My Miami Heat Uniform Design was Featured on Uni-Watch.com Two Years Ago and I Didn't Even Know It

One of my favorite blogs is uni-watch.com, a great site self-described as being devoted to the "obsessive study of athletics aesthetics." Its primary author, Paul Lukas, occasionally writes columns for ESPN.com focusing on all things related to the sartorial side of sports. Before I discovered the blog, I had always paid ridiculously close attention to the details of uniforms, field and court designs, and team logos, among other things related to the aesthetics of sports. After discovering the blog, I was overjoyed to know that I was not alone in my observational habits.

To give you a sense of just how aesthetically obsessed I am, here is a side story from while I was at Duke: In the middle of the college basketball season two years ago, Duke began playing in new unis that featured a triangular "D" crest on the neck rather than a circular one and shorts with small circular ventilation holes going down the side. The new shorts also displayed a "D" logo without the legendary ball and hoop in the middle of the letter.

Note: This turned out to be part of a new "unifying" initiative of Duke Athletics that removed all of the sport-specific elements out of the center of the D logo. The idea, I guess, was to make the "D" the symbol of Duke Athletics as whole, not associated with any particular sport. I HATED this idea and still hate it to this day. It eliminated a classic logo from the uniform and court of one of college basketball's most storied programs.

Cameron Indoor Stadium Center Court, 2008-2009

Cameron Indoor Stadium Center Court, 2013-2014

These days, the logo can still be found in some of the concourses at Cameron and in the Duke Basketball Museum, but it has been largely eliminated from all current officially sponsored merchandise and media. What we are left with is simply not as classic nor as great. In my opinion, the D with the devil head design in the middle should be our primary logo, and the D with the ball and hoop should be used for all things specific to basketball, particularly the uniforms and court.

The new unis (which remain the current model) were made of a newer, lighter Nike material with a matte texture. The material gave the new uniforms a slightly lighter shade of blue in comparison to the previous generation that featured a deeper blue and a more satin-like texture.

Previous Generation Home White Jersey

Current Generation Home White Jersey

Because the overall design of the uniforms remained unchanged, no public announcements were made about the changes. But I could tell something was different from the very first game they wore them, and the slight change in the shade of blue was driving me crazy. At this point, as a student, I was still seeing these games in person and getting a great look at the unis. I became convinced we had begun wearing new uniforms, and kept commenting about it to my good friend Ben. He politely listened to my ramblings but was largely uninterested in any subtle changes that our team's garments had potentially undergone. It wasn't until I finally discovered a two-week-old dukeblueplanet.com tweet announcing to almost no fanfare that Duke would begin wearing new uniforms, that I finally had my suspicions confirmed. As I write this, I realize I should probably have just devoted an entire post to Duke Basketball uniforms rather than throw in this aside...and I probably will at some point. But for now it's a brief look into my obsessiveness. Enough of that though, back to the issue at hand.

About 3 years ago I became a fairly regular visitor to uni-watch. I do not check the blog as much these days, but still enjoy perusing it occasionally. At that time I became very intrigued by the "uni tweaks" section that appeared primarily on weekend posts. Uni tweaks are essentially uniform design concepts submitted by readers.

Cartoon-Style San Francisco Giants Uni Tweak

They utilize templates that range from very simple, Microsoft Paint-like cartoons all the way up to photo-realistic Photoshop creations. Those falling into the latter category can be truly stunning (see the incredible Falcons Nike Pro Combat-style design below, that should be our real uniforms), and because I found them so cool, I decided to find out how to make them myself.

Photo-Realistic Atlanta Falcons Uni Tweak

I began emailing back and forth with Phil Hecken, the author of the weekend uni-watch blog posts that featured reader-submitted uni tweaks. He directed me to Tim O'Brien, a uni tweak contributor who had created some really cool uniform concepts for teams in the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB. Both of these guys were extremely friendly and helpful in answering my questions about how to begin my own tweaking. After getting some invaluable tips from Tim, I decided to drop the approximately $70 necessary to buy Photoshop Elements (Don't believe in Pirating...couldn't and still can't afford Creative Suite). I downloaded one of the more photo-realistic NBA templates that I had seen others work with, and started brainstorming my tweaks.

I decided I wanted to start off with a Miami Heat alternate uniform. I have always liked the golden yellow trim on their standard unis, and thought it would be cool to see what it looked like to create a set that featured this color. With no Creative Suite, and no ability to separate out the template into layers, the whole project proved to be much more difficult than I expected. After tracing out the various aspects of the image to create my own layers, doing some color filling, and drawing out lots of details by hand, I had my finished product...with which I must say I was very pleased.

My Miami Heat Golden Yellow Alternate Uniform

I emailed the finished product to Tim O'Brien and he responded with the following:

Nick,

That is seriously amazing. You did a fantastic job and I see how you had to do so much of it by hand and Kudos to you for sticking with it. Wow. Just great work.
You should definitely send this in to Phil Hecken at UniWatchBlog.com (phil.hecken@gmail.com) he would love to throw that up during a weekend piece.
Keep on working, 'cause this looks great and I'd love to see what else you come up with.
Thanks and talk to you soon,
Tim

Deeply appreciative of such positive feedback from my uni-tweaking idol, I decided to do as he suggested, and I emailed Phil Hecken with my project attached. This was in May 2011, and sadly I never received an email response from him. I checked the blog a few times after submitting my project to see if my work had been posted, but I never found it. After this time, I mostly forgot about it. I guess I had gotten my itch to tweak out of my system, because I never completed another uniform design. But I remained proud of my golden yellow Heat alternate and even tweeted a link to the design to LeBron James himself. (clearly to no avail)

That brings me to earlier today when my sister got my attention and mentioned that she had just randomly Googled my name and clicked on an image search. I was curious to see the results, and became even more curious when I noticed that the 5th result (preceded by three pictures of me and one picture of Elijah, our church custodian) was my Miami Heat alternate golden yellow uniform. I knew I had never posted it online myself, and after a brief investigation I discovered that the image was linked to a uni-watch blog post! It turns out that all of my hard work had paid off after all, and my design was featured in the uni tweaks section of Phil Hecken's post on June 12th, 2011. Scroll down to the "Uni Tweaks" heading to find my design. I had never seen this post until today. How cool is that? It is not prominently featured on the post, but nevertheless, it is THERE. So I enjoyed seeing it on the blog and enjoyed reading some of the comments about it, such as this from Uni-Watch reader Paul Lee:

@Nick Tippens: LOVE the Heat tweak. Did it myself back in July of last year (on MS Paint) but didn’t look anywhere as good as yours. I guess Tim’s 3D template made it extra awesome :) Thank you Tim E. O’Brien!

My Heat tweak
http://img13.imagesh...
(The reason why it looks orange instead of the gold-yellow is because I used the “color picker” tool in MS Paint and that’s the “gold” color that it picked up from the Creamer’s SportsLogo’s Miami Heat illustration.)

Whether or not this will all inspire me to get back on photoshop and start designing again remains to be seen. But regardless, it made for a really cool and unexpected discovery. It also reminded me of how helpful and encouraging both Tim and Phil were when I had questions about getting involved in this hobby. When people are passionate about something, particularly something artistic, they interact and share ideas enthusiastically and generously. It is always exciting to be a part of this kind of innovative and creative interaction, even if it's all just for fun. After all, truly enjoying a hobby is what creating this uniform design and finding out over 2 years later that it had been shared and appreciated was really all about. To this day, I remain just as intrigued by the aesthetics of athletics, and look forward to continuing my amateur exploration into these details for years to come. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for High Definition television and blogs like uni-watch.com.