Disclaimer: This concept theme is not based on any kind of exhaustive/extensive research into the hockey history of each country during the war. There were no fabric samples or forensics involved in getting these designs to be historically accurate. If you're a history buff, you'll probably be annoyed. Quite simply, this is an American perspective on how hockey jerseys should have looked if WWII was fought strictly on the ice.
Here are your Team Canada Totally WWII primary jerseys!
Well, I am happy to say that I'm finished with Team Canada's designs for Totally WWII. It was a giant project, but very fun and rewarding to work on. I really enjoyed the conversations, requests, critiques and compliments.
For the previous Totally WWII jerseys, I pretty much just did all the research and designed what I thought would look right, then unveiled my final concept. For Team Canada, I went with a design-by-committee approach because I felt that I'd get the best possible design with more eyes on the design process. With Canada's rich and long hockey history, I didn't want to get it completely wrong.
When it came time to design Team Canada's Totally WWII jersey, I knew there was absolutely no way I could make everyone happy, and I'm sorry if your suggestions were not used during the design by committee phase. Also, I'm sure there are some history buffs who will dispute my design choices, but I'm ok with that. Like I said before, this is my movie and I'm not really worried about pin-point accuracy. It's just a fantasy project and I rolled with artistic license.
When I first started working on Team Canada I gathered as much reference material as I could. But, surprisingly, that reference material did more harm than good! Let me explain: Team Canada's jerseys have changed so drastically over the years, that it was hard to get a sense for what would make a great jersey for this project, and for this particular time period.
I've seen colors ranging from yellow, to blue and red, to baby blue and red, and the traditional red and white. Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me in trying to please the majority.
To me, Canada is red and white with a red maple leaf. But that's modern Canada. I wanted to be at least somewhat historically accurate, so I tried to come up with something that would have been worn in the late 30's to mid/late 40's.
I based my initial crest off of the photo to the left. Soon after I shared the crest here on PuckDrawn, I was told that it was a Canadian Air Force image.
(Wikipedia: Canadian Roundel)
I really liked the design and it worked well from the very beginning, so I stuck with it, even though it wasn't a totally new creation. I just put more emphasis on the maple leaf instead of the blue ring.
The crest was the easy part; the jersey was a monster from beginning to end! Even with all of that reference material, I couldn't nail down the perfect jersey color and design scheme. At this point it was time to open it up to the readers.
After many comments, tweaks and jersey iterations, I settled on the ones you see above.
Even though I was fine with the crest design for the home and away jersey, I still wanted to do a gold third jersey design with a totally original logo.
When I first started designing Team Canada's jersey concepts, I didn't intend to include a third jersey. Having gold in the color scheme was just one of the many different sample designs that I came up with. The comments were split; many wanting no part of gold and many really liking the gold ... So, the best way to handle this, in my opinion, was to create a third jersey, where gold is an accent color instead of white. And of course the new crest design.
The initial response to the new crest design was very positive and I was sure that it would be the primary crest. So I put the roundel crest up against various "Coat of Arms" crest designs to see what people thought would make the best primary crest. The roundel design easily won the contest and the "Coat of Arms" crest was relegated to third jersey duties.
I created many variations of the new third jersey crest, where the main elements were taken from Canada's Coat Of Arms and the Canadian Red Ensign flag. For me, the most interesting element was the Lion Rampart. I placed the lion on a shield, topped it with the fleur de lis and a maple leaf below the lion, to make it distinctively Canadian (to me).
The colors blue, red and gold are all represented on the Coat of Arms and Red Ensign, so that's the reasoning behind the color choices for the crest. Initially I didn't include the crossed hockey sticks in the design, but since it was a Coat of Arms inspired crest, I decided to ignore my normal rantings about hockey sticks in hockey logos.
Mike, a commenter on a previous blog post suggested that I should not use the lion rampart, as it's a symbol of Scotland. That may be true, but if it is an element of Canada's Coat of Arms and Red Ensign flag, then it is fair game for these purposes. Again, I thought it was the most interesting element from those images.
You can follow along with the thought and design progression of this new logo here and here.
Now onto the third jersey.
The third jersey, pictured below, is not altogether different than the home/away set. The gold replaced the white and of course the new alternate crest replaced the roundel design. I think out of the three jerseys, the away jersey is my favorite. However, I do think that alternate crest is a lot of fun.
Well, that's it. Now that Team Canada's jersey has been unveiled, that leaves Team Great Britain as the lone country left in the Totally WWII Hockey Jersey Concept project. I assure you, it won't be design by committee. However, you history buffs are always fun to hear from.
Though I'm still not sure about the third (i'd still love to see it with 'Canada' written above or below the crest) the Home and Away jerseys are awesome!
I especially love the white jersey as it keeps blue to a minimum, something Canada had a hard time doing up until our current flag was created (the conservative party always pushed for blue, even though it was never a colour of Canada)
Great job Johhny, I'm impressed with the outcome.
Posted by: Josh | July 22, 2009 at 09:03 AM
Thanks, Josh. It was fun.
Posted by: johnny griswold | July 22, 2009 at 09:13 AM
Way too similar to the actual jerseys they used during that time. Would've like it with gold better.
Posted by: Koho | July 22, 2009 at 11:40 AM
Koho, where have you seen pictures of the jerseys they wore during ww2? Was there even international hockey at the time?
And Johnny, I was doing a little poking around and came across this site http://www.iihf.com/channels/iihf-world-championship/vintage-jerseys.html. The Czech throwbacks look very similar to the 3rds you picked for Canada. Weird huh?
Posted by: Josh | July 22, 2009 at 12:58 PM
Hey Josh,
Are you referring to the crest on the Czech jersey? It's a tiny image, but it looks like it has one of those lion dudes on it. The Czech jersey itself isn't close to my Canadian third jersey ... unless I'm lookin' at something different than you are.
Posted by: johnny griswold | July 22, 2009 at 01:05 PM
No i was just talking about the crest, sorry I didn't specify that.
Posted by: Josh | July 22, 2009 at 01:23 PM
... If I remember correctly from previous posts the jerseys in the picture right in this post are replica jerseys of the ones they wore then (logos are way too similar for my taste), if you had read any of the older posts in this series you'd obviously know there's been international hockey long before ww2.
Posted by: Koho | July 22, 2009 at 01:31 PM
The blue jerseys in the picture you are referring to are from the 1948 Olympics and were worn by the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force) flyers who represented Canada at that olympics.
Also, there was no international hockey (WC or Olympics) DURING WW2... because of the war. Also, up until 1960 we were always represented internationally by the top amateur Canadian team. Meaning they wore whatever jerseys they usually wore (unless they were rich enough to have special ones made).
This - http://www.greatesthockeylegends.com/2007/09/photo-essay-team-canada-jersey-history.html - is an interesting essay with pictures of some of the jerseys we wore. I'm assuming Johnny has already seen it.
Posted by: Josh | July 22, 2009 at 01:39 PM
Josh, I did see that site. Also, another site I used as a bit of reference is located here:
http://www.hockeycanada.ca/index.php/ci_id/11456/la_id/1.htm#t/5/pp/0/pv/0/pa/0/p/4/m/57484/d/26215/a/53581
After looking at all those jerseys, I realized it was totally fine to incorporate blue into the design.
Posted by: johnny griswold | July 22, 2009 at 01:54 PM
Yeah, exactly, blue is fine for any jerseys from before 1982 really (which is when we became totally separated from Britain), though after the new flag in 65 we pretty much stopped using it.
Posted by: Josh | July 22, 2009 at 02:05 PM
Thought you meant there was no international competition at all until after ww2 my mistake. But either way, I still think the logo is way too similar to the one it's based off of in the picture.
Posted by: Koho | July 22, 2009 at 02:05 PM
Koho, you were the reason I designed the alternate "Coat of Arms" crest in the first place. I figured I'd come up with something completely different and then let the voters decide what would be the best for the primary. The circle/leaf design won by a lot. And since I was designing by committee for Team Canada, I went with the majority. At least there's a different crest on the third jersey. :)
Posted by: johnny griswold | July 22, 2009 at 02:08 PM
Awesome job. I love how much white there is on the home, makes me think of the great north. I love the limited use of blue. And the third jersey is something that is not what we think of today as Canadian, but a trip to the history books helps explain. Good show.
Posted by: Dave | July 23, 2009 at 11:44 AM