Portfolio AFL x Adidas, by exile

[exile]

WELCOME!

Welcome to my portfolio on the AFL, where I'll be creating my revamped look at the league. I've always wanted to give this a crack, and actually started this mid-late last year but have only now gotten around to finalising it. I'm still finalising a few smaller details, but will look to get a couple designs posted per week.

GENERAL NOTES

• Each team will have 3 sets of uniforms, a Home, Away & Alternate. Of the 3 sets, only one is required to have a significant contrast from another. The idea is that clubs have more flexibility over what colours they choose to wear when playing at home or away. A club may wear the Home or Alternate set when playing at home, and may wear the Away or Alternate set when playing away. My vision is that the Alternate set is a bit of a statement, throwback or colourway piece, where clubs (with stadium lighting like Optus Stadium) could hold themed gamedays based on the colour of the guernsey worn at home. Just my take on how the whole clash guernsey & current policy could be revamped.
• All team designs manufactured by Adidas. All shorts & sock designs will be consistent across the league (3 stripes).
• There is a mix of re-designs, slight variations & maintaining existing designs across the league. I'll try to write a spiel about each team design and my thought process behind it as they are posted. Some teams may feature designs I have previously posted on this board.
• New AFL logo included and has been recoloured to suit team's colours per set.
• Sponsors have been recoloured to some extent, where I felt best suited the design & colour scheme. Mostly removing colours of sponsors that stand out too much or have a colour that is a mismatch from the team's colours.

THE LOGO

One of my starting points with this portfolio was the league logo. I wanted to create a fresh but simple style that was able to be recoloured like the NRL's recent logo change.

I came up with the below, opting for more of a shield design, with the curved bottom half a similar shape to the footy shaped previous logo. I've focused on a strong, bold font for the name, with the goal posts being more prominent & a solid red colour from the historic red foopy.

Through the use of the "double outline", the recolouring has the option to use either of the two main coloured sections of the logo to suit the background of the guernsey.
The look for the premier's logo is a more subtle effect, with just the outermost outline being highlighted in gold. I haven't included the premier logo on any team designs, as in my fictional world Richmond didn't win last year haha.



THE TEAMS

• Adelaide Crows
• Brisbane Lions
• Carlton Blues
• Collingwood Magpies
• Essendon Bombers
• Fremantle Dockers
• Geelong Cats
• Gold Coast Suns
• Greater Western Sydney Giants
• Hawthorn Hawks
• Melbourne Demons
• North Melbourne Kangaroos
• Port Adelaide Power
• Richmond Tigers
• St Kilda Saints
• Sydney Swans
• West Coast Eagles
• Western Bulldogs

 

[exile]

ADELAIDE CROWS



home & away designs fairly much the same as current, with the exception of matching the collar & cuffs to the main colour of the guernsey (this is a common theme across my portfolio). i love the new red clash guernsey for the crows this year, so i've opted for a monogram design in the red for the alternate guernsey.

 

[MooreTreloar]

Looks great. Big yes to shorts matching the tops.

 

[exile]

BRISBANE LIONS



similar to the crows, matching the cuffs to the adjacent colour is the main change for the home & away designs. a modern look at the vee in the bears colours for the alternate design.

 

[BringBackTheAnchor]

That’s one good looking template

 

[exile]

CARLTON BLUES



the monogram is a classic, so it features across all three designs, with the adidas 3 stripes featuring on the away & alternate. the alternate is a bit of a take on their "blueout" guernsey a few years back. i did trial a lighter blue version for the alternate, but in the end i guess they are the "navy blues". maybe the m&m will make a comeback one day!

 

[exile]

COLLINGWOOD MAGPIES



personally, i prefer the use of lighter colours as the main guernsey colour when stripes & hoops are the main design element (a bit like the previous years of the nba where the white colour was predominantly the colour worn at home). in this case, i went with the white being the main colour for the home, and returned the swoopy boi for the away & alternate guernseys.

 

[Nickimus Rex]

BRISBANE LIONS

View attachment 1126580

similar to the crows, matching the cuffs to the adjacent colour is the main change for the home & away designs. a modern look at the vee in the bears colours for the alternate design.

I love the removal of the gold cuffs. Only minor things is the Fiztroy kit should have blue shorts (based on their history), and for some reason i think adding white bordering (similar to the 2019 clash kit) actually would make the alternate pop a bit more, i feel like it is too similar to the Hawks current away clash.
Overall though, ver nice

 

[MooreTreloar]

Love, love, love Collingwood’s. Great work.

 

[exile]

I love the removal of the gold cuffs. Only minor things is the Fiztroy kit should have blue shorts (based on their history), and for some reason i think adding white bordering (similar to the 2019 clash kit) actually would make the alternate pop a bit more, i feel like it is too similar to the Hawks current away clash.
Overall though, ver nice

i don't mind the red shorts for the away, but i did consider making them blue in keeping with the historic look. the colours for the alt are the same maroon & gold colours from the home kit, which may be why they appear a bit more washed compared to the actual bears colours. it does look a bit close to the hawks clash of current, but not my version

 

[exile]

ESSENDON BOMBERS



i tried to get a home guernsey with a red number to work, but the white number & logos is probably the best outcome. away guernsey i went for a bit of a trailblazers style sash with the 3 adidas stripes (loved that guernsey from a year or so back!), and took some grey tones from the bombers logo for the alternate design.

 

[exile]

FREMANTLE DOCKERS



i love the chevron look of the dockers, so looked to expand on that for the away guernsey. a bit of mixing & matching of the white & purple for the guernsey/shorts combo for the away & alternate i felt helped create a bit of a difference between the three designs. a couple red & green stripes on the alternate as a throwback to the original colours.

 

[exile]

GEELONG CATS



similar to the pies, i prefer the look of the cats in all white as a home strip. perhaps in this case it's a bit of semi-nostalgia watching the iconic cats vs hawks matchups where i always remembered the cats in white. for the alternate design, i liked the single white stripe look of their members appreciation guernsey a while back, so a bit of a "blueout" type guernsey here as well.

 

[exile]

GOLD COAST SUNS



i've posted variations of this collection a few times before, and i'm too stubborn to change it to anything else at this point because personally i like it so much haha. yellow on the home guernsey represents the sun, the blue on the away guernsey represents the waves crashing upon the yellow sand, and the red & yellow sash of the alternate guernsey nods to the surf lifesavers. we need a change and i'd love to see something like this implemented.

 

[exile]

GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY GIANTS



i posted a similar version of the away guernsey in a comp recently, and figured i could make some variants of it that for all 3 designs. i love the giants colours and replacing the white with a lighter charcoal i feel adds a sleeker touch to the overall theme.

 

[Andonis1997]

GOLD COAST SUNS

View attachment 1127891

i've posted variations of this collection a few times before, and i'm too stubborn to change it to anything else at this point because personally i like it so much haha. yellow on the home guernsey represents the sun, the blue on the away guernsey represents the waves crashing upon the yellow sand, and the red & yellow sash of the alternate guernsey nods to the surf lifesavers. we need a change and i'd love to see something like this implemented.

Always loved these designs of yours. I think you could have had the blue and yellow curving the opposite way without recolouring to represent a sunset? I'm not sure if you originally had that idea or someone else did (there's been shitloads of redesigns the past few years) but it could have worked

 

[Liam Boy]

BRISBANE LIONS

View attachment 1126580

similar to the crows, matching the cuffs to the adjacent colour is the main change for the home & away designs. a modern look at the vee in the bears colours for the alternate design.

Very clean designs but that away kit should only be worn with blue or white shorts. Fitzroy always wore blue shorts for their home games

 

[Freight Train]

Very clean designs but that away kit should only be worn with blue or white shorts. Fitzroy always wore blue shorts for their home games

He is going for a specific aesthetic here though, so I think traditions can be put to the side.

 

[exile]

HAWTHORN HAWKS



another striped set with the lighter colour being the main guernsey colour for the home. the home & away for the hawks i found tough to completely strip all the colour out of the sponsors, so there's a bit of a mix of outcomes here. the hawks monogram is pretty sleek, so i've utilised this on a faded vertical stripe design for the alternate. i loved the muted stripes look on collingwood's 2021 anzac kit, so it's pulling a bit of inspo from that one, sort of...

 

[exile]

MELBOURNE DEMONS



i'm a sucker for a bold colour on a navy background, so the main change for the home is making the number red. might not look as good as the white number on TV, but personally i think it fits better with their overall scheme. a direct invert for the away, and a bit of a play on fading chevrons for the alternate. another strong monogram that i think looks great on the guernsey.

 

[exile]

NORTH MELBOURNE KANGAROOS



not going to try and change the world with the kangas, but i like the bounding roo design a lot so this one features on the away & alternate. in keeping with themes from the rest of the portfolio, i've maintained a solid colour across these guernseys, compared to the real life version of the latest bounding roo guernsey, which is sort of a half-half colour split and hard to use as a full clash/alternate set.

 

[exile]

PORT ADELAIDE POWER



obviously lots of debate about port's guernseys, but in this portfolio i'm going with the prison bars for the home guernsey. the away guernsey is a recolour of one of the original away guernseys and a "blackout" prison bars for the alternate. i had about 15 other variants of these three, so by far one of the trickier ones to find something i was content with haha.

 

[exile]

RICHMOND TIGERS



the tigers have such bold colours, so i really wanted to get the numbers on the home guernsey back to yellow (along with the colour itself rather than the fluro one currently). i didn't want to lose the sash completely, so it resulted in a half-sash for the home guernsey, which i'm okay with in the end. a tiger skin pattern sash features for the away & alternate guernseys, which i found a bit easier to incorporate the numbers into.

 

[exile]

ST KILDA SAINTS



a fairly significant change for the saints all round. took my girlfriend (who is new to footy) to see the suns lose to the saints the other week, and she commented that the saints home guernsey "doesn't look like a real guernsey" haha. utilising the cross for all three sets provides a fresh look compared to the tri-panel. a couple slight soccer references too, with the red cross on white background like inter milan's old away kit, and the red guernsey/white shorts/black socks referencing man utd.

 

[Supreme_Chancellor]

ST KILDA SAINTS

View attachment 1131050

a fairly significant change for the saints all round. took my girlfriend (who is new to footy) to see the suns lose to the saints the other week, and she commented that the saints home guernsey "doesn't look like a real guernsey" haha. utilising the cross for all three sets provides a fresh look compared to the tri-panel. a couple slight soccer references too, with the red cross on white background like inter milan's old away kit, and the red guernsey/white shorts/black socks referencing man utd.

Away guernsey could be a tribute to Saint George's Cross, and the British colony where St Kilda originated.