Blimey – it’s big isn’t it, this Internet?  I thought that volunteering to be blasted off into cyberspace would be a pleasant affair, but once you get in front of a blank sheet of paper it becomes a bit tricky to think of what to write.  Perhaps I’d be better off sticking to drawing pictures?

That, after all, is the real reason why I’m here.  I’m Rob Warner, and I joined Umbro a month ago as Design Director.  I’m leading the design team for our performance football clothing, including England, and am over the proverbial moon to be here.  As usual in these circumstances I’ve developed “Responsibility Tourettes” and volunteered to contribute to the blog on a monthly basis, airing my thoughts on all manner of things from design through to football.  Well, pretty much those two things really.  That’s what you’ll most likely want to read about from me, what with you all being dedicated followers of Fashanu.

My day-to-day job involves working through trend, colour, graphics and of course the performance needs of all parties concerned (namely the clubs and players of this most beautiful of games), and people often remind me how lucky I am to be able to make a career out of something I love.  I agree, and thought that the blog would be a great forum to give you some insights into what we do as a design team and how we do it, as well as offering you the chance to give us some feedback and input of your own.  Let’s face it – just like football, everyone’s got an opinion on design.

I’m sure if you asked the designers they’d say that I spend all day in meetings and only appear at my desk when one of them is about to make a brew.  Nothing wrong with that, though.  Michael Owen’s all about being in the right place at the right time too.  So long as we as a team design the best football product we possibly can then we can all go home happy, and being privy to the work which is going on here at Umbro Towers it’s fair to say we’re all feeling pretty happy at the moment.  The current England home shirt is for me one of our best ever, even if my favourite is the one from Italia 90 – evoking memories of Gazza’s tears, Waddle’s mullet and David Platt’s incredulous volley against Belgium.

We’ve been involved in some pretty scary kits in the past too, though, and I’ll be doing my best to make sure that the crimes of the 80s and 90s don’t get repeated in a hurry.  Unless it’s in a trendy “fashion-irony” kinda way, of course.  But love them or hate them, our kits have been involved in some of the most memorable and poignant moments of football history and they’ll continue to be playing a key role in football present and future too.  I’m lucky enough to have seen one of my designs win the World Cup and that’s an amazing memory for me.  If England lift the trophy next summer, even though I arrived after it was designed and would be basking in reflected glory, it’d still be up there as one of my proudest moments – both as an Umbro employee and an Englishman.

For now, though, it’s back to creating our part in magical football moments that are yet to come – whether it’s Darren Bent scoring a last minute winner for Sunderland or you ‘megging Steve from Accounts in the weekly 5-a-side.  It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.  And I really don’t think I’m cut out for being a milkman like my Dad was…

See you next month, Rob.

Continuing with our tales from the design room, this week I had a chat with Kev our product development manager. Kev has worked for Umbro for the past 37 years (the second longest time of any current employee) and was actually with the company at the time when the founder of Umbro, Harold himself still worked in the building.

Kev: I’ve been here 37 years. I came into the business because I wanted to be a professional footballer but I was never going to do that. Umbro was in the town [Wilmslow] that I lived so I knocked on the door and because I always interested in football and was never going to make the grade so I thought to get involved with somebody associated with football. Luckily they gave me a job. Having done a few things, I got a job in the buying office – getting fabrics etc. for our manufacturing.

I started in ’72 but probably ’78 is when I started working on kits and fabrics. Remember back then jerseys were just cotton tees.

Tom: So lets get down to business then.. There was recently an article in the guardian about the six worst football kits of all time which featured a few of ours. Can you shed any light on how these shirts came to be?

Scotland away football shirt (1991-1993)

Kev: We got hammered for that! The designer came up with it and the idea came from somebody saying you could do whatever you wanted with an away shirt – so he did.

At the time the trend was to make shirts without any shoulder seams (if you look, you can see it is made from one piece of fabric). The whole front was cut and then the design was printed.

England Third Shirt (1991-93)

Kev: This is another shirt with no shoulder seams. This process of printing gave us the opportunity to put more on the shirt than just a stripe, for example.

The process meant people went wild because they could. These shirts were made from polyester so they could take a print whereas in the past the jerseys were cotton and they couldn’t take print. Nylon also didn’t take prints very well. So polyester came and revolutionised football kits because it was easy care, you could get great colours with it, they don’t fade, can handle being put in the washing machine – suddenly you could do a lot more with it, including printing. It opened up a can of worms as far as design was concerned.

England Away Shirt (1996-1997)

Kev: With this one we had people coming to the door at Wythenshawe and wanting to know why we changed it from red to grey. The papers had fuelled it up a bit because we’d moved away from the traditional red. It was very unpopular so much so we just went back to a red kit the following season.

Manchester United Football Shirt (1997-1998, goalkeepers)

Kev: With ‘keeper kits we were given license to do pretty much what we wanted. The printing processes just made possibilities limitless.

Tom: So that’s enough of the more controversial shirts . What’s your favourite kit that you have worked on?

Manchester United Football Shirt (home, 2000-2002)

The United wool shirt was great. It was the first time wool had been used in a football jersey. It was just something different, it felt different, the players liked to wear it.

England Football Shirt (Home, 2001-2003)

Kev: I think that’s one of our iconic kits. It changed the direction of the home kits – adding the red to it. Much like the New England kit has changed the direction again. I think the new England kit is brilliant.

Tom: That’s all from Kev for now but we will be back soon with more info from the guys that work on the shirts.

Today we are launching a competition that can be considered anything but run of the mill. We are giving you the opportunity to customise the soles on a pair of Speciali boots. But this isn’t just something to do if you have a spare 30 minutes – the 11 designs judged best will be made for the designers to keep.

Oh, before I forget to mention… Amongst our highly esteemed judging panel there will be Michael Owen, Gaël Clichy, John Terry, Stuart Semple, the head of Umbro footwear design and an icon from the design world. And just in case that isn’t enough to get you motivated, Owen, Clichy and Terry will each pick a design to wear in a match.

Once uploaded, you can download your design as a wallpaper.  You can also share the designs in this flickr stream.

If you want to be in with a chance of being one of the winning designers head over to our umbro.com site for full details. Good Luck!