In 2017, I launched a new project called Swift Paintball (www.swiftpb.com).
The goal was very simple. It was to build a brand that sells customizable clothing products for paintball teams - think paintball jerseys, pants, headbands, t-shirts, hoodies and so on, all sublimated.
Sublimation is great production method for sportswear and custom team clothing for a ton of reasons; but from the design standpoint, it's awesome because it allows for full creativity when it comes to the design process, with virtually no limitations when it comes to colours or complexity of the designs. The process feels as simple and seamless as designing business cards; Design, proof, print.
By 2018, I had a full product line of 12 customizable products up for sale on a Shopify website with various apps/plugins/code injections to make the customer experience as good as possible. The products included 4 jersey models (each with a various set of features), pants, t-shirt, tanktop, hoodie, softshell jacket, headband, beanie and barrel plug.
Alongside this product line, I created all the brand assets from scratch, including a brand logo, icons, extensive brand guidelines, realistic 3D models to help us promote and sell the products, and a catalogue of over 100 customizable designs for each of them.
This process required a lot of work, which meant that I quickly found myself building a small team of creatives and admin people to support me. This included a full time graphic designer and editor, as well as a full time administrative assistant and a part time salesperson.
Visual Template we used to present custom logo designs to teams. Each team receives 3 to 5 unique designs based on their requirements, at which point they can choose a design as is, ask for modifications on one of them, or ask for a new set of (3 to 5) unique logo designs based on their original requirements and feedback.
Visual Template we used to present customized designs to teams for most of our products. Each team receives 3 to 5 unique designs based on their requirements, at which point they can choose one of the designs as is, ask for modifications on one of them, or ask for a new set of (3 to 5) unique designs designs based on their original requirements and feedback.
One of the animated templates we created to promote our hundreds of semi-custom designs on the Swift social channels (Instagram and TikTok mainly).
By 2019, Swift Paintball built a very engaged customer base across Canada, the U.S and Europe. The brand continued its growth, quickly expanding to other sports and niches, such as esports, football (soccer) and customizable clothing & uniforms for businesses.
Instagram Post we created to raise awareness of then newly sponsored paintball player Michael Boothby. The Swift Sponsorship Program offered teams unlimited free design services, as well as free or highly discounted products, and free media coverage at national tournaments that PineappleProds attended.
Semi-Professional paintball player Nate Marshall from Brawl wearing his custom Swift jersey at the 2020 NXL Las Vegas Open tournament.
Semi-Professional paintball player Neon Wunsch from Plumlife rocking one of Swift's catalogue ULV2 designs.
Professional paintball player Zane Yachimec of Edmonton Impact wearing one of Swift's catalogue headbands.
Unfortunately, various issues including the COVID pandemic, increasing shipping costs and repeated quality control issues with manufacturers, I saw myself forced to slow down on this project by summer 2020.
While Swift is still active to this day, I since then shifted part of my focus towards creative services (graphic design, video production, photo production) for small and medium sizes businesses under the brand names Camico and Zeytouni. The Swift team is still by my side to this day, supporting all of our creative efforts.
