Team Canada Hockey Jersey Heritage Project:
Research and create an accurate visual data base for historical hockey jersey designs and logos from which brandable designs and artwork could be created.
This was a labour-intensive but rewarding job that spanned about 5 years, although my time was not devoted exclusively to this project. Shortly after the license agreement with Hockey Canada was signed by my client, Parker & Associates, (P&A), we were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the climate controlled storage area at the Hockey Hall of Fame, (HHoF) in Toronto to view some of the heritage jerseys and get a sense of what the project would entail. While Hockey Canada’s main office is in Ottawa, the majority of the team’s vintage jerseys were stored or on display at the HHoF, along with many other hockey artifacts the hall doesn’t even have room to exhibit. During our visit, we discovered that there were over 80 years worth of Team Canada jerseys in need of cataloging and verification. A few weeks later, we received CD-Rs containing professionally shot reference photos and several faxed lists of information pertaining to most of the images. While the photos were crisp and reasonably well composed, they lacked a consistent point of colour reference which hindered tonal correction. Additionally, there was no identifiable object in each frame to determine scale or exact measurement of the details... While not completely essential for the artwork I’d be creating, (an artist’s interpretation of the jerseys), the lack of these important elements hindered progress on some of the concepts later on.
Early on in the project, I decided to create the individual jersey artwork by traditional methods while the final composition and layouts would be done digitally. There were a number of sound business reasons for this choice: Taking the ephemeral nature of licensing into account, I determined that the corporate marketability of my printed artwork using the Team Canada jerseys would be relatively short. With this in mind, having original artwork in my possession that could be sold to hockey enthusiasts at a later date just made sense. I also liked the notion of artwork used to celebrate hockey nostalgia eventually becoming nostalgia itself...
The selection of jersey reference supplied to us was overwhelming at first and my studio floor and walls became a mass of printed images in order for us to sort through the candidates for inclusion in the prototype design. Initially, the jerseys chosen by the client for my first layouts featured the word ‘Canada’ with some variation of the maple leaf prominently included on the front. This was an obvious criteria for inclusion, since the artwork had to be readily interpreted as celebrating the history of Team Canada. Radical, unexpected colours were another criteria for inclusion in the layouts and eventually, (as information became available to us), Olympic or World Competition medal winning jerseys gained prominence. The surprise discovery of the 1920 Olympic jersey belonging to Canada’s representatives, the Winnipeg Falcons also reshaped the direction of the project.
Eventually, with research and artwork on selected jerseys completed, a series of customizable designs were created and sales made to corporate clients such as Molson, RBC and TSN while also producing stand alone print runs under the banner of ‘OH CANADA - The History of the Men’s Team Canada Hockey Jersey’.
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At the peak of the Team Canada Olympic frenzy, Pepsi prepared to offer a series of six collectible soft drink cans sporting jerseys from the team’s historic victories.
As I understand it, the cans were originally designed to feature photos of the surviving gold winning jerseys from the Hockey Hall of Fame but the prototype cans fell below Pepsi’s expectations - Possibly because photos just don’t reproduce well on aluminum cans due to printing limitations.
At the eleventh hour, the rights to use my artwork originally commissioned for Parker & Associates were procured and digital images were supplied to the ad agencies involved by P&A. A 2004 gold medal jersey was added later for special release but I’m not sure if it was a reuse of my 2002 artwork - The colours are certainly over saturated and it doesn’t display well with the other cans.
In the aftermath, we were somewhat surprised to discover that my artwork was further used on promotional posters and packaging (in conjunction with a contest) for Pepsi-owned, name-brand potato chips and snack foods. This intent wasn’t disclosed during the initial plea for usable artwork.
However, one of the coolest things about the Pepsi promotion was a series of TV commercials featuring manager Wayne Gretzky in which the hockey legend bends a drinking straw into the shape of a hockey stick and rests it against a close-up of each of the cans sporting my artwork.
As with all commercial subject matter, the marketability of the artwork eventually ran its course and Parker & Associates decided not to renew their license. Sadly, a few talked about projects with Hockey Canada, such as a coffee table book, never came to fruition and the job of creating vector art specification sheets for the individual jersey logos went elsewhere. However, mouse-mats, clocks, playing cards and corporate branded art prints all made it off the drawing board. Not bad at all.
The Canadian Women’s Team: The team is composed of world class athletes that are just as talented as the men’s team and have a higher winning average but unfortunately don’t get the same amount of respect or recognition. It took a lot of convincing from P&A but finally Hockey Canada’s 4 major corporate sponsors relented and a special art print was created celebrating the Women’s Team Canada jersey designs. Most of the jerseys required new artwork, including the unfortunate ‘Barbie pink’ outfits used for a couple of years. As with most of the work I did under the Hockey Canada license, the piece was never released beyond corporate distribution. I’m very proud that we were able to at least give the women some recognition, (they certainly deserve it!), but it’s doubtful the general public will get to see the prints.
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However, not to belittle the significance of the games, I don’t remember the last time school kids were allowed to close their books and watch a televised hockey game during class in the middle of the afternoon.... I was one of those kids. And it still astounds me to this day.
Cheers,
Graeme Walker, thirty five years later...
However: Copies or prints are no longer available unless a significant volume is requested and a new license defining the print run and specific end use is secured with Hockey Canada. No infringement of copyright is intended. The Team Canada logo is trademarked and copyright by Hockey Canada. Pepsi material: ®/™ Pepsi-Cola Canada Ltd./ ®/™ PepsiCo, Inc. & related companies.
However, copyright on some vintage logos for teams that represented Canada in the early years may now be claimed by other parties... and don’t get me started on any designs that incorporate the word ’Olympic’ as part of the logo ...stay tuned for film at 11.