A Rare Look Inside the Design Process of a Football Kit

Tibabuzo Martin, who had been Senior Apparel designer at Adidas from late 2010 until December 2014, has shared a unique insight of how he designed River Plate's 2014-15 Home and Away Kits as well as River Plate's 2015-16 Away Jersey.

Tibabuzo Martin has already created a huge number of kits for Adidas since he joined the German company in July 2007. Originating from Buenos Aires, Argentina, he amongst others designed Argentina's kit for the 2014 World Cup and has been quite logically also responsible for the kit designs of Argentina's powerhouse River Plate in the past few years.

The Design Process of River Plate's Kit

Here are some of his designs he created in August 2012 for River Plate's upcoming kits, which would be launched more than two years later.

While we usually get few insights of how a football kit is really designed, Tibabuzo Martin sketches give us a in-depth look behind the process it takes to create a football kit for a global brand such as Adidas. So what are the most interesting aspects?

First, it's quite obvious that he takes a look back at the design features of recent River Plate kits. But most interestingly, he also showed off four possible designs for River's kit, including notes of his thoughts. And while the first and fourth designs made their way to an actual kit (River Plate 14-15 Home Kit & River Plate 15-16 Away Kit), the second and third designs are expected to remain sketches.

River Plate's Final 14-15 Home Kit + River Plate's 15-16 Away Kit