Design notes – Ski Squad

It’s no secret that we like a bit of skiing here at T-lab. It’s not just the sliding down a mountain with equal parts joy and terror, it’s the whole Alpine winter thing.

Fresh air, stunning views, snow, mountainside cafés. Après-ski, vin-chaud, cheesy fondues and cheesier Euro-pop. There’s a lot to like!

That’s probably why we produce quite a number of ski and snow-themed t-shirts. They’re just an easy-going reminder of skiing fun.

For our Ski Squad design the brief was to create something that was a distinctive celebration of the Alpine region. We started with the flags of the four main European ski nations. Flags are potent graphic symbols. One simple square of shapes and colours carries a whole pile of visual and cultural associations.

Early roughs looked promising, but maybe a bit too much flag. T-lab t-shirts often need a bit of deciphering. So we started stripping back the flags, so that they were recognisable, but you had to look harder to see it.

We liked the last design shown above but without the colours, maybe a bit too tricky to decipher. So we rowed back just a little bit.

T-lab Ski Squad t-shirt