How do I become ... a sportswear designer

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/jul/10/how-become-sportswear-designer

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For the US athletes, it was a fantasy realised as they mounted the podium to collect their gold medals at the 2012 Olympics. It was also the proudest moment for one Englishman from north London. Matthew Treasarden, 42, helped design the Nike jackets donned by the indoor teams when they received their awards. "To watch them wearing the fruit of my labours as they achieved their dream, and to feel part of moment, was fabulous," he says.

The sober grey of the garment baffled many Americans, but the point of them was the hyper-reflective shell coating which is intended to glow in the spotlights and convey the luminosity of America's sporting talent. Undoubtedly, too, thought had been given to the fact that their inoffensive appearance made them adaptable as streetwear for any fans with $450 to spare.

It's Treasarden's job to devise sportsgear for Nike that makes an implied statement about its wearers and which will sell in the high street as sportsgear and street fashion increasingly cross-fertilise. "When we worked on the prints and branding for the kits for the 2006 World Cup we'd look into the history of the teams for inspiration," he says. "We found that, for instance, the US team had once worn sashes across the chest and so we proposed bringing them back for continuity. And when we designed the kit for Arsenal's last match at Highbury before they moved to their new stadium, we paid homage to the original kit they wore when they first moved to north London in 1913."

"The usual red and white was replaced with a redcurrant shirt with commemorative graphics and it was amazing to see a stadium full of fans and the footballers in our creation saying goodbye to the stadium after nearly a century."

Injuries prevented Treasarden – an accomplished runner – from competing on the sports field in person; instead his skills are displayed in the international arena on the world's top athletes. Once a graphics designer for Nike football shirts, he is now art director for the company's running section with responsibility for deciding the prints, colours and graphics of the kit. "The joy of the job is seeing my handiwork on world famous names," he says. "Mo Farah is based nearby and athletes are always visiting to meet the footwear design teams."

Treasarden was steered into sportwear design by his twin loves of art and athletics. "As soon as I was physically able to hold a pencil I began drawing," he says. "As I got older I did competition track and field to a reasonably high standard."

A foundation art course at East Barnet College piqued his fascination for prints and graphics and he enrolled on a degree in textile design at Loughborough College of Art & Design. "Before Heritage Lottery funding, it was the unofficial sports academy of the UK where people like Sebastian Coe had studied and I chose it because I wanted to run," he says.

When he began, he coveted the latest sportsgear for the prestige of the labels: by the time he left, he had become fascinated by the science behind the designs. His final degree show, in which he exhibited adventurously patterned cotton football shirts, was noticed by the German design company Puma, which bought his concept for enough money to pay off his student debt.

Months of job-hunting followed his graduation into a recession-hit economy until he was recruited by a US-owned T-shirt producer, Nutmeg Mills, which held licences to produce garments for the big US football and collegiate teams. When the company closed three years later, Treasarden was sufficiently experienced in graphics to secure a post with a firm licensed to produced Formula One merchandise. "I went from designing two-dimensional graphics to whole uniforms for the Formula One teams plus merchandise for Pepsi and the launch of the new Star Wars sequel," he says. "I and my team would come up with a concept like turning R2D2 into a slide projector and the marketing guys would pitch it to the client – so it was gruelling work with long hours and last-minute revisions."

His work was spotted by a sportswear recruiter and in 2001 he moved to Portland, Oregon, to work in Nike's soccer department then, five years later, the running section. "It's tough continually thinking of new ideas," he says.

"In London it was great – I'd study people on the street and on the Tube to see what was going on in culture and fashion," he says. "That's not so easy in Portland, but we travel extensively for inspiration – we went to Brazil ahead of the World Cup, for instance, and looked at high streets and galleries to get a feel for the culture."

The design department is governed by a strict schedule to tap into the sporting seasons. "A new project starts with a brief and then a design period of eight weeks or so when we're sketching and throwing ideas about. We then take our concepts to the product managers for a business review when they're tweaked or revised. Then we get the prototypes made up and face another business review when the kit is put on to models."

A degree in an art-related field is, he says, a vital qualification for a career in design – the London College of Fashion and Falmouth University both offer an honours degree in sportswear design. Almost as important is tenacity. "It's sometimes tempting to change course," he says. "I didn't always enjoy my first two jobs because of the long hours and stress of pitching ideas to clients and I often thought of jacking it in to become a web designer or something. But you need to stick at it and see changes as a chance for thinking creatively."

The thrill of seeing one's creations worn by sports stars is the reward of months of tension as designers attempt to sum up a nation, a sport and an era in a small swathe of fabric. And it is daunting convince the product managers of a brave new concept winning over the fans. Treasarden's first project for Nike was designing a new away kit for his own favourite team Arsenal and "suddenly" he says "the scale of the job really hit me. The final design had a colour gradient and lots of lines creating a moire pattern. It was very different to anything that had being used on football shirts before and I remember a few strong reactions from friends.

"People either loved it or hated it and I quickly learned that opinions run strong and deep when it comes to team kits, which makes the job as nerve racking as it is thrilling."