It is time for Day 2 of Conceptober, and the prompt was PWHL. For those who may not be familiar with it, PWHL stands for the Professional Women’s Hockey League, one of the newest major professional hockey leagues in North America. With the prompt being PWHL, I had several different directions I could have gone with for a concept, but I decided to focus on one of the league’s most recognizable teams: the Montreal Victoire. The Montreal Victoire were an easy choice for me for a couple of reasons. First, I think the Victoire have the best colors and logo in the PWHL. Their branding has a strong identity that works extremely well on a hockey jersey, and the combination of their colors gives designers plenty to work with. Second, the Victoire are the current PWHL champions, which made them an especially fitting team to feature for this Conceptober design.
For this concept, I decided to take inspiration from the Montreal Victoire’s dark jersey while also incorporating an important piece of Montreal’s long hockey history. Montreal is one of the most historic hockey cities in the world, so I wanted this design to feel like more than simply a new jersey for the Victoire. I wanted it to connect the modern PWHL franchise with the traditions that have made hockey such an important part of Montreal’s identity. The biggest historical influence on the concept is the stripe across the chest. The design pays homage to Montreal hockey history by incorporating a prominent horizontal stripe across the jersey. The idea comes from one of the most recognizable jersey designs in hockey history: the Montreal Canadiens’ chest stripe. The Canadiens have featured a stripe across the chest dating back to 1917, making it one of the defining visual elements associated with Montreal hockey. Rather than directly copying the Canadiens’ jersey, I wanted to take that historical design element and reinterpret it through the Victoire’s own identity. The jersey uses the Montreal Victoire’s colors, allowing the chest stripe to feel like a natural part of the team’s branding while still serving as a nod to Montreal’s hockey history. On the front of the jersey is the Victoire logo, keeping the team’s current identity front and center. I also decided not to include any shoulder logos on this concept. I wanted the jersey to remain relatively clean and allow the chest stripe and primary logo to do most of the visual work. Sometimes simplifying a jersey can actually make the major design elements stand out more, and that was the approach I wanted to take here. Another interesting part of the design is the jersey template itself. The PWHL uses a unique hockey jersey template from Bauer, and I wanted to incorporate some of those characteristics into the concept rather than designing something that looked like a completely different league’s jersey. One of the most noticeable details is the way the sleeve stripes do not extend all the way around the sleeve. That detail reminded me of the Nike Olympic hockey jerseys, which have also used sleeve striping that does not completely wrap around the jersey. It is a small design decision, but it gives the jersey a more modern appearance while still allowing the traditional chest stripe to serve as the historical element. Overall, the goal of this concept was to combine modern PWHL branding with classic Montreal hockey history. The Victoire already have a strong visual identity, so rather than trying to completely reinvent the team, I wanted to build on what already works. The result is a jersey that takes inspiration from the Victoire’s dark uniforms, incorporates their colors and logo, and adds a traditional Montreal-style chest stripe as a tribute to the city’s hockey history. That is what I enjoy about Conceptober. Each prompt gives me an opportunity to take an existing team, league, or hockey tradition and explore what I would do with it from a design perspective. Sometimes that means creating something completely different, while other times the best concept comes from taking a familiar idea and putting a new spin on it.
Up next for Conceptober is AHL/ECHL. With that prompt covering two different professional hockey leagues, there are plenty of directions I could take the next concept. Be sure to follow along on zacelectrifly.com throughout October as I continue creating a new hockey concept for each day’s Conceptober prompt.
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