TOMS Run Club Tee.
Towards the end of 2011, I was given the opportunity to design a non-consumer facing tee shirt for TOMS employees who joined the staff run club. The graphical ideas for the tee came from a combination of TOMS traditions and my experience actually running with the club. The club often ran in the late afternoon or early evening up Olympic Blvd, Centennial and many other streets in Santa Monica. The use of the large triangle came from a combination of the TOMS design team’s persistent use of the shape on shoes and the classic yield signs used on streets across the globe. This served, not only as an extra reference to TOMS shoe design, but also as a warning to approaching traffic to yield to runners. When on a public street, a runner should be moving against the flow of traffic and as far to left as possible. The placement of the simplified graphic on the right shoulder of the shirt makes it much more visible to approaching traffic and serves as an added warning to yield to the runner. I also concepted a version where the triangular portion of the graphic was coated in reflective 3M material but this was nixed early on because of budgeting concerns. The colors were chosen based on TOMS brand standards for apparel. It was important to create a graphic that worked as a single color or multi-color print and also could be printed light on dark or dark on light while still communicating the same idea to the viewer. The main graphical element depicts TOMS most popular and iconic shoe silhouette, “The Classic”. Ultimately the design was never used but it remains one of my favorite projects.
