoid this time around.

Uruguay has some pieces in place; an experienced team that is peaking, a superstar that is on top of his game, and a style that invites challenges. The team’s nickname, the Charruás, refers to indiginous nomads who were known to be fierce fighters - and the term is something Uruguayans now proudly use in the context of going to battle against foreign forces. (The Charruás were summarily eradicated by Spanish conquerors; here’s hoping a better fate awaits Uruguay if it meets Spain in the knockout stages.)

Despite early wavering (green, white, red, navy; stripes, sashes, panels), Uruguay settled on a visual style in plenty of time for their mid-century success. Light blue tops (with white accents) and black shorts make for a classic combination, and there’s no reason to mess with over a century of tradition. The Uruguay Shirt follows the jersey’s lead, and uses a light (but substantial) blue base. The Clean Sheet crest and star are white; beneath, a ribbon hangs below in black. The forked shape of the ribbon mirrors that of the Asociación Uruguaya de Fútbol’s logo - the crest Uruguay wears on their national shirts. One last touch: from the Uruguayan flag, the Sun of May (a national talisman) is simplified and rendered in the crest’s inner circle, with rays extending out towards the edges of the shield.

Will Uruguay win this Brazilian World Cup? The odds are certainly against them; but then, who else knows exactly how it’s done?

Costa Rica

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Ah, los Ticos. US fans know them well. With Mexico’s regional struggles, Costa Rica proved to be the Americans’ most difficult opponent during the qualification cycle for Brazil. Going into this project, I knew a bit about Costa Rican soccer; coming out, I know a bit more about their culture. And while it might be a stretch to say that Costa Rica is primed for a deep tournament run, they’re not a team, or a country, who couldn’t handle the pressure of one.

There are a few different angles to this shirt; it's probably best to dive right in. First, it's red, just like the jersey Costa Rica plays in; further accents in white and blue echo the team’s kit coloration and the colors of the national flag. The flag is represented here at the center of the crest - concentric rings of red, white and blue form a roundel that echoes the horizontally symmetrical bars of the flag (and replicates, exactly, the roundel mark used by the Costa Rican air force). So: the flag is covered. What next?

Beyond the blue ring, an outer edge of white and red spikes circle the roundel. Combined with the inner circles, this creates a Costa Rican sunburst mark, a symbol with potent meaning in the tropical Central American country. But there’s more too it: behind the blue crest, a boxy figure is rendered in white. This is where a little background becomes helpful. From Pocket Cultures: 

La Carreta, “The oxcart” in English, was designated National Labor Symbol on March 22nd, 1988. During the nineteenth century, with extensive coffee plantations around the country, it was necessary to have a vehicle that could actually pass through muddy places, beaches, hills, curves, rocky mountains and deep small rivers. That’s when this rustic, wooden, strong cart was created….

[The oxcart] is one of the most genuine folkloric manifestations of the country as it represents the simplicity and aspirations of rural Costa Rican people, who have become artisans thanks to it. La carreta symbolizes humility, patience, sacrifice and endurance in an effort to pursue goals in a pacific manner. The national progress is linked to the oxcart, which imposes respect in virtue of its glorious past. 

That’s right; the design is a stylized oxcart (or carreta), a revered symbol of endurance in Costa Rica. The ringed sunburst decorates the cart’s wheel (in the traditional style), and the white cart and hitch stretch out across the shirt in the manner of a cart at rest after a day’s work. I loved the way this symbol said so much about the Costa Rican people and the team’s spirit, and I had to figure out a way to use it. I hope it turned out well.

One last touch: the thin white line representing the cart's hitch meets the wheel and continues on to the other side, jutting up as it leaves the back edge. This can be considered a very stylized version of Central America’s Pacific coastline; the white cart, with a little imagination, be seen as the Costa Rican landmass itself. The geographic fit is highly whimsical, but it works, and it’s a nice coda for a design rich with symbolism.

So, for the honor of Concacaf, out of respect for a regional brother, and because I had so much fun putting this design together: I’m pulling for Costa Rica to exhibit the very same endurance and progress during its Brazilian adventure as the revered correta predicts it might.

England

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England had to be simple. The only question, in my mind, was: white or red? The design hinged on whether I was making a red shirt with white elements, or using the blank canvas of a white shirt to do something intricate. Because I wanted simplicity, I chose red.

This game, and this photo, made me certain I’d done the right thing. The design I’ve worked up here is a simple homage to England’s World Cup-winning jersey of 1966. A field of rich red, a white crest, and some finishing touches - what could be better?

I did work in a few nice little details: first, the crest itself isn’t just white; it uses negative space to reveal St. George’s Cross, as found on the famous flag of England. Second, at the center, the Clean Sheet crest’s customary hole is occupied by three navy stripes. These call back to the England crest and the notorious three lions stretching horizontally across it. They also create the impression of a paneled soccer ball from soccer's earliest days - and as the home of soccer, it makes a bit of sense to draw a connection there.

One last element that I’d like to touch on in this very straightforward identity: the star. Every Clean Sheet design includes the shield and star crest, because that’s part of the fun - adapting the same template to different countries. But the star means something extra here; first of all, England actually wears exactly one star (from that 1966 Cup campaign); second, as the inventors of the sport, they deserve some special recognition. So, on this design, the star itself is intended to be represented in gold. When Clean Sheet makes these shirts, this star will be done not in regular ink, but in permanent gold foil. This is going to be one stunning shirt to see in person. Only England will get the gold treatment; that’s their exclusive reward for bringing such a wonderful game to life.

This is a composed, simple, dignified design for a team whose best sartorial moments have been defined by those qualities. Now, if England go out and win a second star this summer (and what are the odds, really?), I’m sure finding a way to represent it on such a balanced design will be a happy problem to solve.

Italy

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Dutch orange, Brazillian yellow, Italian blue. As long as there is soccer played on this planet, those visual identities are a permanent part of the game. Italy is one of global soccer’s premier visual brands. The country’s identity has been consistent for more than a century - the blue of the ruling Savoy family became the team’s trademark color in 1911 - and to the Italians’ credit, they haven’t sought to mess with a good thing. Sure: collars come and go, shorts change, the crest evolves, hairstyles are, uh, experimented with - but Italy’s shirt is always blue. Like Ferrari or Lamborghini, they roll out a version every year that manages to look exactly like every previous model - until you study the little details.

Within the confines of blue, Italy has found some impressive wiggle room. From the dark royal tones of their mid–90s look, all the way to an almost sky-blue kit in the early 00s, and recently a more muted, aged blue, the teams’ vision what blue can be has shown some impressive variation.

(When they stray from blue, Italy loses something; their white kits are pedestrian in comparison, and their brief history of third kits needs little explication. Well, one thing: somebody has to tell me if they actually wore this 1991 third jersey with blue pizza slices (!!) on the front - if so, it needs to be documented and studied. Thesis papers need to be written about it.)

I’m not one to upset tradition; this project is all about embracing it. The Italy Shirt gets a simple, classic treatment here. The Clean Sheet crest is white against a field of solid azure blue; that’s the basis of the look and it’s almost enough to convey the power of the Italian aesthetic. But there are a few additional references here: the Emblem of the Italian Republic, and the Italian Star.

Let’s start with the star. The Stellone d’Italia is, to quote Wikipedia, “the most ancient identity symbol of the Italian land”, going back centuries to stories of Aeneas and Virgil. The general idea is that a body shines in the night sky - Venus, during its periodic role as the Evening Star - that marks Italy a homeland and a place of love. The star can be shown alone, as a beacon, with rays of light cascading from it; it can also be depicted in the form of a goddess that has come to personify Italy (in the same way Uncle Sam does the U.S.). Here I’ve used the former, and used the rays of light in my favorite application, streaming the colors of the Italian flag.

The Italian Star is a beautiful symbol, and plays perfectly with the star on the Clean Sheet crest. But there’s one last layer to the way it’s presented. Behind the star, you’ll see two additional shapes. A stylized garland of branches (in a subtle, slightly lighter blue), and within it (in negative space) a cogwheel. These shapes, together with the star, make up the emblem of the Italian Republic, the country’s official mark during the post-war era. (You'll also note the ends of the garland's branches jutting out on the sides of the shield in that same lighter tone.) Together, the star and the mark resonate with just the right amount of Italian style, without overwhelming the real star of the shirt: the deep, azure blue.

The Italian look is timeless and simple; variation comes from the personalities that don the shirt, and the moments those who wear it create. No matter the extent of their success - and they have every chance of lifting the trophy - the Italian troupe heading to Brazil this summer is sure to make azure blue memorable once again.

And that's Group D. All shirts are available for pre-order over at Clean Sheet; find me on Twitter for comments, and I'll see you back here on Monday when we skip ahead to Group G (update: it's live - go now!). 32 Nations is a joint project by M.Willis and Clean Sheet Co. about designing expressive shirts for every single 2014 World Cup team. Questions, comments, etc.? I'm on Twitter at @m_willis. You can check out Clean Sheet Co. at cleansheet.co. If you want to know a little more about me, check out the features at the top of the page, or check out my brief bio. Thanks for reading!

[m-willis]

32 Nations, Group B: Spain, The Netherlands, Chile, Australia

The 32 Nations project continues on with Group B! The matchup between 2010 finalists will get all the press here, but I think Chile is coming out of this region, one way or another. Australia is a spoiler, fully capable of drawing or even beating a favorite that expects a result. The second-place finisher will likely play Brazil in the round of 16 - so the scramble should be especially intense through all three games.

On-field exploits aside, let's get to the important stuff: how does Group B stack up, design-wise? Let's take a look.

Spain

Author’s note: This is part of a recurring series on designing beautiful graphic identities for the 32 Nations in 2014 World Cup. When you’re done here, feel free to read on: Introducing: 32 Nations The Rules Group A Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon Group B Spain, The Netherlands, Chile, Australia Group C Colombia, Greece, Côte d'Ivoire, Japan Group D Uruguay, Costa Rica, England, Italy Group E Switzerland, Ecuador, France, Honduras Group F Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iran, Nigeria Group G Germany, Portugal, Ghana, USA Group H Belgium, Algeria, Russia, Korea Republic Epilogue All of the 32 Nations designs are available to order over at Clean Sheet Co., my apparel shop. We make shirts in batches, so pre-order now! All shirts ship later this winter. Click here to see & order all 32 Nations shirts! Finally, if you're interested in discussing this article, getting updates, etc., you can find me at @m_willis on Twitter, or leave your email at the very bottom of this page. Thanks for reading!

Spain vies for the title of “most recognizable national team in the world”, up in that rarified air shared by Brazil, Argentina, Italy, Germany and England. (I’m speaking, here, in a branding sense; draw your own conclusions about how that maps to actual quality on the pitch.) But unlike some of those brands, Spain’s isn’t easy to distill into one symbol or singular idea. Even their crest is complex; it’s the country’s national coat of arms, and it contains references to plenty of different things: regions, monarchies, bloodlines, ideologies, fantasies - it’s like an episode of Game of Thrones is actually playing out inside the crest.

This makes a bit of sense; modern Spain is, in reality, an amalgamation of many cultures and kingdoms. It hasn’t been easy for the country to figure out a unified national identity; if anything, the soccer team has helped polish the the country’s brand, not the other way around. The amazing work done over the last half-decade by the Spanish national team puts the perfect spin on Spanish identity: the country’s history is a little frenzied up and complicated, but their style of soccer says “Hey - everything’s under control. We’ve got a plan, we know what we’re doing, and we’re cool. Just relax and enjoy.”

That smooth, easy, comfortable feelings is what I’m trying to get at with the Spain Shirt. It takes elements of that complex national crest - the four-chambered shield, and the supporting pillars - and renders them in a simple, minimal, obvious style. The end effect (I hope) is one of comfort and control, of mastery over what might (in antother context) seem a bit complex or involved. The shirt is red - a fiery red, like the actual kit - and employs a deeper red ink to evoke a subtle toned effect. Signature yellows and a splash of blue complete the look.

Maybe it’s just me, but I see Spanish soccer style when I look at this design - complex ideas stripped down and smoothed over until all that's left are confident, essential elements. If Spain continues to play in that vein, they’ll be almost impossible to unseat.

The Netherlands

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Consider:

They speak at least two, and usually three or four, languages.

They refer to themselves at least three different ways. They’re Dutch, from Holland (…you know, The Netherlands).

They fly a flag that’s red, white, and blue; and root for a national soccer team playing in orange and black.

Now throw in:

Almost everything is legal there. The biggest city’s logo is “XXX”.

Also, the biggest city’s major thoroughfares are made of water.

The country should, in fact, be under a few feet of ocean.

This sounds, on paper, like it might make for a dysfunctional scene. That’s fair, no? But everything’s just fine in Holland; better in fact. Everything runs really, really smoothly. And why is that?

The power of design.

The Dutch understand design better than anyone. They started by designing their own country, like they were starting with a blank level in Sim City (“Let’s get a few acres of land over here where the ocean is… and hey - a canal would look cool there!”). Their society is goverened by rules that are more permissive, but also expects that residents will act with a certain measure of purpose and discipline. When it comes to national identity, despite the many different “brands” the country manages, there is no confusion; it seems the Dutch can handle multiple well-established identities with ease.

(Google can help illustrate this; “England vs. Britain vs. UK” returns you 73 million results. “Holland vs. Netherlands vs. Dutch”? About one million. The explanations of each are similarly convoluted, of course - something, something, fourteenth century, something something, House of Hyphonated-Names, and, in summation, constitutional monarchy - but the Dutch brand never even makes you wonder. That’s a strong brand. (Update! An excellent tip sent me to a pair of videos by CGP Grey, which explain the details behind both of those queries perfectly. Useful if you'd like, you know, actual information instead of sarcastic speculation.)

How did the Dutch get this way? I think it goes back to a prudent reliance on redundancy. Keeping an ocean at bay with one dike is good; but a few backups definitely help (lest you run out of fingers). Once this concept is ingrained, it makes sense to keep building around it. So hey, why not learn a few languages, and give the country a few names (you know, in case one gets flooded)? Oh, and when you get around to re-designing how people play soccer, why not make it so that everybody can cover virtually every position? That way you can just rotate people around the field depending on the situation. Sound good?

The Dutch do not design things to be simple, or beautfitul; they design things to work towards an ideal. Watch their style on the soccer field for more than a few minutes, and it becomes apparent; there are roles, and rules, but there is also a higher concept at play.

I tried to design a shirt at honored that idea. It starts with a pure, bright orange base (of course). The Clean Sheet crest serves as a focal point for a dual-purpose Dutch symbol - the X. This could stand for the famous windmills scattered throughout the Dutch countryside, or the pulse-quickening pace of Amsterdam, which uses the proportional X as its calling card; either way, the look is Dutch through and through. Where the windmill-x extends past the crests’s black field, it erupts into the flag’s colors of red and blue, and this gives us a pair of nice color combinations: orange-black-white and red-white-blue motifs that work well side by side. The entire effect is both straightforward and quintessentially Holland.

I mean, it’s The Netherlands, after all. As long as it’s designed well, why shouldn’t we have it all? (Now, here's hoping I named the shirt correctly….)

Chile

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This design started simply, and never needed to be anything but. Chile - La Roja - had to be red. Broad, bright red has defined Chilean soccer jerseys since the middle of last century; further, the color has appeared on their flag for almost 200 years. Among their South American neighbors, only their fiercest national rival, Perú, uses anything close to the shade as a primary identifyier; tones of yellows and blues dominate in the region, making Chile’s color scheme a bit of a unique rallying cry in this South American World Cup.

Red jerseys, of course, won’t be hard to come by at this World Cup; what could set Chile apart? First, it’s flag: the strong color blocks on the Chilean flag are beautifully basic, almost like an American flag reduced to its essence. (Texas might compete for that title too, of course.) So the shield, here, is rendered in blue on the top half; the star that the flag’s blue field holds is elevated to the top of the shield in the style of the consistent Clean Sheet crest.

For the shield’s bottom half, I chose to approach the design with an added bit of spice - inspiration from a classic Chilean jersey. Chile’s mid–70s jersey was an exercise in simplicity - a red field with the national federation’s crest centered in a white block over the heart. I adapted this white block for the lower half of the Clean Sheet shield, and it surrounds the bottom half, giving definition to the negative space there. This solves a design problem - how to get a partially red shield onto a red shirt - and also pays homage to one of Chile’s best looks.

The crest is finished, at the center, with two overlapping symbols, each important in native Chilean culture. The solid white eight-pointed star shape is a traditional guñelve symbol, which has been encorporated into past Chilean flags; behind it, elements of the cosmic doubled cross used on the flag that Mapuche people use in the Patagonian region.

The Chile Shirt is straightforward, but not without the influence of history and color. With Chile playing inspirational soccer entering this World Cup season, I hope it fits with the optimistic spirit the nation is surely feeling right now.

Australia

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When it comes to soccer, Australia bears an uncanny resemblence to the US. The two countries didn’t evolve like everybody else. We each have our “own” sports - including our own codes of football - that have traditionally trumped the world’s game in our domestic markets. There’s “football” - Australian Rules for the Aussies, gridiron for Americans - and a stick/ball game (cricket, baseball). And while America focuses on basketball and hockey, Australia pays attention to a second football code - rugby - which is also a national passion.

In our two cultures, soccer has frequently been on the backburner (that’s why it’s “soccer”, not football, in both places). In Australia, it’s been behind twoother types of football. Like Americans, Australian players have frequently been better known for athleticism and attitude than innate skill. And like America, the sport is growing in Australia at a pace that can’t be ignored. Like MLS in the States, the Aussie A-League is less than 20 years old, but already boasts passionate fans, solid rivalries and good soccer. And like the US National Team, the Australian national side has improved to the point where they frequently make World Cups (even as their competition to do so has gotten tougher) and are considered potential spoilers each time they show up.

Identity-wise, Australian soccer is a little mixed up, in kind of the same way it is in the States. There’s been no consistent brand - no hook to latch on to - and the sport has sometimes struggled to gain a mature persona amidst a ton of competition. The team’s nickname, the Socceroos, speaks to that; it’s kitschy and kind of silly, coined at a time (in the 1960s) when Australian soccer wasn’t taken nearly as seriously as it is today. (Seeing, in the mid 2000s, that the sport was attaining a more serious domestic presence, Australian Soccer Association attempted to rebrand soccer as “football” in the country - but I’m not sure much came of it.)

Finding a consistent color scheme for the national side has been, as you might imagine, less than straightforward. Take all of the Australian/soccer identity problems, add a helping of the nation’s blue and red flag (which owes much to other national identities) and mix in a strong international sporting identity in other sports (green and gold for limited-overs cricket and rugby) and you have a conundrum. The team has played in gold tops and green shorts, sometimes going all-green; recently, navy blue (owing to the flag’s dominant color) has made its way into the mix.

The Australia Shirt, therefore, contains some compromise - and that seems appropriate. The primary base is a rich gold, and the crest is rendered in muted, mossy green. I’ve added a diagonal strip of navy as a nod to the flag, and bursting off of it, the Southern Cross (as seen from the earth looking up at the sky; the Aussies are far more modest in this respect than the Brazilians) and the the Commonwealth Star. Both are found on the national flag and are revered symbols of Oz.

But of course, I couldn’t forget about the team’s lighthearted Socceroos nickname, or the idea of a kangaroo to symbolize Australia. The symbol is obviously a well-established one; the problem though, from a design standpoint, is that kangaroos are awkward shapes. They don’t play well with other aspects of a streamlined design. In fact, their shape tends to dominate everything else, no matter how you try and work with them. I attempted a few things and got nowhere.

After a little more research, I found a better way. Enter the boxing kangaroo.

Turns out, you give a kangaroo a pair of boxing gloves and things get a lotcooler. (Who would have thought?) Not only is the boxing kangaroo a famous symbol of Aussie fiestiness, it’s actually been used quite prominently as a symbol of Australian sport out in the world. Australia’s America’s Cup triumph in 1983 was acheived under a Boxing Kangaroo flag; the country picked up on it and has embraced it ever since.

For the sake of simplicity and clean lines, working a kangaroo into the design continued to be a non-starter. But boxing gloves? That works. So a pair of red boxing gloves hang proudly from around the green crest, waiting to join the fight. A little bonus: we get to sneak some red into the design, to pay homage to the final important hue in the Aussie color family.

There is a balance between seriousness and good humor to the design that’s in line with the tradition Australian soccer has grown up with, and the steadiness and confidence their game is now finding. And to those in Australia’s World Cup group, remember: a kangaroo might sound like a prefereable opponent, but boxing with one doesn’t always work out so well for the other guy.

There you go: Group B. All shirts are available for pre-order over at Clean Sheet; find me on Twitter for comments, and I'll see you back here on Wednesday for Group C.

32 Nations is a joint project by M.Willis and Clean Sheet Co. about designing expressive shirts for every single 2014 World Cup team. Check back Friday (after the draw) for Group A. Questions, comments, etc.? I'm on Twitter at @m_willis. You can check out Clean Sheet Co. at cleansheet.co. If you want to know a little more about me, check out the features at the top of the page, or check out my brief bio. Thanks for reading!