Phillies Shirt Design
The Design Process behind the Phillies Bamboo Bombers (Trust The Plant) T-Shirt.
I work for a company called Dynasty Sports and was tasked with designing a shirt centered around the Phillies current bamboo lucky charm. After some brainstorming and multiple changes the term "Bamboo Bombers" was chosen. I decided to go with a baseball diamond with bamboo coming out of it with the words slightly arched around the logo. The "B" in bamboo and bombers is the Phillies vintage logo upside down with stylized text for the other letters. Two versions of the design were decided on to represent the current and throwback colors of the Phillies. The design itself really came together and I am looking forward to seeing it printed on t-shirts.
The Design Process
After 7 consecutive loses and a big shift in team morale, the Phillies looked to change their luck, and Brad Miller, who the Phillies acquired on June 13th (2019) knew just the trick to help his new team. When Miller was playing AA Baseball he would buy a lucky bamboo plant in order to shift his luck. “Lucky bamboo — I always like having some around. Figured this can get us going here, and we’ll get them for everybody. And this will bring us some wins. I can feel it. (Miller)” Since Miller has brought his team the bamboo plant they have won their last 3 games straight and look to increase their streak going forward. Several players have used the hashtag "TrustThePlant" on Twitter and Phillies fans everywhere are embracing this new good luck charm.
I started off with a simple Bamboo silhouette with a Phillies "P" in negative space on top of it and the words "#TrustThePlant" written above the image. This was initially where my head went for the design but I knew I could do better.
Next I added to the design by incorporating the baseball diamond within the bamboo using a slight outline in negative space to differentiate the diamond from the bamboo. I also added saying "Trust The Plant in Phillies style text and moved the word "plant" down to the bottom of the design.
After realizing that the bamboo would just have a straight line where it gets cut off if I were to put the design on a shirt, I decided the logo should be rounded and added a semi-circle to the bottom of the bamboo in order to allow the design to work if printed on shirts, as intended.
Not a huge change but after the addition of the semi circle I felt that the text needed something to be a bit more included in the design. I went with a rounded look to match the semi-circle and although this didn't look bad, it also wasn't quite what I was going for.
Another slight fix; I wanted the text to be less rounded and more arched around the logo. In order for this to work out with the design a bit more I decided on scrapping the semi-circle and going with a cleaner, simpler, baseball diamond with the bamboo "growing" out of it. This was one of my more preferred versions of the design but of course I kept making changes to the design until I found one that I liked more than the previous.
At this point I decided to change the term "Trust The Plant" to "Bamboo Bombers". The phrase itself seemed catchier and I feel like the hashtag "TrustThePlant" fits nicely as an accent on the back of the shirt. I knew I was getting closer to finishing up the design, but it was missing a key element that I later learned would fit the design perfectly.
Here is where I really saw the design start to shine. I replaced the text with lower case letters and made the lower case b's the Phillies vintage letter P upside down. This really connected the text to the Phillies more than before and gave the design a Philly vibe. It wasn't just any baseball team that had bamboo as a lucky charm, it was clearly the Phillies after the addition of their upside down logo. I also removed the negative space outline around the baseball diamond and had the bamboo silhouette connect to the outline of the baseball diamond. It was a minor change, but a good one. At this point in the process I knew the design just needed one more change, color.
Finally I changed the black text to blue with a white outline to match the Phillies traditional color palette. This did two things, it made the design itself pop a little more, looking cleaner and more complete and it also further connected the design to the Philadelphia Phillies. On the left, I swapped the red background for a powder blue with maroon text and a white outline. This is a nod to the Phillies vintage logo and jersey and is a good alternative for someone who likes the throwback color palette over the new color palette. I also quickly made the hashtag "TrustThePlant" for the back of the shirt.
At this point the design is considered complete and is ready to be printed on shirts and sold in my works store. It was a lot of fun to mess with different design concepts and ideas and I couldn't be much happier with the final design.
~ Vincent Diiorio
