TEAM VELOX ROTA
October of last year, I was manning our booth at an event up in Connecticut at the Mohegan Sun when Rachael popped in to say hello, at the time I didn't know her but we clicked and have been in touch ever since. Her friend was shopping around, she ended up getting our Pink STRONG LIKE RHINO Crop after some debate about which style to get. Rachael and I started chatting. First about how the pink shirt was for breast cancer... which turned into her telling me about how orange is the MS color. Then she mentioned that she was a cyclist and I was like, "uh, me too!!" ...except she actually rides outside for like, hundreds of miles. And all over the country. And to raise money for MS!
About a week later, I received a phone call and guess who?! RACHAEL! HEY GIRL! She then introduced (well, e-introduced) me to Michael. Long story short, we decided it would be really fun to work together on some team tees for her races and events.
Michael is the founder and Rachael is the Development Director + member of TVR, Team Velox Rota. They have been riding together (14 years now...but last year it was 13!). Our plan was to come up with 3 designs for 3 different events: Climb to the Top, MuckFest MS, and CCG a.k.a Cape Cod Getaway (the same event we made shirts for the National MS Society who runs that particular race--their biggest fundraiser of the year!).
- We started with the Climb:
Their saying goes, "1200 Steps Closer To A Cure." So as you can see, we used their tagline as the focal point. I think it's pretty straightforward but I'm excited that we are going to reprint this design for this year's race, too!
- Then we worked on MuckFest:
Their team name for this event is the "Muck Dogs." As any event tee, we wanted to make sure to get everything in: team name, event name, year, and the team's logo. I think sometimes it's hard to achieve a modern design when there are a lot of required elements but I think we pulled it off!! It's a mud run so I think it's dirty enough but clean enough that it doesn't get lost.
- Last and CERTAINLY not least (this one was a doozy!), CCG:
This year, TVR wanted to celebrate all the individuals who have participated on their team so the idea was to take all names (as you can see, there are hundreds) and incorporate them into the design. After a lot of editing, fixing names, moving names around, we finally came to this! The negative space is the team's logo. To achieve the negative space logo, we listed every name of every participant around the outside. We filled the inner circle with team hashtags, the event name, year, etc... #JUSTKEEPPEDALING
The design became the back of the shirt and because it's so detailed, we felt the front should be a little more minimal for the sake of balance. We did this design as a left-breast placement.
Designing last year's shirts was only the beginning; I'm posting about it now because we are revving up to start this year's designs and I'm getting PSYCHED about it! I love designing but it feels pretty damn good to do it with a cause.
'Til next time,
Paige
