The Flying V Uniforms: Explaining Their Design.

[JA]

I posted this in another thread, but felt it would be worth sharing with you. This article from August 30, 1978, describes some of the details regarding the development of the Canucks' Flying V uniforms (1978-1985).

Canuck colors: trick or treat?
Taylor, Jim. The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] 30 Aug 1978: P.29.

...

Reports that the Canucks might ditch their green, blue and white uniforms have been circulating for months. Most thought they'd follow tradition and change the blue to red. But no, the new look is red-orange, yellow, and black... They hired a U.S. communications counselling firm to find out what was wrong with their old image and come up with a new one, something that would make the customers forget the ghosts of disasters past. For only $100,000 they got their answer... Monday morning... I phoned Bill Boyd of Beyl and Boyd, the San Francisco firm responsible for the new look.

"The Canuck colors," he said, "were all wrong. Blue-green is the coolest color of all. Slows the pulse, reduces aggression, promotes calmness... Psychiatric wards are painted blue-green... Encourages tranquility... White, being a passive color, induces the least response of all. And green -- did you know that in ancient times green -- not black, but green -- was the color symbolizing death?"... Boyd's group has never seen the Canucks. But so far he'd painted his picture of a bunch of dead-looking guys skating calmly around with no aggressive tendencies and a pulse that's barely registering.

...

"... To the ancients, blue symbolized saintliness. It was their color of virginity... There are physical and psychological differences in people's responses to different colors... Colors are read by rods and cones in the eyes and the input travels along different sets of nerves... With the Canuck uniforms we are going from the coolest of colors -- blue-green -- to the hottest -- red-orange. The cool color is passive, the hot one aggressive. Plus the black. It's the contrast of colors that creates emotion. White produces no response at all, so we went for yellow -- which is warm, pleasant, happy. Upbeat. What we are attempting to create is an atmosphere that will help create the happy, upbeat, aggressive player -- and, hopefully, the happy, upbeat fan. The Canucks want to provide the fan with an atmosphere in which it's easier for him or her to have fun."

...

"V," he said, "is for Vancouver... It's fortunate, too... because it creates the ideal diagonal stripe. All teams have horizontal or vertical stripes. That's static. Diagonal stripes get your attention. They're like the crooked picture on the wall. You have to fix it or it drives you crazy."... But now he was on to my favorite subject, the Canuck crest... "We analyzed the colors and logo of every team in every major league sport. We gave the Canucks 20 different approaches. Mike Bull, a San Francisco illustrator who did the Levi jeans commercials on television and whose work is known to millions, did the one that's been accepted -- the skating speeding over the word Canuck. It has motion and style. It's pop art, sure, but we don't mind the term. Pop simply means popular, doesn't it?"... Beyl and Boyd had two three-hour sessions with the Canuck directors outlining the new color scheme.

...

It must have been fun explaining that there were other colors besides red, blue and dollar green... But the job is done -- a job so radical that the patterns had to be made by a flag-manufacturing company and the actual uniforms will be made by firms new to hockey because the old firms aren't geared to handle them... "The fans will love them," Boyd said... And they will -- if somebody in them can win.

...

Works Cited

Taylor, Jim. "Canuck Colors: Trick Or Treat?" The Globe and Mail: 0. Aug 30 1978. ProQuest. Web. 5 May 2014 .

Of course, this design was modified in 1985 to become the Flying Skate uniforms.

In 1989, the Canucks further simplified the sweaters to become these (with slight color modification in 1992).

Click to read more...

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

I always thought the V's were supposed to stand for victory...which was quite ironic.

Though it's neat that they thought the crest was just some pop art...it's perhaps the only good thing to come from these atrocities. Should've stuck with blue and green.

 

[Patchey*]

I miss the old jerseys

 

[LeftCoast]

And that my friends is why you don't hire a communications firm to design hockey sweater.

I hated those ugly yellow pajamas from the day they announced them.

 

[Fat Tony]

They hired a U.S. communications counselling firm to find out what was wrong with their old image and come up with a new one, something that would make the customers forget the ghosts of disasters past.

I guess the answer was to create a new disaster.

I remember reading that article in the 80s and just shaking my head.

 

[Luck 6]

I will admit the players in those photos look more fierce than the current brand haha

 

[VanillaCoke]

All of those sweaters are better than the current iterations.

 

[Freakshow]

Ditch the Orca and go with the newly designed stick

 

[PM]

A modern version of the Flying V with our current colours and the stick in the rink logo on the shoulders could look pretty awesome. Or it could look god awful. I'm having difficulties picturing it in my head...

 

[Trelane]

Yes. Bring back the V and the black-gold-red combo. Enough with the eco friendly BS color scheme and the stick in the rink with the "C" no one can see.

Kerry Fraser has an article in "The Hockey News" about refs innate bias to even up calls in 2nd and 3rd periods and acknowledges it as a statistically verifiable phenomenon. I.e., it is better to be feared, on account of jerseys and/or play, than respected. Turning the other cheek won't give much, if any, edge in PP time over a long sample size.

 

[SighReally]

Some of the best rose-coloured glasses I've seen in the longest time here.

 

[Reverend Mayhem]

Yes. Bring back the V and the black-gold-red combo. Enough with the eco friendly BS color scheme and the stick in the rink with the "C" no one can see.

Kerry Fraser has an article in "The Hockey News" about refs innate bias to even up calls in 2nd and 3rd periods and acknowledges it as a statistically verifiable phenomenon. I.e., it is better to be feared, on account of jerseys and/or play, than respected. Turning the other cheek won't give much, if any, edge in PP time over a long sample size.

Highly doubt our colours or logo would affect our calls. We made our bed with Kesler, Burrows, Lapierre bringing the ****show and the Twins diving. We may have cleaned up but we are still sleeping in that bed like the Sharks should in a year's time or so.

Changing our jerseys back to the worst ones in arguably NHL history besides the Burger Kings jersey won't change that.

 

[PuffAdder]

Your 89 to 97 jerseys are some of the best looking jerseys ever.

 

[jimslob]

Way back when I read an article much like that and knew the new uniforms were a mistake.

Yes the colors would make players more aggressive, but it was the opposing players that were looking at them the most.

Our players were acclimatized to the colors as they wore them all the time, other teams would come in and it was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

 

[Shareefruck]

Silly argument.

I prefer the stick and rink with the colors, and hope we don't go back to these orange scheme, personally.

 

[Zombotron]

They shouldn't have been made to wear yellow helmets. Black helmets would have looked much, much better.

Here's a few more changes which would have made the uniform look less goofy:

 

[DCantheDDad]

Those jerseys were certainly...unique. I think next season we should take a visual tour of our entire jersey catalogue: they could wear a different jersey for the first several home games of the season.

In all honesty, I wouldn't mind the skate and the Maroon Millionaire jersye to make 1 - 2 appearances during the year, but no more than that. I am one of those people who really like our current jersey. I absolutely can't stand the stick in the rink. I find it boring and uninspired. It just doesn't do it for me.

 

[PhilMick]

Great read, thanks Jetsalt!

Also any discussion of the flying V jerseys is incomplete without a Gary Lupul namedrop.

 

[Seattle Totems]

It was a mistake to hire a San Francisco communications firm to design hockey uniforms. It's clear no one in that firm had ever seen a hockey game in their life. The end result was that the Canucks became the laughingstock of the league for ever after. It's the darkest period of this franchise and an indictment of the Griffiths as owners. I don't know why any Canucks fan needs to celebrate it.

Had the Canucks simply used the Johnny Canuck jerseys like they originally intended or kept the Joe Borovich jerseys all along the perception of this franchise would be entirely different. It's not a coincidence that the Canucks brand has gotten substantially stronger since they ditched their 90's colours and went back to blue and green. It's the first time this franchise has looked like close to a real hockey team instead of a bizarre marketing experiment.

Just say NO to the flying V. If the Canucks bring back any uniform it should be the WHL jersey.

 

[LeftCoast]

V is for vomit inducing.

I agree 100% with silvercanuck. Hockey sweaters should be designed by people who understand and appreciate the traditions of the game.

Personally, I'm not really a fan of the RBK Edge sweater designs - at least the ones that removed traditional elements like striping on the waist and arms. I hate the vertical side panels and vertical striping on socks (some Olympic teams). I like lace up collars for original 6 teams (but not the fake laces as on the Olympic Nike sweaters). I like horizontal shoulder yokes, but they are not essential. Overall, it's not so much you have to have these elements and can't have these, but the end result has to look like a hockey sweater.

 

[Raincouver]

Complete history of the Uniforms:

http://forum.canucks.com/topic/296395-the-complete-history-of-the-vancouver-canucks-nhl-uniforms/

 

[mossey3535]

The SIMPLIFIED flying skate jersey was one of my favourites. Been wanting a McLean since I was a kid.

 

[YouppiKiYay]

The 85-89 jersey is my favorite Canucks sweater. Don't judge me.

 

[JA]

The Vancouver Blazers, incidentally, wore the red-black-yellow color scheme just a few years prior to the Canucks' switch to the Flying V design.

 

[GetFocht]

I would acutally love to see a variation of the V back in to the Canucks uniform, they look very intimidating on the ice. Reminds of San Jose Sharks current black jerseys, boy do they look like a massive team in those jerseys.