While illustrations of football kits from fantasy to reality break illustrated ground, Angelo Trofa has taken to training wear to express more than a fair share of flair. We caught up with him to grab his inspiration behind the project.
So football bibs - a beautiful hidden gem, what inspired this project?
I recently saw a pic of the 96/98 Barcelona training bib by Kappa. It completely blew me away, and I instantly wanted to illustrate it. In the search for more, as I wanted to create a short project on training bibs, I couldn’t find any to that high level. So I decided to design my own, there’s a real nostalgia for the crazy designs of the 90’s football shirt and as the training bib is probably the most consciously garish garment in the football world I had something really interesting to play with. There’s no limits to sponsor logo sizing and placement and it's purpose is to be eye catching, so it was great to go crazy with colours and patterns.
Has there been a favourite you've put together?
The most fun one so far has been the Japan one, I love Japanese street wear and brands, so this one took inspiration from Comme des Garcons and the character Doraemon. Having visited at the country at the tail end of 2015 I wandered through the Bamboo grove of Kyoto, so I wanted to show that with the green one.
What's your take on the football shirt scene right now, is it in a good place from your perspective?
I think that the end end of the 2000s has seen some really interesting things happening, brands have become conscious about how the shirt can be worn outside of the stadium and treated more as a fashion piece. I think the fusion of technology and old school designs that we have seen has been great. As a graphic designer I love how the name and numbering has become such a big part of the design, with some of the best type foundries and typographers being called in by the big brands to work on designs.
What would you like to see more clubs doing or not doing with apparel like this? It's clearly somewhere lots of experimental work could flourish?
I think that the big fear with football shirt geeks and lovers is that they all become plain and uniform with the templated design taking over. Off field wear is always very interesting, I love what Nike have done with France in particular, curating clothing lines more as fashion collections, which are not too sporty and lean more towards being sartorial, I think this idea is indirectly used in the training bibs I designed.
What football inspired projects are next on the Angelo Trofa horizon?
I have a few lined up, I designed a female template last year, so want to work on some kits for the women’s game. I have a name and numbering font set which I’ve been working on for a while which I need to complete too. Hopefully 2016 is the year I can start to realise my dream of designing real-life sportswear, I have a few projects which I can’t talk too much about which will hopefully see my designs come to life.
Heroics from a simple place, sensationally worked, no? You can see more of Angelo's work here. Let us know what you think in the comments below. Got a favourite? Hit us up.
