“Designing McLaren’s F1 Race Suits?”
With their latest competition, it’s almost as if McLaren have been reading my recent blog posts!
Last Friday McLaren and Sparco launched a competition for their fans. Now, normally, news of a company creating a competition isn’t exactly worthy of an article, but this one is different. After all, for most competitions all you have to do is sign up to a mailing list or like a post on social media, and the winner is picked randomly. Not for this competition, though. This competition actually rewards creativity.
The task is pretty simple, so in the words of McLaren themselves:
“To be in with a chance of winning, download the Sparco Race Suit template, design your own race suit and send your design to McLaren’s social channels. The winner will be chosen by McLaren from all entries received.”
As an absolute sucker for competitions, paired with the fact I had a go at designing my own race suit a few weeks ago (which you can see here), I thought this was right up my street, so naturally I used a portion of my weekend creating the best entry I could think of. The result? You can see for yourself here:
With my design, I wanted to pluck design themes from both the current McLaren branding and my own. After all, it’s a McLaren competition with the McLaren sponsors plastered all over it, and so I had to keep it recognisably McLaren to an extent, whilst tying in my Living The Racing Grind brand. Luckily, the colour orange is prominent in both the McLaren race team and my own logo. The only slight complication arose from the contrasting shades of orange, so I decided I wouldn’t use either specific shade. Instead? Traffic cone orange.
The main way I have implemented the orange is by adapting a design idea I had when creating my initial #RacingGrind concepts, by creating a sort of spiral transition up the legs. This time, however, I chose not to make the colour transition a sharp line, but instead utilised the tapering line theme used on the current McLaren Formula 1 race suits. Personally, I also think this gives the suits a nice, modern look which breaks the mould a bit, too.
The tip of the transitional pattern is also seen at the top of the suit, with a slight intrusion of orange coming off of the left shoulder. But anyway, back to the legs. At the bottom of the left leg, I have inserted a little black outline of the #RacingGrind motif, as a little touch that isn’t immediately visible. Over on the right left, I have added large #RacingGrind branding in the contrasting grey colour found on my logo.
Other grey touches you will see on the suit include the little corner accents by the shoulder tabs, and another transition on the forearms, within which the Richard Mille logos sit. This transition once again utilises the tapered lines idea, and makes a good alternative to the block colour change featured on the real-life race suits.
Finally, I have created an imitation of the current number font used by McLaren to add my preferred number, 99, on the back, and the last touch I added was a whacking great big Living The Racing Grind logo, front and centre, on the chest. After all, it’s an area used for sponsorship branding, so I’ll happily place my brand onto a McLaren race suit!
Well there you have it, a full explanation of my entry into the McLaren & Sparco “Design Your Own Race Suit” competition. So far a lot of very good entries have already been submitted by other people, so whilst I’d love to be one of the two winners and have this suit make in into reality, I’m not holding out any hope.
What do you think, though?
Are you planning to enter the competition?
Let me know with a comment down below!
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