Clan United had the pleasure of working on the Cambodia National Team (FFT) home, away, goalkeeper, and under23 kits, launched in 2022 on May 27th.

The Summary

• Clan United created all the artwork and print files for the Cambodia National Football Team Football Kits
• We worked collaboratively with the Varaman team, to turn their visions into high quality digital prototypes.
• We then worked with the garment factory to produce the print-ready files, and give key input on physical prototypes.
• We used HCD methodologies to develop various ideas, and were delighted that our creation of a digital camouflage made entirely from pixelated Angkor Wat vectors was appreciated, embraced, and approved.
• We were allowed more freedom with the away shirt, and met the clients brief with an eye-catching abstract design.
• Our initial idea board (asset library) was called upon to find a supporting identity for the u23 kits (home/away/goalkeepers).
• Initial reaction to all kits during the launch was 100% positive! (Live Facebook launch at 19:00 on 27th May via Cambodia National Team page to 6000+ fans—rating based on 300 comments during feed) — A great success, and further success for HCD practices in football.

Photography Note

We will be using official photography that belongs to Varaman and FFC – we plan to update this case study with photos of the kits in use during the upcoming national friendly on June 2nd.

The Story

Football kit releases have become a yearly occurrence, with some teams opting to release a barrage of additional kits throughout their footballing campaigns—from third kits, tournament kits, to special editions. While some teams, such as Napoli, release an excess of kits, there are many teams that have had a much quieter release schedule.

The last time Cambodia released a national kit was in 2018, via FBT. And at the beginning of 2021, Clan United were delighted to be brought to the table to help facilitate the creation of a new range for the National Team, including a separate range for the under 23 squad.

This project was running in tandem with the creation of the new sports brand: Varaman. Varaman is a Cambodian brand, proudly operating, designing, and producing in the Kingdom of Cambodia. The name of the brand is inspired by a previous Khmer King (specifically Jayavarman VII) and the word itself has connotations to ‘armour’—the brand announced that it personifies itself to protect the team during national matches.

Our role in the project was to aid the ideation process, and help bring Varaman’s vision to life via our kit mock-ups and print-ready files.

When we joined the project, we were briefed that the kit(s) had to be unique, and that the desirable style for the home kit was to be a blue digital camouflage design. There were a a few low fidelity prototypes available to quickly gain inspiration, helping us kickstart our process immediately:

Our Process

We kickstarted the project by building a range of initial ideas for the kits, including various goalkeeper and training tops. The first stage of our ideation was to supply a wide range of concepts, to help quickly identify desirable routes forward and rule out directions unlikely to resonate with the target market and concept.

From this exercise, we had an asset library to use as references—during later discussions about colours, cuffs, logos, and overall design directions.

We then immersed ourselves in the home-kit brief, which was to create a digital-camo design using the blue from the Cambodian flag. We quickly arrived at the conclusion that the camouflage pattern should be custom made, and also suggested using notable shapes to build the pattern. We experimented with the shape of Cambodia as an option, and also with the Angkor Wat vector shape from the national flag.

The latter proved ideal for the concept, and by pixelating the details, and placing thousands of different sized shapes in multiple shades of blue, we created a bespoke digital camouflage pattern to suit the client brief.

We were then on hand for hundreds of micro-iterations of the design to suit the ongoing discussions around print materials and styles with the local Cambodian Garment Factory.

The Away Shirt

The away shirt was to be a contrast to the ‘micro’ design (of thousands of Angkor Wat shapes) used in the home shirt; By going ‘macro’, the away shirt used an extreme close up from the Angkor Wat vector with Cambodian flag colours faded across it against a white background. We then added fine details throughout the pattern, using further sections from the Angkor Wat vector—creating a striking, unique finish that dared to be different.

The Goalkeepers

To compliment the set, the goalkeeper tops were designed in Red (for the home games) and Blue (for the away games), with a particularly ornate section of the Angkor Wat detail repeated into a seamless pattern.

We wanted the pattern to be subtle, so used similar tones to the base fabric to ensure it was visible without being overbearing. In particular, the navy collar and cuff pantones on the red goalkeeper top worked well to balance the whole design with a more ‘classic’ look compared to the rest of the set. We absolutely love concept kits, but equally were delighted to submit a more subdued piece to the collection that could balance the designs.

The u23 range

The Varaman brand decided to launch with the Cambodia National U23 team range in February 2022. Many items had been prepared simply with solid colours and their brand identity, but Clan United were proud to assist with supplying multiple designs for the launch consideration.

One of our initial ideas from round one of the team range ideation (22nd Feb 2021) was selected and used a year later (7th Feb 2022).

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