GPC Bike Shorts Design

April 2007

Here is the final GPC bike shorts design. There may still be some very-fine-tuning for exact placement and scaling of some of the graphic elements, but no changes other than that. Updated fine-tuned images may be posted here, later.

• The shorts will match the jersey — both the new yellow-background jersey and the older purple-background jersey.
• The yellow and purple colors will match those on the jersey, regardless of how the colors look on your computer monitor.
• Generous amounts of yellow for standout visibility, especially from the rear, and of course to coordinate with the jersey.
• The body panels are solid black, as shown.
• The typeface will match that on the jersey.

Plain-Black Back Panel?

The Story

How was the design chosen? In January, three overall designs were presented to the club. It was impossible to gain a full consensus; the split was nearly equal 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/3. The selected overall pattern was (just marginally) the most popular.

The topic which provoked the most comment, even during the initial overall design phase in January, was the back-panel design. From March 14 though March 16, the club had an extended maillist discussion on just this. On March 19, after the discussion died down, I took a vote or poll on back-panel choices. Each person was given 3 votes which they could combine or split as they chose. 31 people voted, for 93 votes total. Of these:

71 votes: Yellow back panel of some sort.
22 votes: Plain-black back panel.

The votes for yellow back-panel design were:

22 votes: Pawprints design of some sort (echoing the jersey pawprints).
21 votes: The text "www.grizz.org", which is the short-form club URL.
10 votes: Latin translation of the club motto "Ride to eat, eat to ride."
10 votes: Plain yellow.
  4 votes: The text "GPC."
  3 votes: Translation of "Go Bears" into a to-be-determined European language.
  1 vote  : Other (write-in).

The final design incorporates the two top choices. One person who said she liked neither of those two choices alone says that she loves the combined design with the arched writing (as shown above) and can't wait to wear them.

(The numbers above are the revised vote count. It supercedes the preliminary count reported in the meeting minutes. It includes two people who sent their vote shortly after I made the preliminary count just before the club meeting. Also it corrects three errors I made reading people's emails. There is no change in the overall outcome.)

Who?

Bruce Marchant is our graphics artist for this project. For all your work and patience, we thank you Bruce!
Mark Abrahams is coordinating the other aspects of the project.