*** The 2024 Volleyball Canada Youth Nationals may be over, but you still have a chance to grab this year’s merch! The Post Sale is live, running from May 26 to June 19 at 2:00 PM MDT. Click here to order your gear! ***
Have you checked out the new Volleyball Canada Youth Nationals merch yet? Or maybe youāve already received your presale order, and now youāre wondering about how we do it? For all you volleyball enthusiasts out there, hereās a look behind the scenes of how we design the Volleyball Canada Youth Nationals merchandise every year.
Weāve been at this since 2018, when Volleyball Stuff became the official merchandise provider for Volleyball Canada and we set up our first booth at Youth Nationals, the largest youth sporting event in Canada, with over 1,500 teams and 20,000+ athletes competing across the nation. Each year, we start the design process for Nationals as early as 6 months in advance of the May tournaments, to make sure that each yearās design is trendy, relevant, attractive, and something the youth will actually want to wear. We make sure the most popular apparel colours from previous years are on offer againālast yearās best-selling Sandstone crewneck sweater becomes this yearās Sandstone hoodie, for exampleāand our goal is that each yearās designs flow into the nextās in one cohesive style.
That doesnāt mean we donāt like shaking things up! At vbs apparel and our sister company Lubdub Apparel, weāve taken on a trio of talented graphic designers in the past couple years, and we wanted to use their talents to push in a new, more illustrative direction. So Sarah, Melody, and Maria set out on their initial sketches with the inspiration of a vintage concert t-shirtālarge, minimalist graphics on the back, and calling back to the foundation of the Canadian Volleyball Association in 1953 on the front chest logo. We always want to be sure thereās a link between Canadaās elite national teams and the young athletes who look up to them as well, so weāve made sure that the typeface and graphic style of the Youth Nationals merch flow into the style you see on the uniforms of Canadaās national team. We want to foster the talent of Canadaās future top athletesāand this is just a small detail that helps you dream big!
After our trio of designers started on their initial sketches, it was a team effort to refine them into the best ideas to present to Volleyball Canada for their feedback. This year, one of the early concepts that Maria and Sarah worked on was a design of a volleyball hitting the net, but Volleyball Canada pointed out that a more positive angle would be better. Rather than showing a ball hitting the net, which would surely mean one team or the other would be disappointed, letās show the ball sailing over the net, where all players can imagine the excitement and potential of a rally in progress.
Taking these concepts and feedback, Melody, Sarah, and Maria all worked together to develop their designs further. Melody tells us that while each of the designers tended to focus on the concepts and designs they had come up with, it was by no means an isolated affair. Each of them worked together on all the ideas, offering each other feedback and taking inspiration from each otherās strengths to eventually arrive at a slate of finalized concepts for Volleyball Canadaās approval. Once they had selected the design they liked best, final tweaks and mock-up stages looped in our production team, testing placement and materials until we arrived at our final locked in designs.
And as you can see, they look great! Weāre so proud of the work we put into these designs each year, and weāre so excited to share them with you. The presale period for the 2024 Volleyball Canada Youth Nationals merchandise may be over, but you still have the chance to pick up your piece of the excitement at each of the Nationals events in Ottawa (May 2-5), Fredricton (May 2-5), Richmond (May 9-12), and the festival event in Edmonton (May 15-26). Weāll be there slinging shirts at a booth at each event, taking in all the action with you. Good luck to all the competitors at this yearās nationals! We canāt wait to cheer you on!
