Kansas State University Athletics
SE: The Story Behind K-State MBB’s New Uniforms
Dec 17, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Sports Extra
By Corbin McGuire
What's in a uniform redesign?
Creativity, sure. Design experts, rooms full of them. Scrapped ideas, probably over hundred.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the process that can take anywhere from 18 months to two years.
There are also several back-and-forth discussions with the team, countless hours of research even before that and, in the case of K-State men's basketball, a designer with a predisposed passion for the program.
Jason Wright, a product graphic designer for Nike, was that person. A K-State graduate (2012) and a lifelong Wildcat fan, the Garnett native helped lead the designing efforts for K-State men's basketball's uniforms this season.
From the away purples, home whites, Throwback Wildcats Script uniforms and the brand new, all-lavender uniform K-State will wear this weekend against St. Louis at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri, Wright had a hand in all of it. Seeing them worn by his childhood team has been somewhat surreal for him.
"There's definitely a cool element, especially now that the things are out, just being able to see a team that I already cared about how they were doing, regardless of their uniform design…being able to see it and know you contributed to it is a really crazy, unreal feeling," Wright said in a phone interview with K-State Sports Extra. "Also, from a design angle, it's so much easier to design for something that you personally are invested in and know."
Which is a big reason why Wright got asked onto the project in the first place. Typically, he works in football design in Oregon. When the Wildcats' uniform redesign first started, however, Wright said he had "enough of a reputation around here as a K-State fan" that he got asked to help.
Wright certainly had a head start on the research side of things. He grew up around the school. His older sister went to K-State in the "Bill Walker, Michael Beasley days," Wright said, recalling visiting her and watching many of Walker's rim-bending dunks.
"I was watching a lot of games in that Beasley/Walker era," he said. "That's kind of where it started."
Still, this project required thorough research from Wright and the rest of the design team. They started by working with K-State, getting feedback on the previous uniforms, likes and dislikes, and then tried to gather a deep understanding of the program.
"What are they trying to communicate to their guys? Where's your program at? What's your identity? We get a good idea of that, and then we do a lot of research," Wright said. "We're in Google, reading forums, doing everything we can to get a really baseline idea of where the team's at and what kind of visuals could make sense for them.
"A huge part of our process when we get on a team is trying to get as informed as we can about what makes sense for them. A good design for a school in the SEC looks completely different than a design for a school in the Pac-12, Big 12. So, the better you know a client, the better you can kind of shoot from the hip and know it's going to be something that's going to hit home with the fans. I think being that closely invested with K-State, it made the design process just really fun. Every time I went into design reviews here at Nike, it was always easy to be like you were speaking from a place of knowledge."
Throughout this research phase, design teams usually narrow the visuals down to a few main pillars that represent what the program's about. For K-State's home and away uniform redesign, there were three.
The first: "A no-frills toughness," as Wright described it.
"They're a team that's tough. They work as a team and have more of that state-school vibe to them," Wright said. "That kind of informs some of the typography and some of those details (to be) a little less on the flashy side."
The second: Midwest humility. Wright said the design team used Dean Wade, a Kansas native and current two-way player with the Cleveland Cavaliers organization, as its prime example.
"He was kind of our muse when we were talking about what types of players succeed within the program under Coach (Bruce) Weber," Wright said. "Dean Wade, (Rodney) McGruder, the guys that are willing to work hard and be part of the team, not necessarily the guys that want to be flashy and make it about themselves."
Lastly, there was the "Wildcat within," which comes into play on the sides of K-State's home and away uniform. Wright, who took classes at K-State from the creator of the Powercat, Tom Bookwalter, said he wanted to bring the school's most prominent logo to life in a different way. The stripes down the side of the tops and bottoms represent this effort.
"The whole uniform design, especially from the front view, has a very simple, stripped-back design language to represent that no-frills, no-flashy, hardworking (culture), but then, as you turn to the side, there's this reveal of the Wildcat within," he said. "Just bringing some of the visuals from that Powercat out. That's how everybody in the Big 12 and in the country looks at K-State. They know us as the Powercat. So, how do we have a uniform that has some of that bold read from the visual cues of the Powercat? You can kind of see on the short, the way the stripe comes out from that side seam. We've been calling that the 'Wildcat Within.' It's this DNA of the Powercat that's sort of revealing itself."
K-State's all-lavenders and its retro Wildcats script white uniforms, which it wore against Marquette, came together in much the same way. Research.
Only this time, Wright said the design team used photo subscription services through Nike to look at pictures from those eras for inspiration.
At first, the successful reception of K-State returning its two-tone look (originally worn from 1973-82) the last two seasons led Wright to think of how to build off it and continue it in a different way. From there, he and the design team came up with the all-lavender look. They used those old photos as a way to make pieces of the uniforms look as authentic as possible.
"(We) looked at the details of the typography. So, all the typography for the 'Kansas' and 'State' were pulled from these photos, and we recreated that to be one to one, especially with the numbers, using a custom font so that it's accurate to what Rolando Blackman was wearing," Wright said. "Just trying to add some more authenticity to what (K-State was) doing with lavenders."
The idea to add the "EMAW" on the middle of the frontside of the short's waistband also came from flipping through an old photo deck of K-State home games in Ahearn Field House.
"We have this photo in the deck of a game from the late '70s when Rolando was there and there was this great 'Every Man a Wildcat' banner up in Ahearn. I couldn't believe it went back that far," Wright said. "We recreated that banner for the read on the (shorts)…just trying to bring those story details into the retros to add some more layers to it."
In those photographic trips back in time, Wright said he was taken back by how much he loved K-State's home white uniforms during that era. He thought fans might as well. Thus, the recreation of it for the Marquette game.
"I was looking through some of the Rolando Blackman looks, and it was crazy that white one just stood out so far with the script Wildcats that it was, like, 'We've got everybody's loving these lavenders and nobody's even talking about how cool the home look was during this time,'" Wright said. "So, I thought that would be a really cool addition to the set and kind of continue that lore of the lavender. The home look, originally, I don't think it probably had any of the lavender in it at the time but knowing the fans' affinity for that and just wanting to incorporate that into some of the piping details, the striping, the kiss-cut around script wordmark, we were just trying to bring what would be successful in the modern day and taking inspiration from that throwback look."
Asked for a personal favorite, Wright went with the new away look; though he was equally excited for the Wildcats script throwbacks. Still, he said seeing those purple uniforms pop on TV when K-State beat UNLV in overtime earlier this season, while displaying some of those pillars he used to design it, was special.
"It was definitely one of those career moments for me to be able to turn the TV on and see the school that I went to and spent a lot days going to those games, ripping up the newspaper...to be able to see it out there on the court has definitely been a big thing this year," he said. "It's been really cool."
What's in a uniform redesign?
Creativity, sure. Design experts, rooms full of them. Scrapped ideas, probably over hundred.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg of the process that can take anywhere from 18 months to two years.
There are also several back-and-forth discussions with the team, countless hours of research even before that and, in the case of K-State men's basketball, a designer with a predisposed passion for the program.
Jason Wright, a product graphic designer for Nike, was that person. A K-State graduate (2012) and a lifelong Wildcat fan, the Garnett native helped lead the designing efforts for K-State men's basketball's uniforms this season.
From the away purples, home whites, Throwback Wildcats Script uniforms and the brand new, all-lavender uniform K-State will wear this weekend against St. Louis at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri, Wright had a hand in all of it. Seeing them worn by his childhood team has been somewhat surreal for him.
"There's definitely a cool element, especially now that the things are out, just being able to see a team that I already cared about how they were doing, regardless of their uniform design…being able to see it and know you contributed to it is a really crazy, unreal feeling," Wright said in a phone interview with K-State Sports Extra. "Also, from a design angle, it's so much easier to design for something that you personally are invested in and know."
Which is a big reason why Wright got asked onto the project in the first place. Typically, he works in football design in Oregon. When the Wildcats' uniform redesign first started, however, Wright said he had "enough of a reputation around here as a K-State fan" that he got asked to help.
Wright certainly had a head start on the research side of things. He grew up around the school. His older sister went to K-State in the "Bill Walker, Michael Beasley days," Wright said, recalling visiting her and watching many of Walker's rim-bending dunks.
"I was watching a lot of games in that Beasley/Walker era," he said. "That's kind of where it started."
Still, this project required thorough research from Wright and the rest of the design team. They started by working with K-State, getting feedback on the previous uniforms, likes and dislikes, and then tried to gather a deep understanding of the program.
"What are they trying to communicate to their guys? Where's your program at? What's your identity? We get a good idea of that, and then we do a lot of research," Wright said. "We're in Google, reading forums, doing everything we can to get a really baseline idea of where the team's at and what kind of visuals could make sense for them.
"A huge part of our process when we get on a team is trying to get as informed as we can about what makes sense for them. A good design for a school in the SEC looks completely different than a design for a school in the Pac-12, Big 12. So, the better you know a client, the better you can kind of shoot from the hip and know it's going to be something that's going to hit home with the fans. I think being that closely invested with K-State, it made the design process just really fun. Every time I went into design reviews here at Nike, it was always easy to be like you were speaking from a place of knowledge."
Throughout this research phase, design teams usually narrow the visuals down to a few main pillars that represent what the program's about. For K-State's home and away uniform redesign, there were three.
The first: "A no-frills toughness," as Wright described it.
"They're a team that's tough. They work as a team and have more of that state-school vibe to them," Wright said. "That kind of informs some of the typography and some of those details (to be) a little less on the flashy side."
The second: Midwest humility. Wright said the design team used Dean Wade, a Kansas native and current two-way player with the Cleveland Cavaliers organization, as its prime example.
"He was kind of our muse when we were talking about what types of players succeed within the program under Coach (Bruce) Weber," Wright said. "Dean Wade, (Rodney) McGruder, the guys that are willing to work hard and be part of the team, not necessarily the guys that want to be flashy and make it about themselves."
Lastly, there was the "Wildcat within," which comes into play on the sides of K-State's home and away uniform. Wright, who took classes at K-State from the creator of the Powercat, Tom Bookwalter, said he wanted to bring the school's most prominent logo to life in a different way. The stripes down the side of the tops and bottoms represent this effort.
"The whole uniform design, especially from the front view, has a very simple, stripped-back design language to represent that no-frills, no-flashy, hardworking (culture), but then, as you turn to the side, there's this reveal of the Wildcat within," he said. "Just bringing some of the visuals from that Powercat out. That's how everybody in the Big 12 and in the country looks at K-State. They know us as the Powercat. So, how do we have a uniform that has some of that bold read from the visual cues of the Powercat? You can kind of see on the short, the way the stripe comes out from that side seam. We've been calling that the 'Wildcat Within.' It's this DNA of the Powercat that's sort of revealing itself."
K-State's all-lavenders and its retro Wildcats script white uniforms, which it wore against Marquette, came together in much the same way. Research.
Only this time, Wright said the design team used photo subscription services through Nike to look at pictures from those eras for inspiration.
At first, the successful reception of K-State returning its two-tone look (originally worn from 1973-82) the last two seasons led Wright to think of how to build off it and continue it in a different way. From there, he and the design team came up with the all-lavender look. They used those old photos as a way to make pieces of the uniforms look as authentic as possible.
"(We) looked at the details of the typography. So, all the typography for the 'Kansas' and 'State' were pulled from these photos, and we recreated that to be one to one, especially with the numbers, using a custom font so that it's accurate to what Rolando Blackman was wearing," Wright said. "Just trying to add some more authenticity to what (K-State was) doing with lavenders."
The idea to add the "EMAW" on the middle of the frontside of the short's waistband also came from flipping through an old photo deck of K-State home games in Ahearn Field House.
"We have this photo in the deck of a game from the late '70s when Rolando was there and there was this great 'Every Man a Wildcat' banner up in Ahearn. I couldn't believe it went back that far," Wright said. "We recreated that banner for the read on the (shorts)…just trying to bring those story details into the retros to add some more layers to it."
In those photographic trips back in time, Wright said he was taken back by how much he loved K-State's home white uniforms during that era. He thought fans might as well. Thus, the recreation of it for the Marquette game.
"I was looking through some of the Rolando Blackman looks, and it was crazy that white one just stood out so far with the script Wildcats that it was, like, 'We've got everybody's loving these lavenders and nobody's even talking about how cool the home look was during this time,'" Wright said. "So, I thought that would be a really cool addition to the set and kind of continue that lore of the lavender. The home look, originally, I don't think it probably had any of the lavender in it at the time but knowing the fans' affinity for that and just wanting to incorporate that into some of the piping details, the striping, the kiss-cut around script wordmark, we were just trying to bring what would be successful in the modern day and taking inspiration from that throwback look."
Asked for a personal favorite, Wright went with the new away look; though he was equally excited for the Wildcats script throwbacks. Still, he said seeing those purple uniforms pop on TV when K-State beat UNLV in overtime earlier this season, while displaying some of those pillars he used to design it, was special.
"It was definitely one of those career moments for me to be able to turn the TV on and see the school that I went to and spent a lot days going to those games, ripping up the newspaper...to be able to see it out there on the court has definitely been a big thing this year," he said. "It's been really cool."
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