Illinois Football Uniforms

#251      
I think this would be too busy on the helmet.

I’m no design or branding expert, but the arched early 80s style Illini on the helmet is the way forward. There are two options I see for the striping that I’ll let others debate.

1) Keep the current three-stripe and accept that coloring will be different based on the primary color of the apparel.

2) Use the five-stripe on Saturday’s helmet on all apparel. I do realize that this will look like white/orange/white on blue apparel, but at least the three interior stripes would always be consistent.

My first thought is 2) would look a little too busy on apparel, but others can disagree.
I feel like we could slightly alter the #2 striping for the different colored jerseys/pants ... but I also honestly don't think it matters if we just keep our uniform design and keep that helmet! The helmet itself IS a look ... think Michigan. No one cares or notices that they don't have that winged pattern all over the rest of their uniform. The helmet stands on its own, and I think ours would, too.
 
#253      
Go with the arched ILLINI. Wouldn't mind a navy blue helmet now and then.
 
#254      
I feel like we could slightly alter the #2 striping for the different colored jerseys/pants ... but I also honestly don't think it matters if we just keep our uniform design and keep that helmet! The helmet itself IS a look ... think Michigan. No one cares or notices that they don't have that winged pattern all over the rest of their uniform. The helmet stands on its own, and I think ours would, too.
This gets to something that I think me, you, Gritty and the other uniform sickos have been hammering on all the way back to the early days of the Shield Wars: consistency is a nice trait but it doesn't need to be a prime directive. Had things gotten sideways at the point that we did the rebrand? Probably...it felt like every sport was completely choosing its own adventure.

But being super rigid around the brand guidelines is a fool's errand if the brand elements don't function well in the places we need them to (i.e. the rebrand font "Illinois" on the front of a baseball or basketball jersey, or - and I realize reasonable people can disagree - the Block I on the helmet), or if the brand identity they are reinforcing rings hollow.

When Illinois takes the field we should look like what we are: a founding member of the B1G that's been on the field/court/whatever longer than you and your parents (and your parents' parents) have been around. We should feel sturdy and Midwestern. We should feel like something you've seen before. That's why the font is so bad - it's not just functionally limited, it's not true to us at all. The Shield was at least a solid directional attempt at looking like something out of an old yearbook, even if you can quibble with its specifics and its implementation.

These two uniforms, however, accomplish that objective, despite the fact that they are not consistent with each other in any real way:
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images
 
#258      
Besides the color orange being similar, I've never really cared if basketball and football have similar brand identity. In fact, that's the main issue with the non-throwback basketball set. I do however think it's much more important for football to have a consistent brand with some of the earlier eras of the football team, which the current uniform set does.
 
#265      
Orienting the design around the earhole doesn't make any sense, and every iteration of this idea that followed Bob Blackman's original got even worse.
I think the orientation was meant to look like The Chief’s headdress. A subtle detail. Try looking at an old picture with that in mind, maybe you’ll see it

The helmets vs cmu were the best in years.
 
#266      
I’ll go way out on a limb here, and I acknowledge this will never happen. But arched illini over a round small chief logo. A combo of the two below (smaller chief), kinda like LSU.
 

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#267      
just the arched Illini as per Saturday

that’s all

the arched Illini was most definately intended to represent head dress of a Chief .
 
#268      
I think the orientation was meant to look like The Chief’s headdress. A subtle detail. Try looking at an old picture with that in mind, maybe you’ll see it
But...the Chief's headdress extends beyond the immediate vicinity of his ears.

The decal was placed there to make room for the stripes that were meant to invoke Blackman's Dartmouth teams


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Then Gary Moeller came, ditched the stripes and......just left the decal in this bizarrely low placement with nothing above to balance it? Why?

MpgBxtZnjqc7AUGlrVu33pzV5no-Dk8rNof9xMAJpzhZLi-u6h7yR_3OLtONK06tX9AQrqqfequw1PFH8zf8wL7SHYcuQVOS8aRWf65twx7j



The decal needs to be placed higher. And it is on the revised version we wore on Saturday

66e8dc40de855.image.jpg


The old orientation was an error that this version has corrected.
 
#269      
But...the Chief's headdress extends beyond the immediate vicinity of his ears.

The decal was placed there to make room for the stripes that were meant to invoke Blackman's Dartmouth teams


s-l400.jpg
11802750746_61bb797a38_c.jpg



Then Gary Moeller came, ditched the stripes and......just left the decal in this bizarrely low placement with nothing above to balance it? Why?

MpgBxtZnjqc7AUGlrVu33pzV5no-Dk8rNof9xMAJpzhZLi-u6h7yR_3OLtONK06tX9AQrqqfequw1PFH8zf8wL7SHYcuQVOS8aRWf65twx7j



The decal needs to be placed higher. And it is on the revised version we wore on Saturday




66e8dc40de855.image.jpg


The old orientation was an error that this version has corrected.
If I were king I'd probably get rid of the stripes on the pants but keep the navy blue block I for grins. And are numbers on the sleeves really necessary? But as long as The Illini do well, I'm happy.
Heresy: I might even consider losing the shoulder stripes. I like simplicity.
 
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#270      
If I were king I'd probably get rid of the stripes on the pants but keep the navy blue block I for grins. And are numbers on the sleeves really necessary? But as long as The Illini do well, I'm happy.
Heresy: I might even consider losing the shoulder stripes. I like simplicity.
I’d ditch the stripe on the shoulders WAY before the stripes on the pants. No stripes on the pants slides back into our unfortunate and hideous minimalist look we tried under Lovie … it looked like we were just chasing the newest trend, and we were. The stripes at least call back to uniforms we wore spanning three different decades.

If you kept our exact same uniforms but removed our shoulder stripes, it wouldn’t make any difference to me … hell, it might make them better.
 
#271      
But...the Chief's headdress extends beyond the immediate vicinity of his ears.

The decal was placed there to make room for the stripes that were meant to invoke Blackman's Dartmouth teams


s-l400.jpg
11802750746_61bb797a38_c.jpg



Then Gary Moeller came, ditched the stripes and......just left the decal in this bizarrely low placement with nothing above to balance it? Why?

MpgBxtZnjqc7AUGlrVu33pzV5no-Dk8rNof9xMAJpzhZLi-u6h7yR_3OLtONK06tX9AQrqqfequw1PFH8zf8wL7SHYcuQVOS8aRWf65twx7j



The decal needs to be placed higher. And it is on the revised version we wore on Saturday

66e8dc40de855.image.jpg


The old orientation was an error that this version has corrected.
See the 47-56 logo and instead of ‘Illinois’ put ‘Illini’.

Might just be coincidence, as ya, blackman’s priority was the two stripes to ‘bring the same mentality’ to Illinois, so very plausible he wanted to make room, but on that helmet there’s still space to move it higher if he wanted.

That low wouldn’t look good now, and they nailed it last weekend.
 

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#272      
Compromise: lose shoulder stripes, keep sleeve numbers in white. Heck, ILLINI arch on helmets with stripes is nearly too busy. Don't need stripes on shoulders. But I still don't like pants stripes on football or baseball uniforms. Overkill. Pinstripes in baseball or plain, yes! Stripes on football pants are too thick and stretch even wider. Not a good look, IMO.

Who cares?

Beat Nebraska!
 
#273      
100% but let's update to the white face mask instead of the gray
I remember we also used an orange facemask with the arched ILLINI helmets, maybe in '83. I remember a sports illustrated (?) Rose Bowl preview of us with a fantastic photo of our massive O-Line lined up and the orange facemasks looked so hard. Also remember the helmet stickers were The Chief. David Wiliams' helmet was practically covered with Chief helmet stickers.
83-O-line.jpeg
 
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#274      
I remember we also used an orange facemask with the arched ILLINI helmets, maybe in '83. I remember a sports illustrated (?) Rose Bowl preview of us with a fantastic photo of our massive O-Line lined up and the orange facemasks looked so hard. Also remember the helmet stickers were The Chief. David Wiliams' helmet was practically covered with Chief helmet stickers.View attachment 36341
That’s the look I want with the ILLINI arch the way it is now. We won’t look like any other school but Illinois!
 
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