APPAREL•BRANDING
Convict
Apparel
Convict
Apparel
- Created With Bench -
Location
Manchester, UK
Brief
Create art direction, illustrations, designs and start-up apparel label.
Tools
Hand Drawn, Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop
Sectors
Streetwear Fashion, Casualwear, Urban Fashion, Lifestyle Apparel, Sustainable Fashion, Collaborations and Limited Editions, Accessories, Digital and E-commerce, Retail
Convict was a apparel label which looked at prison culture. Founded by Bench's Kelvin Kidler Convict was intended initially founded after leaving Bench in 2007. Intially founded in 2010 the second coming came in 2014. The label took inspiration from prison culture primarily which was reflected in the black and white, monochromatic colour scheme
Looking at fairly obvious prison tropes- bars, wire, towers etc I eventually stuck with a piece of razor wire as I liked it’s geometric shape. I created something which would give a very simple but meaningful mark along with a strong logotype. I was required to stick to black and white for the whole line and it only made sense to use this for the branding as it fit in with the concept of prison.
Two of the conecpet were specifically requested by the client including the think image which was taken from an image sourced inline and heavilty manipulated to avoid copyright infringement. The Skully character which was planned to be a mascot for the label was a take on the Go To Jail card inMonopoly.
The client was very keen on using the brandname CNVT which was ultimately changed back to Convict for clarity.
“...we are aiming at the commercial end of young fashion, sitting alongside the likes of Henley and Superdry - inspired by US West Coast hip-hop via graphic prints and embellishment...
Taking concepts from a lot of prison tattoos, especially Mexican tattoo with it’s italic flourishes and offset those against thicker typography.
Additional concepts that I used was a simple US DOC style of typography, a very simple, unadorned typeface. As well as a continuation of the tattoo theme with the addition of a quincrux tattoo - used to represent time spent in prison.
In addition to the usual fare of T-shirts and sweatshirts I created designs for a series of varsity jackets. The above is a good example of what I was trying to accomplish- I didn’t want to have the logo plastered all over the garments as I feel this comes across as a little too obvious and cheapens the brand somewhat so I preferred to stick with something a little different and much more understated.
