The Sponsor a Player Program is the PUL's annual fundraising initiative, and helps ensure the running of ultimate's most impactful and important professional league. Given the amount of hype surrounding these jerseys, we want to share the inspiration and process behind this year's design theme.
We asked VC Creative Designer, Etán Santiago, on the process and his inspiration for this year's Premier Ultimate League PSP.
The Theme
For the last few seasons, we’ve approached the design for the PSP with a theme to help keep a league-wide look to these super exclusive sponsor jerseys. What was your inspiration behind this year’s theme?
The inspiration behind this year's theme was Bauhaus and a little of vintage Football jerseys! However I can't say I did all the thinking, as like with much of the PSP, it was a collaboration. And in this early stage of the works, VC's very own creative powerhouse (Adriana Withers), brought on the brilliance of Bauhaus-ery into the mix. And I ran with it! (Or more like walked, really slowly haha... Sorry exec board!).
After some time of workshopping the theme, the way the concept was set to work in my mind was to have Bauhaus-y dynamic elements that could be tailored to each of the teams and keep a familiar identity whilst trying to shake the specific looks. And on the other hand, have the vintage Football jersey elements be static as a way to connect all the jerseys across the theme (so we didn't have to rely on using the same Bauhaus-y elements to keep everything connected).
In theory it worked pretty great! But when it comes to the nit and grit, there has got to be dicing room to adapt to the requests, and for a handful of the jerseys the Bauhaus-y elements were let go haha (the static elements really came in handy for those as they helped keep everything anchored across the board). But everything came out great though =D
How do you approach making sure each team’s personality, so to speak, is represented in the creative aspects for their PSP jerseys?
It was a bit of a challenge for sure as a somewhat not-too-close-but-not-so-far-adjacent collaborator for the PUL (actually the closest I have orbited to the league's teams directly has been when I've worked on a couple of their seasonal kits), but precisely because of our familiar unfamiliarity, I figured that the best way to approach the creative*personality/brand equation was going to be like going to the pool; to swim, you've got to jump in. In other words, I reckoned if I just gave it a good shot with what I felt was right without worrying too much about figuring out the margins from the get-go, we might land butter side up more often than not (PS: That's why I'm not an O-line handler for CASA).
I'm happy to report that for the most part everything went smoothly, however I did get a few shots out of bounds. But that's when the magic of collaboration within the PSP project came in handy again to dial everything in perfectly. As per the strip below:
Torch, GridLock and Surge's creative pivots to the initial proposals gave us the best match of creative*personality/brand final results for their PSP Jerseys. Credit where credit is due.
Is there a difference between designing for a PSP jersey and an official team uniform?
Creatively speaking (this year particularly), something I kept in mind whilst developing the proposals for each of them was that the PSP jerseys are for the sponsors, and the uniforms are for the players. So something I really wanted to do was to decisively establish that difference by making the PSP jerseys quite contrasting to each of the teams official uniforms. And with that, I ended up aiming to have a very loud and disruptive looking fan jersey that could easily be spotted amongst the crowds... You look over and you spot a fan, and not just any fan, it's a super fan.
Simply put, for me the official team uniforms are business cards, and the PSPs are calling cards.
Do you have a stand-out favourite from this year’s line up?
Atlanta Soul's PSP jersey has been my stand-out favorite for 2 years consecutively counting this one. It might have to do with the fact that It's one of the teams I feel most familiar with as I was actually heavily involved with their 2023 rebrand. For me, their brand just feels like an old pal that I can just pick up with from where we left off last. Usually I do 2-3 proposals per team but for Atlanta Soul I never do more than one proposal because the first to come always just feels right................... in my soul.
Thank you to everyone for their support and also apologies to everyone I ghosted in the last few weeks. I'll get back to you shortly Grandma 🙏
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Check out the Premier Ultimate League Player Sponsorship Program and their VC Fan Shop to support their mission:
To achieve equity in the sport of ultimate by increasing accessibility to the sport for and visibility of women, transgender, intersex, non-binary, genderqueer, and genderfluid people through high-quality competition, leadership experiences, and community partnerships. Our league strives for gender, racial, and economic diversity in the sport of ultimate.