Tag Archives: Detroit

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2023

Hello and welcome all to the ninth annual Detroit City FC kit post! Whether you’re new to Detroit City or new to this site, each year I do a run down of the previous Detroit City FC season, review the out-going kits the club wore, and I mock up three potential kits for the upcoming season – home, away, and a clash/charity kit.

Here are the links to the previous kit posts:

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

There are probably people, mostly people whose personalities are born and bred on the birdsite, who will consider 2022 a not great year for Detroit City. Whether for the impact USL-C had on the club and supporter culture, for the growing pains that popped up throughout the year, the bitter cold of those first handful of games, or for the “disappointing” (heavy emphasis on the quotes) result.

I must attest that, at least on the pitch, I was extremely satisfied with the product and the results the club put out. Moving from NISA to USL-C was a move up in more ways than one, and I was expecting a season where we attempt to not be embarrassed more than actually attempt to win. However, the NISA All-Stars put out quality games. Sure, we didn’t make a deep run into the playoffs, but back in March I wasn’t expecting to make it to the playoffs at all. So that’s a massive success already, and it means that the club has a strong foundation to build off of.

The next few years are going to be so exciting for Detroit City. I can see us really becoming a power house over the next few years, especially with the right signings and coaching. We’re so close. We can do this.

Meanwhile, a lot of controversy was going on off the pitch – mostly in the stands. I will not comment on every event, first because it’s not the point of this blog, second because I don’t remember them all, and third – I don’t want to come off as an authority. Generally though, my opinions run from unhappy and rebellious to unhappy but pragmatic.

Personally, I think my time in the midst of all the smoke and the pounding of drums might be reaching its conclusion and thus so too my pontificating on the matter. Perhaps I am getting bougier, perhaps I am getting older. It is very likely that it’s a combination of those things, but also a subtle shift in what I want out of the game day experience. The Niamh of 2023 is quite different than the person who was going in 2012. Less is the need for tribal belonging and aggressive venting, and in its place a need to be seen, to enjoy, to exist outside of my home office, to have my cocktails and catch up with friends and perhaps throw eyes at potential new friends.

Starting next year, I will be in the VIP section more than not. I basically consider it pre-paying for about $300 of drinks and food, which I do regularly get each game. My plan as of writing (October of 2022) is to coëxist both in the stands and the VIP section, but generally, I expect to make those retreats when needed.

But what about the kits?” you might be asking. “I’m here for the kits” to which I might reply, “Oh! Kits! You said Kits. Sorry, I misheard you. I thought you said- you know? Never mind.”

The 2022 Detroit City kits will always be the kits from our first USL-C season, which in-and-of-itself is a big deal. Potentially that is enough to make them something special, though I am hesitant to go all-in on that idea. Looking back to the 2020 kits, those aren’t exactly the most memorable set, but there was a lot going on in 2020 that might’ve prevented them from solidifying in my mind.

Detroit City donned four kits across 2022 – home, away, and two charity kit designs (one for the women and one for the men) and from those four it’s hard to pick a “best” in the worst possible way. It will have to fall to either the home or away because… sublimation, but outside that I think all four kits are less than great.

The home kits – all rouge with a rouge-colored sash was an interesting choice for a follow up to one of the best DCFC kits of all time. I like the sash as an element, but I think these kits fall into a serious uncanny valley of being needlessly complicated? I never really thought of the two-tone kit this year as anything other than just solid rouge, if that makes sense. I think the lacking piece was the Adidas piping being the same color as everything else. You might as well have deleted the piping and left them as is. The sash never popped in such a way to stand out. Even my wiki kit mockup was pretty plain, and we all know I hate plain. In that way, the 2020 and 2022 home kits share a bit in common – I forget that they had anything going on at all.

I think, on paper, the 2022 away kits would’ve made more sense if the home kit had been stronger. I just legitimately have zero attachment to the away kit at all. The design elements make sense, but again, there’s not much going on. Had the home kits had more, been better, the away kits would’ve snapped into sharp focus. They definitely meet the definition of “clean” I constantly bandy about on this site, but… I don’t know, they just didn’t mean much to me. Maybe it was the lack of trophies? Maybe there was a malaise over the entire season, coming out of the libertarian madness of NISA and into the corporate mundanity of USL-C that just subtracts from these two kits. Maybe if we won more. Maybe if we lifted more trophies. Maybe if something these kits would’ve magically worked. Inevitably the kits both define and are defined by the season. A great season can bring great meaning to a kit. But a great kit can make a mediocre season memorable. And that’s the problem. We had a good season, we broke expectations in mediocre kits, and that leaves them both unmemorable.

Lastly, and leastly, the charity kits. I hated both of them? They were awful, cacophonous messes of sublimation. I’m stoked we raised money for great causes, I’m so happy we got to do good with them – just wish we had looked good in the meantime. I assume this signals a trend – the custom Admiral kits for charity and the Adidas kits for the “main” kits. Part of me wishes we’d return to a special kit for the charity, still Adidas, but just a little bit more off the beaten path. I wish we’d consider another go like 2019 with a full third kit. We’ve shown that we can do stuff like auctioning off normal kits. But as we get bigger and are able to get more out of Adidas, maybe that won’t be the case. Perhaps we’re nearly at the point of considering another supplier.

Perhaps I am overusing “perhaps” in this post.

We live in a time of uncertainty. A time of ‘perhaps’ when we need certain answers.

I have no certain answers for you, dear reader, only thoughts and conjecture. I read the tarot of the kits. Some things are clearer than others. However; somethings are obvious:

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official nor necessarily endorsed by our front office
    • I refuse to include the Chevy logo on my work, deal with it
  • The reality of 2023 might be very different than what I predict here

The Home Kit

The 2023 Home Kit Prediction – Rouge with horizontal pinstripes and gold trim

I went through a lot of iterations on my home and away kits this year, slowly honing in on something that worked for me. Like the club, I usually alternate between years with a lot going on and years without so much. Last year for the home kit, we had the hoops, this year pinstripes.

The 2021 Kits were something amazing, and I want to build off that more. Some clubs are defined by features as much as colors (e.g. Celtic and green/white hoops, Newcastle and black/white stripes), but Detroit City isn’t one of those clubs. We can have hoops, sashes, pinstripes, nothing at all so long as the kits are that lovely, rich rouge color. Making the gold trim something that all home kits have going forward would be amazing, and draw a serious line of continuity even as features come and go. I’m not sure if I want to see bigger gold features, for example, a gold sash, but I’d at least be interested in seeing it.

This is what I mean by the difficulty of designing a home kit. I can’t imagine having these difficult discussions regarding the away kit. Want a gold sash? Done. Want a rouge band? Done. There’s no problem there. But when you talk about making a serious change to the home kit there’s a hesitation I feel in my gut. Will this be something that adds to the history of Detroit City kits? Or subtracts from it? I’ve done mockups with, for example, gold hoops and I cannot help but feel that it’s not a Detroit City home kit. A training top or a one-off charity kit, but it’s not a home kit.

So perhaps this is a “safe” design. Clean and simple. Three tones of rouge (the base, the lighter piping on the shorts and hems, and the darker stripes), but I think it is a strong design balancing everything I’ve talked about above.

The Away Kit

The 2023 Away Kit Prediction – White with a rouge and gold chevron

Working on the away kit is always a ton of fun, and I often get caught up in making dozens of potential designs, many just iterating on one strong design, drilling it down to something amazing. In previous posts, I’ve talked about wanting to do an homage to the 2013 kits with the rouge band across the chest. The 2013 away kit was the first DCFC kit I’ve ever bought, and I absolutely love it. It’s a fun kit with a variety of elements: the white body, the rouge band, the champagne sleeves.

Here I went to a sort of parallel homage – substituting a multi-colored chevron for the rouge band. Sure the sleeves are still white, but the champagne is captured in the piping and the chevron. Rouge piping on the shirt hems and on the shorts with a little two-tone going on in the collar.

Part of me wants to start a completely alternative discussion to the one above? Is it time to consider having a bit more fun with our away kits? White makes up the majority of our away kits despite us being the rouge and gold, so my gut is thinking do we move more permanently to champagne? Or do we let go all together? Can Detroit City pull off an orange away kit? Or a purple one? I Legitimately don’t know. Something about having both home and away kits fit the club’s color profile is uniquely American to me, a carry over from gridiron. But maybe that’s not actually the case, maybe I just don’t know because I’m used to clubs in the EPL having a very solid home design and the away kit having a bit more variation. Newcastle United has shown this over the years.

But what I do want to reiterate is what I said above – you gotta have at least one kit knock it out of the park, and I feel like the 2022 Detroit City kits didn’t provide. So for 2023 we need a strong slate of kits. Which brings us to my favorite kit to work on…

The Clash/Alternative Kit

The 2023 Clash Kit Prediction – Black with rouge sleeves and socks

The clash was the third of the three kits I started on and the second I came to a final decision on. It started with black and pastel pink. But as I played around with the options and variations, I really couldn’t shake the Inter Miami vibes, which was extremely disappointing. When I eventually moved on to the black/rouge combination.

I wanted a look that would be instantly iconic. I think I hit the bull’s eye with this design. We’ve seen some black and gold kits but something I’d like to see is black and rouge. When the two colors are so close together, you’re going to have to take steps to really emphasize them, so here, instead of just piping or some small features, I went with the sleeves and the socks. The more heavily contrasting gold comes in as piping on the shorts, in the collar and sleeves, and the hem of the top.

This sort of design, one that fits in with the rest of the options is perfect for an alternative or clash design, not just a a charity match or two.

There are some kits that years later folks still talk and think about, those ones that made bold choices and stuck to them. I think the black and gold third kits really embody that, or for another example, the Kitman Moy kits from the same year. I don’t think we’ve had a design since that really bucks the convention and gets not just talked about, but used. I might sound a little curmudgeonly here – but I’m fucking sick of the one-off sublimated kits. I really am. Let’s see something with some meat.

Three amazing kits, I think! There’s a lot that makes them different, there’s even more that ties them together!

The Sketches

The sketches for this year’s trio of kits.

Despite the ending in Memphis, 2022 was an extremely memorable year for Detroit City FC. Our first season in the USL-C, our first playoff spot, our first playoff loss. I for one certainly did not see it coming, though I dared to hope. I dared to hope quite a bit through the 2022 season – whether it was a playoff hosting spot or even just a playoff spot at all. The club and the staff really rose to the occasion on the pitch and despite growing pains off the pitch, I think we saw a lot of progress and improvements.

As my time as a “hooligan” comes to a close, my involvement with the club only grows. First with the 2022 Prideraiser campaign, which many of you contributed to and made a massive success. And now as a member of the Fan Advisory Board. I hope to continue to support and represent all fans, but especially queer fans, as the club continues to grow.

I have high hopes for 2023.

Hit me up on Twitter or Mastodon with your thoughts about 2022 and 2023, what did you think of the kits in particular and what would you put Detroit in for the upcoming season? If anyone wants to commission me, I have a portfolio and pricing page on this site. Feel free to drop a line.

Cheers, everyone!

Background Photo Credit:
Photo 75098233 © Jesse Kunerth | Dreamstime.com

Detroit, Detroit City FC, Life, Michigan, Soccer

Ten Years of Detroit City

I don’t know how long this post is going to be. Originally I thought I’d do it as a twitter thread, but I actually have an app that limits how much time I can spend on that hellsite.

Detroit City kicks off its first game in the second tier of American soccer in roughly two hours as I finish this up. Founded in 2012, Detroit City has consistently pushed what it meant to be a community-led capital-C Club, one invested in the community, not one invested into by the ultra-wealthy as a form of bread and circuses. Owing the idea of a “zeroth” anniversary, this is actually our eleventh season, but a decade of City is worth talking about.

It’s particularly worth talking about for me because I have built a weird parallel with Detroit City since the first season. I graduated on an off semester from Purdue University at the very end of 2011 and soon after got a job that moved me to Detroit working on the edges of the automotive industry. My first day at work, if I recall correctly, was the 28th of January, 2012, months before Detroit City kicked off.

I found Detroit City searching for MLS in Detroit, as I had read that there was interest in bringing a club here at the time. At Purdue I mostly just followed EPL and when I didn’t it was because I was following Newcastle down into the Championship. My roommate had an MLS team, Chicago, and I vaguely followed the Seattle Sounders because as an aerospace engineer, I assumed I’d be moving to Seattle sooner than later.

My first game was the 16th of June, 2012. According to Detroit City historian Michael Kitchen, that was a three to nil win over FC Buffalo. I have two pictures from that game, one taken by Brigid of my friend Zak and I. We showed up with some shoddy flags and custom t-shirts, driven by my own need to recreate what I had seen elsewhere. To build.

It’s not quite ten years later. But it’s getting there. Brigid and Zak didn’t catch the bug the way I did. I started going to games alone, which for an extrovert like me means I started talking to people, which meant I soon got caught up in the nascent Northern Guard Supporters.

City means something in particular to me because it has become so intertwined with me over the last ten years. I’ve been to secret meetings. Sold Darren McCarty a scarf after drinking a pint of whiskey. Met countless people from all over the world. Carried a drunken footballer out of a bathroom. Invested in two major campaigns to grow the club. Lit more smoke bombs than I think most people ever even see. Traveled to states I wouldn’t’ve otherwise. My first tattoo was for Detroit City. And City got me interested in playing, so much so I helped re-found a beer-league team that is playing an international friendly in a little more than a week!

Detroit City has impacted a lot of who I am, is what I am saying. And the big this is that the community around City has greatly enabled the biggest change of my life.

A man pushes over a small domino labeled "read a wikipedia article on MLS expansion" that will eventually topple a very large domino labeled "come out as trans with a ton of supportive friends".

I’ve talked at length about being trans, I’m not going to rehash too much of that here, but as the meme says, there is a direct line between fatefully looking up MLS expansion on wikipedia to searching on google to learn more about potential teams and finding Detroit City to joining the NGS, to meeting amazing people and building a support structure, to getting involved with more LGBT+ folks, to eventually my coming out as trans back in 2020.

Isn’t that crazy? Like if I were to go back in time and be able to pull ten years younger me aside and point out onto the pitch and up at the smoke and go “That. That is what enables you to finally come out.” I don’t think twenty-three year old me would’ve been able to grasp it, even fully understand the enormity and the utter correctness of that statement.

Detroit City means a lot to a lot of people, and like a fractal faceted diamond, it reflects and refracts all of us at once, and the sparkles dance in our eyes forever. Over the next few months and years and decades I expect we’ll see a lot of emotional posts like this. Of people who found City because of some cheap tickets or a quick blurb in ESPN and in doing so find a life-changing community. They, like me, will find themselves swept up in something amazing.

Here’s to many, many more years of Detroit City Football Club!

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

The Kit Post 2022

Welcome, welcome to my eighth annual Detroit City FC kit post. For those new to the site, new to Detroit City, or both, let me give you a quick idea of what this yearly even is about: when a Detroit City kit reaches the end of its life, usually at the end of a season, but sometimes at the end of the year (this time it’s both), I do a review of the out-going kits and design a set (home, away, third) of new kits for the upcoming year/season.

If you need a handy guide to my previous updates, here you go!

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

2021 was an amazing year for Detroit City, quite possibly the best since the inception. An utterly dominant season that technically started in the fall of 2020, Detroit City won everything that we could. We were so dominant that to keep up appearances and competition, buys and spots in the finals were consistently given to a number of teams with a growing number of asterisks behind their names.

I helpfully updated this graphic for NISA when they tried to hand-wave away that every possible path to the Championship had actually been seized by Detroit City. But I don’t think the league appreciated my efforts.

In the end, though, City saw it all the way through to the end, beating LA Force and gaining that fabled star over the crest. It was an emotional moment for all of us, but for the team it was the plateau that would hold through the end of 2021, when we won our third consecutive NISA “season”-thingy.

It really is hard to emphasize how much of a powerhouse Detroit had become, and instead of the tide lifting all ships, things seemed to get worse. Bad teams just upped the chippiness and physicality, taking advantage of NISA’s unpaid refs and willingness to let red cards just be forgiven with no real fall-out. With all that in mind, it’s not surprising that Detroit City chose to fauxmote to the USL Championship, a move that is rather fraught, so let’s start there (because this really is as much as season retrospective as it is a kit post, despite the title).

My thoughts are mixed to say the least, when it comes to this move. USL has long been a bogey in the dark, looming over Detroit City since our early days and the on-and-off proxy battles with Dan Duggan and the Michigan (now Flint) Bucks. Their model, especially in 2013 and 2014 was MLS but not as good, going as far to act as an MLS stand-in during these battles.

The closed system. The high fees to enter. The countless MLS 2 teams. USL was not where anyone wanted to see Detroit City, and I assume there are folks who continue to not want to see us there, and I won’t fault them that.

While Sean Mann has assured us that our IP is safe and that the gameday experience will almost certainly not change, the latter still needs to be proven, and I’d bet many people will remain apprehensive until the end of time, because if anything, the USL has proven to be as fickle with rule enforcement as NISA has. Lastly, when talking about USL, is how did we afford it to begin with. Word is an angel investor stepped in, one who wishes to remain anonymous, but I don’t think that soothes anyone’s minds. Really, it only bristles us more. So now we have a league that could, at any time, step in and fuck with how we do things and an anonymous owner who could step in at any time and fuck with how we do things – either through direct action or inaction.

On the other hand, we had clearly outgrown NISA and all the worrying warts that made us sigh or roll our eyes aren’t as forgivable two years into the experience, especially given the arbitrariness of them. COVID doesn’t stop NISA from living up to its own rules and its own disclosed values, but shitty league owners do. NISA is “independent” but independent seems to have less to do with not fucking with teams and fans (which NISA is happy to do) and more like “letting certain owners get away with whatever they want so long as they throw a big enough fit”. Plus vetting is apparently non-existent as a number of vaporware teams appear in equal standing with Detroit City, threatening to water it all down for us.

Sure, for many of us NISA was the equivalent of the Titanic in the vicinity of Liverpool circa 1912 – but we’re not in Liverpool anymore, we’re off the coast of Newfoundland and given the choice of staying on the Titanic or jumping over to the Carpathia, some of us see the choice as easier than others.

Does it make hypocrites of all of us?

Unpopular answer – yeah, yeah it does. But you roll with the punches knowing that’s the only thing folks got on you and keep on supporting.

Luckily for me, the kits are a much easier topic to tackle. I absolutely loved both of our primary kits. I especially loved that the squad itself grew so attached to the away kit they were requesting to wear it for big matches and the championships. They couldn’t’ve have picked a better kit to win trophies in, except for maybe the home one. But that’s just me.

The home kits were a perfect example of a clean kit – a phrase that I’ve used in contrast to a plain kit quite a bit on this site. Like pornography and art, sometimes you need to see it to know the difference. A plain kit comes off the rack, or does nothing to look like it didn’t. Whereas our home kits used the gold adidas striping to frame the otherwise “plain” shirt, giving it an extremely intentional and professional look. The gold trim is something I had wanted to see for quite some time, I hope we stick to it. While the all-rouge or rouge-on-rouge-on-rouge kits are okay, I’d rather keep that for elements like hoops or stripes while the gold details can be kept.

Meanwhile, the away kits were absolutely gorgeous. Gold bodies with white sleeves, gold trim on the sleeves and shorts kept them unified with the home kit. And boy did those kits get plastered everywhere on the media. Every time we needed to lift a trophy, there they were. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few new comers who didn’t wonder if we were really Le Champagne. A little-noted feature of all three kits that I adored was that the crest changed to match the kit it was on – rouge and gold for the home, champagne and white for the away, black and grey for the charity kit.

And while we’re on the charity kit – they never grew on me, quite the opposite really. Intricate, sublimated designs aren’t my thing. Plus it required us to use Admiral kits which probably meant that more could go to the Give Merit charity, but eh. I don’t like kits as picture canvases and prefer that designs stick to the old limitations even as everything becomes sublimated now.

Anyway, my usual list of disclaimers, which I’m just copy-pasting from last year because why the fuck not?

  • I don’t work for the DCFC front office
  • The DCFC front office fucks with me
  • Kits shown here are not official direction
  • Logos, league, and sponsors are used without permission
  • Sponsors and league are not official nor necessarily endorsed by our front office
    • I refuse to include the Chevy logo on my work, deal with it
  • The reality of 2022 might be very different than what I predict here, I love the challenge regardless

Before we got to the designs, I want to talk briefly on process, because I often touch upon it when writing these posts anyway. Since I am a stickler for very traditional designs, I often “sketch” kits in wikipedia format before scaling them up. I mentioned this forever ago in a post about working on the first Harper’s kits. Recently, I made a photoshop template for free-hand sketching wiki kits, so I don’t have to rely on the finicky template system, instead allowing me to potentially churn out dozens of designs with little or no trouble.

And as of late, that’s where I’ve been starting for bigger projects like this. Getting my thoughts out and on a piece of digital paper allows me to test things out, or get a better grip on the reality of what I’m thinking. Some designs die here because their flaws become obvious or seeing them for real makes me aware that they don’t really look like a Detroit City FC kit.

I’ve been finding this process to really help, especially when it comes to broadening my designs, proper framing, and getting ideas out and on the page without committing too much energy to them. That’s the best thing – the experimentation. Since I’m working in a tiny format with barely any resolution, I can sketch an idea, see it sucks, and move on all in like three minutes, instead of thirty. It means I don’t rely on crutches as much, even though, a favorite of mine is about to appear again.

This year one of the designs to not make it was a throwback to the 2013 kits, with the rouge stripe through the chest on the away kit. I was conceptualizing what a “better” version of that would look like. It just never worked and I knew it wasn’t working without feeling committed to the design. I moved on to another idea I had and it looked much, much better. So that’s what you’ll see here.

And with all that out of the way, let’s see some kits!

The Home Kit

The 2022 Home Kit Prediction – Hoops with gold trim

I’ve often said that the home kit can be hardest, though perhaps the better word is it can be more daunting. There’s a lot of focus on getting the home kit right and folks can be much more picky about what is and isn’t on it. This year I wanted to return to a focus on kits that can be produced by a company like Adidas, after a few years of allowing some slips into the sublimated hell that is dominating US kits right now.

After such a stellar year, I wanted to go back to a reoccurring Detroit City kit – the rouge on rouge hoops. City has worn hooped kits twice before: 2014 and 2017. Of the two, I think the 2017 did it better, and not just because it was Adidas over Nike. The darker “base” with the lighter “hoops” just looked overall better to me, and I wanted to follow up on that. I also wanted to keep the gold framing – we are rouge and gold after all. Having both colors on the kit at once is a good nod to that. I kept it cohesive with little light rouge touches in the shorts, using an extra little line to break up the vertical stripes and at the hem of the shirt, which gives good definition to the overall makeup of the kit.

The Away Kit

The 2022 Away Kit Prediction – Half-and-half champagne and white

Champagne is a difficult color to work with, admittedly. Generally, it doesn’t come out looking like “gold” so much as sandy tan, while “gold” is usually just a highly saturated yellow (think the Packers). Such is the disconnect when working with a color named after a shiny metal. The alternative, for Detroit City, would be white, which is our usual away kit color. Personally? I prefer the champagne, I think it looks better, it’s not a common color for kits, and again, we are the Rouge and Gold, so it’s nice to stick to that.

But as in many things in life, it can sometimes be important to compromise. Gold? White? Why not both. And thus we arrive at a staple design that rarely makes its way to the United States – the half-and-half. Here I’m working with a base of champagne, with the right half of the kit colored white. The sleeves are both champagne, as they are often a separate “item” to be colored on sites like Adidas, with no option to split them. Like the home kit, I wanted to showcase both colors, and so here I use rouge as the framing color in the cuffs and the stripes. And bucking previous trends, I went with the champagne socks – something unseen since 2012.

The Clash/Alternate Kit

The 2022 Clash Kit Prediction – Verdigris

The template I work with is admittedly not that impressive, but it is cheap and it does work for someone who is more of a spirited amateur than a professional. A few years ago I turned off the layers that are intended to add the photorealistic shading and texturing to the kits, in favor of this more cartoony/sketch look. One of the downsides to that was when you made clean kits it effectively came out looking like a romper, with nothing dividing the shirt from the shorts. But this is an actual design concern and this year I wanted to address it with the hem at the bottom of the kit.

Verdigris, the color of oxidized copper, has been a popular recommendation when I seek them out. The Spirit of Detroit, the statue that is at the heart of our crest, is in person a large copper statue and is, in fact, verdigris. It goes without saying, then, that this would be a fantastic choice for an alternate kit, though I think the color would be hard to do in reality. I used gold and black to frame the kit, leaving it otherwise unblemished by design elements. The sleeves have some vertical elements that I saw in my head as going partway around the sleeve, so it wouldn’t just be the ones visible.

The Sketches

The wikified sketches I did before kicking off proper renders.

I mentioned above that I use tiny wiki-sketches to get my ideas down on paper first, so I wanted to include the actual sketches at the bottom of this post. There are some differences for sure – for example the solid bar gold tops of the rouge kit wandered over to the clash. Part of that was just about look. The verdigris kit also had a slightly different collar look, with the gold not completely surrounding the neck, but I just couldn’t get it to look right in the render, so it was dropped. Otherwise, I think I stayed pretty true to the original sketches, and they look amazing in miniature, if I do say so myself.

A fine trio of kits!

So that’s that for the 2021-wrap up and the 2022 kit post. As you can see by the sorry state of my site, I don’t really post much to it but this annual shindig, but hey – what can you do? 2021 was a hell year, just like 2020 and there wasn’t much for it.

As always, if you’re interested in commissioning me, you can check out my portfolio/commissions page for what to expect. Have a lovely holiday everyone, and I hope to have more stuff to put on this site eventually other than just “I’m trans” and “I love kits”, but honestly, that’s probably all it’ll be for a while!

Cheers!

Background Photo Credit:
Photo 75098233 © Jesse Kunerth | Dreamstime.com

Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Soccer

Football from Scratch

In a “two birds, one stone” sort of situation, celebrating both my thirtieth birthday and HAFC’s 12-2 victory late on Tuesday night, I wanted to write a bit about the genesis of the club from the perspective of the guy who’s almost really only done marketing/branding/kit work (which shouldn’t really be shocking to any of you).

So what is Harper’s Athletic Football Club (usually just “Harper’s” or more rarely “HAFC”)?

Harper’s is a co-ed, beer-league indoor/outdoor football (soccer) team that is comprised of about equal parts DCFC fanatics and not, who started off life as Whiskey in the Jar in the DCFL outdoor summer league which plays at historic Fort Wayne south of downtown.

I joined on the urging of several friends as a way to get more soccer in my life, actually start playing sports competitively, and as a way of staying healthy.

Between the summer and fall seasons there was a longer-than-usual break as Detroit City prepared to open the Fieldhouse (and then later, the Clubhouse). This would move DCFL indoors to the renovated facility. At this point the captain of Whiskey decided to look into a few new potential sponsors and a rebranding.

The Crest and “Harper’s” AFC

Being a sort-of, almost sports branding person, I basically took this as a chance to have a ton of fun and learn a lot about running the image of a team. I set out chasing down one potential sponsor which will pop up a lot in the following images. But despite that, it was pretty quick how we moved from them once another sponsor popped up.

The decisions between sponsors is a story that doesn’t necessarily belong here, or really anywhere. Both are fantastic. Both owners were generous and forward. Both are worth your patronage.

Originally, and in the spirit of the bar league, we were going to take the name of the bar that sponsored us, but with the coming Fieldhouse (and the attached bar, the Clubhouse) we knew that there might be multiple sponsors in our future. At that point was the genesis of a club with an actual name and thus a real identity.

The first mock up was pretty basic, a bumper filled with red beer with the name of a bar over it, here Little Tony’s, which is a favorite hang out of Brigid and me.

This is a prototype image, because I had never bought the actual image IIRC. Or if I did, I didn’t use it later. It might’ve actually been free, now that I’m thinking about it.

Anyway, it was eventually upgraded to this:

Which is a much better-looking glass and I most certainly have the right license too!

The reason for a red beer instead of more traditional black or yellow ones actually has to do with the kits, but it starts here with Little Tony’s. This bar is in an offset building on Mack Avenue that is green and black:

(Taken from the Little Tony’s Facebook)

I knew I wanted to use green and black as two of the primary colors of the club, and if they were going to be the primary colors, it was likely that the crest would involve both. Now, I could’ve gone with a green crest and a black beer, but I already had a sort of idea in mind so what I needed was contrast. The cream contrasted the black, and so to contrast the green I went with red.

So I threw together a very Germanic or even Celtic-inspired crest with an art deco font I had laying around (and again – the license to). I needed a sort of “name” to fit in there and rather than using Lorem Ipsum, mostly jokingly threw on the name of the other avenue I live near – Harper.

For those of you know don’t know, I live between Mack and Harper avenues literally on the line of Grosse Pointe Woods and Harper Woods. Many of the bigger, better teams in the DCFL (which play in the much more competitive “Neighborhoods” league) use the names of local neighborhoods. Harper Woods is oft forgotten, so eh?

I fully expected the name to be questioned and changed pretty quick to another part of Detroit proper or even just to something a bit more generic. To my surprise it stuck, which maybe I shouldn’t’ve been because it does roll off the tongue pretty well and I love that it has a human quality to it without also being easily gendered.

Plus my phone puts “Harper’s Ferry” and “Harper’s AFC” next to each other so… you know… fight the power.

“Athletic Football Club” also came from a desire to be outside the norm. “Football Club” is much more common, especially here in the States. Really it’s a tiny tweak, but it has some good consequences. It differentiates us and it the abbreviation is much more aesthetically pleasing to me: HAFC vs HFC. HAFC is a sports team, HFC is a TV channel that plays in the background of the dentist’s office.

The Folks in Hoops

This is probably the part everyone is waiting for. Obviously one of the things that appealed the most to me was being able to design distinct, perhaps even iconic kits for HAFC and then getting to actually make them. The thought of working with suppliers and designers, at the time, was super exciting. And to an extent, it still is, but it is much more… mundane? Mundane.

The first thing I did was sit down and collect my thoughts and asked a vital question. What makes a kit iconic?

What makes a kit that after hundreds of years of iteration can be put next to the first one and you go “oh yeah, I see that”. And really, what I found, is that it is a combination of sticking to your colors, sticking to a simple design that offers room for experimentation without losing the focus.

So the next question was, what are some iconic kits?

Newcastle. Celtic. Manchester United. Chelsea. Inter Milan. Barcelona.

This list could go on forever. But basic colors. Basic designs. Focus. A plain shirt is a design. It’s an aesthetic as much as any other decision. Hoops vs stripes. What color are your shorts? Your socks? Those can be easy to forget when doing this. Shorts and socks provide either more room for your color of choice, like with Liverpool. Or can provide contrast, like Manchester City.

If you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend Historical Kits. which is a lovely archive of hundreds if not thousands of kits spanning more than 100 years of football history in England and Scotland. It’s an easy way to see (and also get lost in) the design of football kits.

But if you’ve been on this site even just once or paid attention to that crest I posted, you probably know where this is going – we’re going to hoops.

The crest and the kit were being iterated at the same time, but the hoops were first on the kit and then migrated to the crest to solidify the relationship, it’s also a bit of a nod to my favorite English team – Newcastle United, who have their stripes on their crest. I did think about vertical stripes, but the hoops are so much… better? Better is the wrong word, but it works here.

One club in particular I had in mind when picking colors and designs was Plymouth Argyle, a team I know literally nothing about other than over the last few years they’ve had several kits I nearly bought just to have lying around. Their colors are also include a beautiful shade of green and black and boy have they had some amazing kits:

Plymouth Argyle's most recent home kits

(Image taken from PlymouthLive)

Their 2018/19 kit especially (far left above) is so gloriously fantastic that I might still buy one just to have. If only their season was going as well as those kits. They’d be in the PL before Christmas.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I hadn’t even picked colors yet. Whiskey in the Jar (the team, not the bar) wore sky blue kits.

The shorts and socks were a mish-mash as only tops were made and I actually never even had one as I wore a sky blue Adidas training top. Originally I considered keeping to the sky blue and potentially doing hoops or stripes with that. But since we were on the prowl for a new sponsor, the idea to grab new colors was too strong and the green/black color combo is a favorite of mine, one that I’ve used a number of times in mock ups and world building scenarios.

This is a kit I designed as part of a failed project mentioned several times in the blog. You can tell it was pretty early in my ‘career’ as it uses the 3/4ers “hero” pose and things don’t line up as neatly or make much sense. Like the logo on the side of the shorts. The first iteration of the Harper’s kits was basically this translated to the front view:

I wanted to emphasize green with the hoops, rather than black, so instead of starting and ending with black, I started and ended with green. The sleeves line up with the shirt only in opposite colors, which gives it a cool effect, I think. Then, stealing directly from Plymouth, I threw on that sexy, sexy white collar. You can see the first iteration logo here. I think it mostly works, but it doesn’t have the charm of the circular ones to come.

Still with the older logo (the second iteration of the logo was something that really only lasted a day or two before being replaced, so it didn’t really end up on any mockups), I had a sort of serendipitous moment when I colored the sleeves white and liked the look of it so much I took another step back to let it soak in. That’s when I came up with this crazy idea – what if the top of the kits were white?

I applied a pattern I had laying around from another project (or recreated it) and got that rounded effect on top.

Side note – if you’ve ever worked with me and wonder why I can finish shit so quickly, it’s because A) I’m very familiar with my tools (I’ve been using PS since I was like 14), B) I have a very extensive knowledge of kits because there are great people like Högs, Eric, Roger, and others who always give me great tips when stuff pops up and C) I’ve got a very large portfolio made almost entirely of random ideas that I can quickly grab pieces off of. And also, when you pay for “15 minutes of work” you’re actually paying for 15 minutes of my time and all of the above. This shouldn’t need to be explained, but there’s a trend of devaluing artists and designers… but not the work they produce? Which is weird.

Anyway.

So, I get the designs all together (there is a corresponding away kit that has not and will not be made and isn’t being discussed here) and I send them over to our captain for review.

The review portion can always be nerve-wracking, even in situations where I maintain a large amount of control like this. It often leads to sitting next to gmail and refreshing.

What came from the review was: no collar, different sponsor. Plus at the time we were made aware that the custom socks could not be made, so we had to choose from some pre-made ones, we chose black.

I have one final check that I often like to do when working on more traditional designs like the one above. I open up my sandbox on wikipedia and I try to recreate the kit using only the default patterns for the kit and see if it captures the spirit of the design. Not necessarily 99% of it, or even really 90%. But the closer, the better.

It worked fantastically.

So there it is. The Harper’s AFC kit in all it’s finished glory. I’ve actually learned a lot about everything working on these. Including how to get those hooped socks, which some of us now have! There is a few things I’d improve with the finished (i.e. worn product) but for the most part they are amazing and I’m please to have worked on them.

We’re already looking into next year’s kits and we have some sexy new away kits on the wings ready to drop in the next few weeks.

Cheers, everyone!

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Kits, Soccer

Detroit City 2017 Kit Guess

I’ve been getting a lot of work done on my fake world cup stuff, but recently Detroit City FC announced their 2017 charity match and charity: the Kalamazoo match 23. June will benefit Alternatives for Girls, a Detroit-based charity that helps homeless and at-risk girls and women in the city.

What a great group to be helping, and honestly what amazing possibilities for some awesome charity kits, right?

Right.

Listen, I designed more kits and I’m about to shove them down your eyeholes.

Anyway, I decided to guess what the 2017 Detroit City kits are going to look like. I have a bit of an advantage because I’ve possibly been tipped off to what they aren’t but there are still a lot of unknowns. First is the possibility of a fourth set of kits hinted at debuting at the Glentoran match as throw-backs to the Detroit Cougars.

But, as a few of us agreed, there is the likely chance that there will still be only three sets – home, throw-back, and charity. I think this is what we will end up seeing. It keeps with tradition and doesn’t saturate the market with unwanted kits.

So let’s start with that throw-back. This isn’t terribly hard, we already have a raging clue: Glentoran already unveiled their Cougar throw-back kits and they are white plus orange. From there it is easy to deduce that ours will be black and orange. Here it is folks, our first non-white secondary kits. That’s pretty exciting. But what will they look like? Maybe something like this:

Simple black kits with orange trim/cuffing. Arm space is almost always reserved for the league and sponsors so I’ve put the Cougar’s logo on the pant leg.

It would be strange seeing orange on our kits, of all things, but I assume that as throw-backs they’ll be in for a season and out. Hopefully, though, the black stays and next season we can have some black on black on black kits.

So we got a black and orange kit… what next? How about a pink and black charity kit!

Our charity, Alternatives for Girls takes over on the chest of a stunning hot pink and black combination. I love, love, the idea of pink/black kits for Detroit City. If we do end up getting them, they will surely be hard to beat in the future.

Definitely check out the Alternatives for Girls site and give them a follow/like on your favorite social media site. Very excited to bring them into the DCFC family.

“That’s all fine and dandy,” you might be thinking. “But there’s only one kit I care about” and you’d not be wrong.

I don’t think you’re right, but you’re not wrong what with opinions and subjectivity and all, but you do you. I love secondary and alternate kits a lot as an expression of creativity. Home kits should be consistent, the others should shake it up from time to time a place to test what works and what doesn’t. To throw metaphoric shit against the wall and see what sticks.

Anyway, the home kits:

Rouge. Lots and lots of rouge. And a little bit of white. It’s very similar to a design I posted a while ago, but I’ve added the collar so the home kit isn’t just a ctrl+c, ctrl+v of last year’s, which admittedly was very simple.

Anyway, that wraps up this “surprise” update. Hope you guys enjoyed and feel free to let me know what you think… or, alternatively if you are a kit manufacturer hire me.

Cheers, everyone.

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Soccer, Writing

Mid-Autumn Review

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Got a bit of time before an afternoon appointment ends up sinking a good chunk of our afternoon so I thought I’d get a rambly life review post out of the way. This is going to shift topics pretty quick so try to keep up.

Wine

After a half-year hiatus due to the move, our wine bucket is full again this time with a straight pomegranate wine. Right now the smell is amazing and fermentation is roaring ahead. I’m looking forward to the finished product.

In a week or two, we’ll get a second batch going: this time of raspberry wine. That too should be amazing.

And once winter sinks in, we’ll look at upgrading our wine cellar with some stone work and some decent racks and perhaps even a wine cooler.  We’re probably looking at doing it ourselves so expect a full how I managed it post at some point.

The House

We’re settling into the house quickly. We’ve already done a lot of work and we’re looking at getting the roof fixed first thing is spring. We also looked into either doing siding or remodeling the bathroom, but those ended up falling out of our price range. Too bad, both of those things can seriously go with an overhaul.

We’ve almost entirely unpacked as well, notable exceptions are bags of stuffed animals in the bedroom as well as organizing our clothes. Plus there is a giant tupperware  container in our office plus a box that needs to find a home. The office is now fully equipped for coffee production, freeing up much needed space in the kitchen (an issue that came very much to light when depipping ten pounds of pomegranates.

Otherwise we’re settled and extremely comfortable. The benefits of living so much closer to work and friends has already paid off, plus the reduced cost from the mortgage every month is helping as well. Walking is way, way up thanks to the myriad of stores and restaurants near-by, and we’ve signed up for fencing classes, our first since uni, so hopefully I can burn this damn beer gut away.

Writing

Been getting a lot done on the writing front, even if I haven’t been talking about it.

I am not participating in NaNoWriMo, so don’t expect word counts. I do plan to get some editing done, but there may or may not be some huge overhauls in my plans for the coming year/year and a half.

Brigid and I have been talking timing and publish for my four novels, which will either fall under her pre-existing company or more likely my own that I will set up when the time comes. The current plan is a release schedule something like this:

Sun-King: Q2 2018
Book 2: Q4 2018
Night Queen: Q2 2019
Book 4: Q4 2019

None of that is cemented, in fact I think it is safe to say the release schedule will likely get pushed back even further.

Why?

Well I’m a slow writer, mostly. I wanted book 3 (Night Queen) to at least be written (first draft) before I pull the trigger on publishing Sun-King. But Brigid very honestly pointed out that at the rate I write, I might want book 4 (is it strange I have the most trouble coming up with titles for the even numbers?) in the first draft stage and book 3 essentially wrapped up from the writing perspective.

I might plot out and write books 3 and 4 here in the next year – one giant binge of writing. Then I’ll have a first reader or two go through all four books and realign the consistency of the tone and action. That way I don’t have to keep going back to Sun-King when I make adjustments in Night Queen’s plotting.

It’s a lot of work, and the encouragement I get from you guys is, and always has been, great.

So thank you very much.

Kit Nerd

I’ve still been kit-nerding it up lately, messing around with sponsors and even going as far as to look beyond my normal front sponsors, manufacturer, and experimenting with a bit of color.

puma_strohs

A clean-ish rouge kit sticking on the piping theme from the official kit nerd post. In this series I went with Stroh’s as the official sponsor, following the tradition of teams like Liverpool and Newcastle who proudly wore their favorite session beers on the front of the logo. With this particular kit the dark red above the black collar isn’t the back of the shirt – it’s actually an inset of the front, so the collar is a rather traditional cut while also giving the effect of wearing an undershirt even when you’re not.

puma_strohs_plain_w_gold puma_strohs_plain_w_gold_bired

A bit of a cleaner design, in my opinion. A minimal amount of gold breaks up an otherwise plain rouge kit (top) or divides the rouge from a darker shade (bottom). I like that the Puma and DCFC logos follow the swoop, gives it a more balanced effect then when used above. I like them both quite a lot, with perhaps a slight preference to the plain one on top. The Stroh’s logo ads a lot of colors but if done right (and DCFC has been doing their sponsors right – with transparencies instead of giant bounding boxes) it still looks good. In fact the red and gold in the logo are really great with the rest of the get up.

puma_strohs_plain_w_blue puma_strohs_plain_w_blue_bired

Now on twitter I mentioned these would probably be a bit controversial (though that has so-far proven untrue). Instead of gold accents, I went with the blue from the Stroh’s logo, something unheard of for DCFC. I want to go on record saying I prefer the gold more and that I don’t actually want to see blue added to our kits, but it was a fun little experiment which I think looks good. In this case, though, I think the Rouge – Blue – Dark Rouge works better (instead of the plain one as was the case above). Maybe the blue stands out better with the defined line between the reds and isn’t lost as much.

Anyway, that is a life update. Cheers everyone.

Detroit, Michigan, Opinion, Writing

The 2016 Summer Wrap Up

No this isn’t a thing, nor do I plan to make it one, but there’s a lot going on and a lot on my mind and I’m planning on writing some of it down for the curious and so that it’s here and not floating around taking up space that could be used to memorize useless CAE method codes for work.

NGS Kilts

I sent the order in. We got a few orders, but that’s all. I’m hoping to hear back from our supplier in the next week or so. Technically this is the real deadline, but I’m guessing no one is actually going to take advantage of it.

That’s fine.

I’m amazed I sold as many as I did, to be perfectly honest. It is humbling and awesome that people chose to buy something I designed, so thank you to the handful of you who ordered or even expressed interest in ordering. It means a lot to me.

The question of whether or not we’ll try again is up in the air. My gut reaction is “no” but you never know. So maybe?

The Move

The biggest thing going on in my life right now is the move. That’s right, Brigid and I are moving clear across the city from Howell to Grosse Pointe Woods. The move should be wrapped up 23 September. We and everyone involved (three families total) are cleared for our individual closings so it is all about scheduling at this point.

Brigid and I are supremely excited for this, and I’ve talked about it elsewhere so I will spare the details here. The short of it, though, is Brigid can begin writing full time! That’s super exciting for both of us and it means that she will hopefully eclipse my income shortly and then make us a billion dollars so we can retire at 35.

Surgery

I’ll keep this brief – I am going under the knife Friday (2 September) morning for a regular, minor, elective surgery. No big deal (hopefully). If things go right it’ll be a speedy recovery.

Book Two

Let’s end on a high note! The first draft of the still untitled book two of my series is complete! Huzzahs! I have a lot of editing to do, so expect those updates as I quickly try to rebuild the whole thing from the ground up a fifth or sixth time. I really like where it ended, I like what the characters got done, but I also recognize that it needs a lot of work. Hopefully that can get done sooner than later.

I’m taking a bit of a break from writing directly and switching to replotting out books three and four with much more detail than I have in the past. Hopefully this will make writing the last two installments a much quicker affair with fewer total restarts.

On the publishing side of things I might poke a few more agents, but at this point I want books one and two totally done and book three mostly done before moving into indie publishing, this way I can maintain a semblance of a release schedule. The idea would be to publish one book roughly each year starting around summer of 2018. I think that is an extremely doable goal, so no putting on the breaks!

Thanks everyone for keeping up on this site and hopefully we’ll see you at Soktoberfest and the so-far unannounced (probable) house-warming party.

Sláinte!

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests

NGS Kilts – Order Form, Pricing, What Changed, and What’s Going On

tl;dr:

Prices for kilts made more accurate; 25% deposit now, rest later; prices will fluctuate so nothing is final; up the fucking city; you have until 31st August; order sheets.

January 2017 update: There will likely be a second round of orders. Please do not send anything to the address given on the order sheets in this post as I no longer live there. Keep watching this site/my twitter for updates and thank you for your continued interest in NGS kilts.

Hey guys! The Detroit City season is underway and we’ve already packed Keyworth up to the brim with 7,410 supports, fans, and bewildered Hamtramck locals! We’ve crushed the Bucks, carried Louisville in PKs and have shown that we’ve weathered the off season, rumors, and came out stronger than ever before!

During the off season I began work on designing, registering, and producing an NGS/DCFC tartan that we can turn into kilts and other fun items for our burgeoning army of rapid supporters.

So where are we on all that?

The Design

Final - NGS Tartan

This was the final design that I came up with and got approved by Sarge and Ken. Anyone familiar with the NGS will recognize the colors motif pretty quick. We’re rouge and gold on a background of black and white, with a grey little train-track running through the middle as an homage to our new home in Keyworth.

There isn’t much “deep” history here. Not like every thread count means something. No long stories to tell. It is a tartan. It is ours.

Registered

After designing I got it registered with the Scottish Government. It is ours and always will be ours. They would not add the restriction that people from Ohio couldn’t wear it without coming to a game and shaking Sarge’s hand but I wasn’t going to press the issue with a bewildered and honestly rather tired Scottish bureaucrat.

Making it Real

This is where things get… complicated.

You’ve likely seen that I’ve posted links to order sheets before, tried to get people to send them in, pushed back dates, and eventually fell silent.

There’s a reason for that.

I found a supplier more than happy to make our dreams come true at an extremely reasonable price: SportKilt. I decided to do a test run with my personal tartan, going through all the steps and eventually including checking CAD and thread selections. I placed my order and was surprised at the protectionist taxes we levy on imported wool.

So I had to rethink how we were going to do this.

Here is the updated order sheet.

I had to bump all the prices in order to reflect the 25% tax on imported wool. It sucks. It hurt. But these prices are still significantly better than I expected when I first started this whole thing. Prices range from $245 for the smallest base kilt to $433 for the largest fancy kilt (excluding options). This is an increase from $210 and $380 respectively.

Sashes and capes are no longer priced for labor-only. They now include a yard of material at $45.

Children’s kilts were also increased, now ranging from $74 to $128 from the original $60 to $110.

Women’s skirts reflect the same price increases as the men’s kilts.

I’ve also extended the time-line to the last day of August. You have until the 31st of August to get me your order forms and your money.

Which brings me to the ordering part – When you give me your order sheet (in person or by mail) you MUST include a 25% deposit (rounded to the nearest dollar). Since we’re talking international importing/exporting prices fluctuate and so do conversion rates. The number of orders changes the price of fabric as well. Right now we’re assuming we get enough to get the best price, but too few orders will increase the price from $45/yard to $62/yard.

When I get a final price from the supplier/SportKilt I will update you and have you write a check for the remainder of the balance.

 

Detroit, Detroit City FC, Opinion, Soccer

An Open Letter

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Hi Tom and Dan,

Well… Hi Tom, Dan’s blocked me on twitter apparently for that time I reminded him that he can’t just say Detroiters support the Cavs. Or maybe he did it on MLS’ orders in which case expect your list of required blocks soon – I’m on it.

Anyway, I literally just wrote about this.

Convenient.

I’m not going there right now. In fact, I’m going to try to be as nice as I possibly can. Which is really hard given the mental situation I am currently in. I’m not going to talk war plans. I’m not going to talk fighting this at every turn. I’m not going to talk about doing everything in my power to stop you. I’ll even drop the “Fuck MLS” tag for just a regular “Soccer” tag.

See? Meeting you half way.

I’m just going to offer the olive branch once.

Hey guys. Heard you want to put an MLS side in Detroit. That’s cool. That’s cool. I’m sure lots of thought and planning has gone into this announcement. And there’s a lot more coming, of course. You’ve got a whole team and culture to build.

But.

But what if you didn’t?

What if instead of trampling over what already exists like a three year old left to their own devices in the flower beds, what if you help us grow Detroit City FC further?

Sure we aren’t exactly… sanitary for the big TV markets and stuff… sure we’re not exactly the kind of people you’d bring to your big fancy parties with your fancy finger foods.

But we are Detroit.

We are the life blood of this city, this city you both are so apparently interested in helping.

We bus kids into games.

We rebuild old stadiums.

We help our vets and we recognize losses to the community.

We follow our team through thick and thin.

We, or at least most of us, are willing to listen to what you have to offer. We want to believe you’re here to do good. We need you to prove that.

I’m not going to list any demands (yet). Nothing like that. What I want is a chance to show you want DCFC has is unique.

Have you come to a game?

Have you stood in the midst of the supporter’s side? In the smoke? In the songs? In the greatest party in Detroit?

I invite you, Tom (but also Dan if you pass this along to him), to join us at any DCFC game. USOC, FCUM match, at Keyworth or not… join us and see the soul and heart of Detroit. See the excitement in people’s eyes. See the passion. Smell the smoke.

Join us and not only will I recomp you your tickets, I’ll buy you a pint, buy you a burger, and buy you a smoke mask so you can really get into the heart of it all.

Sure it doesn’t sound like much to you, but you probably made this afternoon what I made since moving to Detroit four and a half years ago. But it is offered openly and freely. I’d like for you to accept it. I’d love for you to have real talks with Detroit City’s owners and it’s fans.

I promise. I promise you’ll love it if you give it a shot.

Please?

Pleeeeeeeeease?

Don’t kill my team. Because if you try, we will fight back.

Detroit City FC, Flags, Symbols, and Crests, Soccer

Faust

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Faust: Who holds the devil, let him hold him well, He hardly will be caught a second time.

During the first DCFC season, my friend Zak and I had fashioned some cheap and easy flags. For mine he spray painted a quick trio of fleurs de lys on it in no more than two minutes and called it a day. Meanwhile he found a rouge-colored fabric with golden fleurs de lys sewn into it.

received_10155245222385643

The next year I decided to get a bit more advanced. Zak had dropped out, so I was on my own. I bought a blank white flag, marked it off, and covered it in rouge, gold, and white checkers. It was janky, the colors looked like shit, and the lines between them were blurred and runny.

Over-all it blew. But it made it to quite a few matches. And as I told one supporter who called it shit but was empty handed, “It’s better than yours.”

Checker

20130512_131912

The next two seasons I was flagless. Generally it was pretty liberating, not having to worry about where the flag was, keeping track of it, or worrying about someone running off with it (like anyone would steal that piece of shit). But I missed having one. For some reason I had it in my head that I needed a flag.

This season all that changes.

I’m back in the business of making a flag. This post is/was not written after the fact. I am saving it as a draft and publishing it upon the completion of the flag, which I have dubbed “Faust”. As I work I will add more to the post so you’ll get a stream of thought. Generally I’ll break writing periods with quotes from or about Faust.

Faust, for the uninformed was a German folklore character who sold his soul to the devil for all sorts of powers.

I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

Unlike previous flags, no small deal of work went into designing Faust. The basis was the flag of the Kingdom of Württemberg. The banner at the bottom reads Furchtlos und Trew [sic]. I would keep that and fix it to the correct Furchtlos und Treu meaning “Fearless and True/Loyal”, a great line for any hardcore supporter.

20150704_195751

I wanted a way to mesh this flag with the flag of Detroit.

1280px-Flag_of_Detroit,_Michigan.svg

My thought was to work on the crest in the middle. Instead of Württemberg and Swabia, my thought would be to create a simplified version of the above: a field of stars, a gold lion on red, fleurs de lys on white, and alternating red and white stripes.

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I worked on simplifying the Detroit flag. I removed the needless crest. Replaced the fleurs with something a bit more complicated, then replaced that with something less complicated but still more traditional than the ones on the Detroit flag.

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Concerning the lions of England, I knew at first I’d rather a single, better detailed lion than three smaller ones. Plus I wanted it in a more active pose.

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So I looked at some more complicated, active lions. And I mean, really, that one has a sword! So the sword won.

The blue field of stars should’ve been simple. The Detroit flag has 13 for 13 states, but their pattern is kind of lame. I chose to replace them with something based off the flag of the United States when Michigan was added to the Union.

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Lastly I flipped red to the top so the red banner would be on the black half of the flag. So here is the first main version of the Faust:

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Some other changes would be needed. Originally I liked the black lion and the gold stag – it made a good reference to Michigan, but it was a bit complicated and the black wouldn’t show up well on the black and red banner.

First I considered a skeletal crow and a a skeleton as supporters.

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But with zero artistic ability I switched to the Tudor dragon which is rouge and gold paired with a golden lion.

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The dragon, however, is a really cool image. So the decision was made to double down on the dragons.

I worked on simplifying the golden shield around the crest, knowing that if time and paint permitted I could always add the the leaves and texture back in. Another minor detail I wanted to fix was the super tall helmet on top made especially tall with an extra fleur de lys on top.

The idea came to combine the fleur with the crown and find a simpler helmet to go on top.

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So the crown of France will have to do.

The final design for Faust:

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(Dragons further flattened for painting)

God help us — for art is long, and life so short.

Eventually I had to get working. It wasn’t long before the itch got the best of me and Brigid and I ran out to two Jo Ann Fabrics to get enough polycotton and gold trim to put this together. Brigid came for the Japanese food.

I divided the build into four phases:

Phase 1 – Combining the halves

Phase 2 – Painting

Phase 3 – Trimming

Phase 4 – Basing

Phase 2 is far and away the longest, or at least most tedious step, itself having a main coloring phase and a second detailing phase. So here we go. First I sealed off a spare bedroom in our house and put down a thick painter’s canvas. Next I laid out the red half, then marked an inch deep onto it to overlap the black half. The I laid out the black half and pinned them at the end.

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Over two days I glued the two halves together.

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It wasn’t perfect but I managed to not completely cock it up.  After gluing I wanted to stitch it just to be careful that there wouldn’t be a completely failure if it got caught in the rain.

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It wasn’t a terribly good stitching job, and it caused quite a bit of bleeding from the fact that I didn’t do a terribly good stitching job. Otherwise it was a a basic backstitch job.

Stitching took three nights (doing a little bit at a time so not to completely start to loathe the project), after which I let it sit for a few nights until I had time to get paints.

After I did get paints I got back to work pretty quick:

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Surprisingly, all of this happened without a major fuck-up, which is some sort of record for me. Hence I wasn’t surprised when:

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A gentle reminder to would-be painters, all yellow paint is neon green until proven otherwise. Luckily I was able to soak most of it up with a paper towel and then paint directly over it with zero wait. Not sure how the back looks as of writing but the back is the least of my worries.

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I lost a shade of gold, but in the end… I lost the need to constantly swap colors, so I’ll call it a win.

Just take a look at our patrons, and you’ll know
Some don’t appreciate us, others never will.

The next big step was getting some chalk and chalking out the helm, the ribbon, and eventually the dragons. I initially wanted to save the details for later, but I broke down in time and just started scatterbraining across the 8×8 canvas.

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Eventually some equipment would need to be replaced. Brushes break, cups dirty, but my poor old printer was just getting too old. Plus it was like $50 for new ink cartridges so for $100 on Amazon Prime I got a new ink with a free printer thrown in. Oldest joke in the book, but work with me here.

This one has wifi. No more wife emailing print-outs to me.

Usually one paints a tifo by first projecting the image onto a wall, hanging the fabric, tracing the image, and then painting it on. Colors are limited and even the small details are huge. Here, no luck. Projectors are expensive and the small details require getting up close and personal, often free-handing the actual lines. For the most part I use tracing, which in turn means lots of printing, cutting, and taping.

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Then once the stencil is made, it is traced out. One of the reasons I made everything as symmetrical is that I can use the stencils “twice” – once on each side.

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Plain, white blackboard chalk is surprisingly hard to find. I’ve checked at multiple places multiple times over the year and have never actually found white chalk, always just an empty hook next to the colored blackboard chalk no one wants because it stains everything.

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First coat of the red banner, right before getting scatterbrained.

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Second coat of gold on the ring, first on the helmet. Genius Kendall. Also, by this point the brush death toll started. A 1″ brush Brigid grabbed so I wouldn’t have to dedicate a single night to a single color died about halfway ’round the ring.

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So while the gold dried I decided to work on small details instead of cleaning my remaining 1″ brush twice.

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At this point I also realized that my old printer had slightly enlarged certain print outs. So my fleurs de lys were too big to fit two abreast.

So they got staggered in a weird pattern. Had I know earlier I would have aligned two to the right and one center and to the left. But fuck it. Perfection was never the goal. So I finished the third fleur and then went to wash my brushes…. and promptly killed my good 1″ brush by rinsing it under too-hot water, causing all the bristles to loosen and fall out.

For fuck’s sake, Kendall.

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All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.

Bought new brushes today. Grabbed two and didn’t grab cheapos. The first order of business was going to be the crest I was hoping to finish it first so I wouldn’t be sitting on the supporters to get at it later. This would include the helmet too and then eventually the motto. The first day back to work was a red day.

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Traced out the lines.

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Looks good.

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And promptly went about adding a second coat to the banner.

With the red done, it was time to move onto the first of the arty parts of the project – the Lion in the red field. The Detroit flag uses a stylized version of the English coat of arms – three Lions. I wanted to simplify this, but also add a Detroit flair. The choice of a Lion holding a sword was a simple one.

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Worked upstairs on this one.

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Freeeeeee!

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It fits! Mostly because I specifically shrank it.

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A quick trace later.

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And the gold paint added.

And before anyone asks what’s happening to all the brush cleaner, don’t worry, I’m no litterbug.

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That’s right. Kitty litter. It’ll go into the trash, not the best but beats down the drain because I’d never do that…. ever… really.

I waited to finish the Lion’s sword, teeth, and claws until I was getting the white paint out, basically when I did the stars.

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Going with an inverse stencil to keep the spacing.

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FUCK.

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Squished that second star in. Still. Fuck. Anyway, shitty picture – but that is the nearly finished crest. Just needed some black outlining and that needed a a bit of bravery because we were getting into freehand territory.

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Practiced outlining with the dark red for the banner. It doesn’t look good up close but fuck it. Paint was not sticking well.

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This bit I could free hand, or use basic existing stencils like a ruler or a spool. However eventually I’d have to at least trace the main guidelines.

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So I cut apart the existing stencil.

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Boom! Looks good considering I’m shit at art.

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More free handing. Super, super proud of the calligraphy I was able to do. Probably wouldn’t be able to do it again. But I got it when it counted.

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The traced crest and the motto. Furchtlos und Treu for sure. But with that there were two things to go… two things I had been postponing – the highly intricate crown… and the two massive dragons.

That which issues from the heart alone,
Will bend the hearts of others to your own.

So, that crown… kinda royalist… don’t you think? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t care about things like that. But I do. It was grating on me for a while. Not only was it intricate and hard to paint, but it also symbolized something I don’t support – monarchism. If only there was some sort of hat that represented freedom and democracy… Wait! There is!

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It’s called a Phrygian cap and is a symbol of revolution. It appears in a lot of French Revolutionary scenes as well as the coat of arms of Argentina.  It’s also on the seal of the US Senate.

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That was easy. 😉

Now those fucking dragons.

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It’s pretty big.

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Finished. It was something like 13 or 14 sheets of paper all told. I don’t have the final count any more. It was a lot though, but it is for a good cause.

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Positioning. Ignore the missing phrygian cap.

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Traced.

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White details.

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Gold details.

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Starting the red.

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More red.

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Added black details and more red. Still a lot to go… plus… another fucking dragon? Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

Whatever is the lot of humankind
I want to taste within my deepest self.

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Working down in the basement was hell on my fingers, decided the best thing to do was get a space heater and let that baby wash over me. I also started bringing down a tablet to listen to podcasts and things to keep my brain occupied. After this I noticed shifts went from an hour or two to six hours pretty quick.

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An nearly complete dragon.

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One down, one to go.

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Got the sleeve glued, but not stitched. In this time frame I was thinking about the colors of the dragons. I was thinking that a lot of the flag was very samey looking. After talking to Brigid, I decided to switch the second dragon up. White -> Gold, Gold -> Red, Red-> White.

This would give me some more variety and could also reflect the Polish roots of Hamtramck and have the dragons wearing the traditional kit colors of DCFC – Rouge (home) and White (away).

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I got the sleeve and a massive chunk of the white dragon (everything seen above) done in a single shift. I also named the dragons – Danny on the left, Dave on the right.

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

I’m headed into the final stretch at this point. Finish the white dragon and then getting trim and re-enforcement on before the 16th of April was the goal. I put zero work in over the week, but was dedicated on getting it finished on the weekend.

On Saturday we did our normal routine of Bob Evans followed by grocery shopping. Then. Work.

It had to be done in time.

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In case anyone (no one) was wondering, I used the tape roll to keep my paint cup from getting knocked over. Saved me quite a few times.

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Painting complete.

Now I had to move onto the trimming and the re-enforcements.

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It’ll never look this good again.

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Around this time I was horrified to discover that the sleeve around the pole had two pinch points and thus it was impossible to remove the pole from the sleeve. Which means I needed to cut it out.

Luckily I had some fabric lying around from uni when we tried to make bags for cornhole. I was planning on using this for the grommets, but I had plenty so it would also be used to expand the sleeve.

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First pinch at the bottom.

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Second pinch about a quarter the way up.

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Little extra room.

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I laid out patches for the grommets. This would add a few extra layers of canvas so they wouldn’t pull out easily. The plan was that the grommets would be used as a secondary re-enforcement to the sleeve on particularly windy days.

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Pretty in pink.

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If my aim was off it was because getting over the sleeve was a pain in the ass.

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I have to admit cleaning the grommet pliers was pretty awesome.

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All nice and set.

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At this point I undid the ties holding the fringe together and wasn’t happy with the corners. (Un)Luckily I had mismeasured along the top and had to run to JoAnns for more fringe, so I had a foot to play with. I cut some tiny sections out and glued them diagonally across the corners. This really filled it out well.

The last steps were cleaning. I had to get all the chalk off and all the gold lint from the fringe as well, also cat hair, human hair, and just general junk.

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And so ends my project!

Brigid suggested we give Faust some air upstairs in our great room.

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Faust stands proud.

Thanks to everyone who helped me along the way when I had questions or just needed a little encouragement. This project had a lot of twists and turns and a few complications, but in the end everything for my club.

Up The Fucking City!

 

Draft to Reality:

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Only took two months.