Can I take professional designs created for hugely famous brands such as Adidas, and turn them into better more effective examples of graphic design.
Now you can be the judge of my four different Adidas designs and tell me if you think the surprising changes I’m going to make do results in a better outcome.
So the first of four designs today is this poster which is the “Rise Above” advertising campaign. Now if you’re read this post you’re probably a graphic designer or you’re someone who’s interested in graphic design.
So please tell me, what do you think is wrong about this design. And where can it be improved or at least just think to yourself what improvements you’d like to make and make a mental note of those improvements.
Now one of the first things I noticed about this design that I didn’t like, was how different parts of the poster were spread out. I mean different parts of the information were not actually clumped together in proximity. This creates a disjointed design layout and it’s not visually appealing and it’s not user-friendly either. Also, I really found this pretty amateurish where they’ve used basketballs as bullet points for these two points here.
It’s way too obvious it’s way too cliche and I think it’s just an amateurish decision on the designer’s parts. But yeah the main issue for me with this design was this space between the different text areas, which again just is bad use of proximity.
So when I recreated this design I started with a blank canvas pretty much, and I did want to get rid of the background kind of court that was in the original design and you will soon see why. I really wanted to give the “Rise Above quote some emphasis and some oomph”
So I really put that in a bold uppercase solution and I’ve used some contrasting color sampling a red from the Chicago Bulls jersey. And hammering home the point of proximity I’ve gone ahead and lumped every text solution in one simple area up here in the top right. Then keeping things balanced and in line, the logo was put at the bottom right.
But at this point, I felt like it wasn’t finished and there was something missing. Yes, that background basketball court image isn’t on my design. But I did have a solution to fill up this space and still make it negative space. So to speak I took the Adidas three lines symbol and I placed it here in a lighter color. But I do like this shape here as it does resemble moving upwards which leads to that rise above quote and falls in line with the basketball player actually jumping upwards.
So as you can see side by side here is the original and then here is my redesign and furthermore checking them both out in real-life situations we can see how one of them is effective and one of them isn’t.
The second Adidas design is a “YEEZY” advert, which to be fair isn’t that bad actually it’s pretty good I don’t think this design does too many things wrong. I like the minimal layouts and I like how you know it flows pretty well as well. There’s some balance going on from the left to the right. But I don’t like the gradient being used on “YEEZY” in this way.
Yeah, it’s just a personal preference, but I do feel like I could take this design and elevate it a tiny bit more. So I started off again with a kind of a blank canvas and I wanted to soften up the trainer itself and kind of give it a dream heavenly appearance.
You might notice I removed all shadows and I’ve made the background completely white, and again this is just personal preference. I really liked this approach by putting “YEEZY” in bold sound surf lettering behind the trainer in this way. I just think it flows really well and it gives some kind of context to the trainer itself.
I also think it’s a very nice dividing line horizontally across the design. And instead of going huge on the “YEEZY” text, I wanted to go a bit more minimal and so I’ve put it in the bottom right in a smaller size to the original. And I think this is where the kicker of my design comes in because I’ve used an orange focal point to emphasize the boost part of this design. Which is of course the model of the shoe.
Now I think this touch works really really well and this design for me worked out amazingly well. And then to finish off we have the Adidas logo in the top left to finish off the balance part of the design and here’s the before and then here’s the after.
And like I said the original wasn’t a bad design I just thought I could improve it using my own style and my own kind of perspective on things.
So design number three is a very vibrant design and it’s in Spanish and I don’t speak Spanish, but hey we’re gonna run with it anyway.
What do you guys not like about the design, when you look at it what would you change and what would you work on. For me firstly the text at the bottom seems too cramped and it just doesn’t seem well thought out to be honest.
It doesn’t read well and that’s not just because it’s Spanish, but the main issue for me is that it’s cramped down here just below the shoe. Now I do like this concept of using those three lines from Adidas brands. But in this instance, I think it’s too overpowering, mainly because firstly it’s black which is very stuck on the contrast of this design. And I think that black does kind of compete with the text below, and also the trainer itself. But also just the sheer size of it I mainly want the trainer to be the focal point and any kind of lines in this way to just complement the design.
So we’re going back to my black canvas approach and we’re starting off with just the trainer that I kind of do want to be more or less the focal point. And again I’m not Spanish and I can’t read Spanish and I did use google translate to come up with an approach for this text layout. So I thought this was the first part of the sentence and I think this would be the best approach in my opinion. We then use some hierarchy in size and also the color for the final part of the sentence.
Notice how my text is pretty much the same size or takes up the same amount of room as the original. But because it’s above the train in a bigger space it has more room to breathe, and so the design as a whole has more room to breathe. And then finally below I’ve used the dash logo and also those lines in a more discreet and more minimal approach. Every designer has a style they bring to the table when it comes to a project, and for me my style is more minimal and more discreet in some respects.
And that’s how I prefer to use such elements as the three lines for the brand in this instance. And here you can see side by side it does really hit home how much more room there is to breathe on my design. Which is always going to be a more user-friendly and a more welcoming approach to a design concept.
So the fourth and final design today is a pretty weird one and it’s one of the most odd Adidas adverts I’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s in black and white and it does look very very retro indeed and I wanted to make sure I kept with the concept of having a grayscale design. But for me the issue here was the typography, I do understand the concept of that.
The athlete is kind of breaking free of the text and breaking free of the impossible. But I do think it’s too convoluted and it’s too spread out and it doesn’t look visually appealing.
In my redesign, I didn’t actually use the same athletes or the same poster design. Because it would take me forever in Photoshop to kind of redesign this athlete as the text is in the way.
So I just grabbed a different badminton player and placed them on my design, and granted this guy hasn’t got as much movement and as much power as the original one. Also, the sizing is off but you kind of get my concept.
Firstly as in the original design the model or the athlete sorry, it’s kind of tilting from bottom left up to upper right their body is angled in this way. So I wanted to get some typography that complemented that and of course, italics will work perfectly here.
Also, I took notes that the Adidas logo in this instance has those three lines horizontally. I think having text and also some lines above and below do complement that and it does set a standard or precedent for this design. And yes the main issue for me was having the text in the original too spread out and too convoluted so I’ve gathered things in one orderly middle section that I feel does work really well.