When I was first approached to do Phil's suit, I asked him a few questions about where he wanted the suit design to go, and the primary direction I was given was to just be "original", so far as to him not wanting me to even research existing suits. I flew blind then, creating a batch of designs that went from mild to crazy; he picked one of the crazier ones, as seen here. This was a year before his sponsorship cleared, so it sat on the shelf for awhile
Once Phil's sponsorship cleared I was put in contact with the suit producer, Lorini. At this point I was informed that the design I created for Phil was unreproducible, and revisions had to be made. The primary issue was the fact that the suit couldn't have graphics on certain areas where the material was comprised primarily of rubber. Those zones are colored in white, and had to be negotiated
These are a range of sketches I did for a couple of the suits you will see renderings of as you move through this project. The free-form sketches of Phil's suit were done originally so I could plan Phil's new suit, then I applied color fields to give Phil an idea how it would look. The bottom row are a few of the original concepts for Phil's suit, while the right column are color comps I did for the Ukrainian and US suits I designed after Phil's. That top left sketch was a random doodle I did while planning the Austrian suit, in case you were lost on that one
The final render for Phil's suit. The graphics planned for Phil's first suit were carried over, with heavy modifications to work with the Lorini template. The idea was that the flag was waving off of the body and then cascading back just in-time to emblazon the right calf
Right after Phil's suit his agent asked if I would be interested in doing the national suit for Ukraine, so I naturally jumped at the opportunity. I was again working with the Lorini template, so this suit was much simpler to create (and had to be, as I was given a few days to complete the entire process). The graphics are based on the Ukrainian Coat of Arms, simplified to create a simple yet unique pattern
The 2007 suits in-action, Phil atop and two of the Ukrainian team skaters below
The following year one of Phil's training buddies asked me to do a suit for him. Again, the Lorini template had to be adhered to, so I sent some ideas to Charlie to begin the process, and he picked one of the "test concepts" outright. The concept was an anatomy graphic, where the graphics would mimic the muscles underneath. The arm "blades" were an idea I had after watching longtrack footage; it was a way to take advantage of what little motion longtrack skaters produced
The next three were killed by budget shortfalls, and were all through Phil's agent. They had moved to a new producer, and the new company (Craft) had a suit that could produce all-over graphics. The Austrian suit I was looking forward to seeing in-action, but sadly it was not meant to be. The white graphics are feathering patterns taken from the Eagle on the Austrian Coat of Arms
The Finnish suit was fairly straight-forward, a flag-based pattern like on Phil's, but I included a small Rose from the Finnish Coat of Arms on the right hand, so when the skater was standing at attention for the national anthem the Finnish Rose would be raised to their heart
Lastly, the Hungarian suit. This was a fun one simply because it was a color field exercise. I was doing color comps and happened across the White-Green-Red pattern, and built the rest of the suit around that color field. The gold lettering added just a nice contrasting touch, a callback to the (give a wild guess) Hungarian Coat of Arms
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Skinsuit Designs
As a Sophomore in college I was given a unique job opportunity, as a long track Speedskater from Great Britain approached me in search of somebody to design him a new "skinsuit". From there I was able to turn it into my first job as a designer, producing designs for 4 national teams and a Speedskater on the US team
