Swim and Dive Shirt Design 2025

Project Summary: Returning to this ask by the head coach for a second year, I led the design with a stronger focus on team identity. The final shirt blended legacy and humor, refining both the concept and production process from the year prior.

The starting point was developing a concept that would spotlight the people on the team something fun, but also powerful enough to show off the badasses we are. After spitballing ideas like movie posters, Greek/Roman statues, and references to current TikTok trends (with help from the team), I landed on the idea of a comic book cover. I found a free template online that I liked to help save time and jumpstart the layout.

Next, I dug through team photo albums from the 2024–2025 season for about an hour, pulling some of my favorite action shots to work with. This was one of the most successful parts of last year’s design, so I knew I wanted to bring it back. A key priority this time was making sure our one diver was featured, something I hadn’t been able to pull off last year. As a final touch, every athlete included in the design was a senior.

My initial idea was to use a photo of the pool as the background, but it created too much visual noise and distracted from the team. From there, I posterized each person and manually cleaned up the images to remove small details that wouldn’t translate well to print, a key lesson I learned from last year, which had made final production more difficult than it needed to be. During this phase, I also checked in regularly with the team and the individuals featured to make sure they felt good about how they were represented.

I got feedback that the bar on the left was throwing off the balance of the design, so I ended up removing it. The “Fire It Up” text—our team’s slogan at meets—was also getting lost in the top banner, so I adjusted the placement to give it more room to breathe. For the final delivery, I sent the coach a polished version along with a transparent SVG and a black on gray color variation.