New Uniforms

Hannah Avdalovic

Every team in the NBA league will be sporting Nike jerseys come next season, but according to media outlets, Sactown upheld the title as the league’s most tech-savvy team with their unique launch.

Using the Sacramento Kings + Golden 1 Center app, seven-year Kings guard Garrett Temple was seen rocking the new threads within an augmented reality component.

This offered fans the experience of posing next to the Kings legend while also being able to create a virtual, personalized uniforms for themselves.

Here’s what everyone is saying about the launch:

A List Daily shared insight regarding the squad's creative content. “Montoya said that for over a decade, the Kings have been pushing the boundaries on digital innovation, welcoming fans behind the curtain for enhanced and immersive experiences through this app, as well as inside the arena. The team has been at the forefront for many of activations that an average sports fan would not anticipate a franchise to make.”

Venture Beat commented on how technologically advanced the organization has been over the years. “The Sacramento Kings have embraced digital tech for a while. They say they were the first team to join Twitter, invest in a virtual reality company, host a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” with players, use Facebook Live to interview players, stream a game in VR internationally, and host a startup competition”

Forbes discussed the launch and its innovative nature. “The Sacramento Kings unveiled brand new uniforms for the 2016-17 season, featuring the team’s recently released logos. With a focus on using technology to enhance the fan experience, the Kings debuted the uniforms in an interactive and innovative way.”

Sport Techie weighed in on the immediacy that the launch offered fans. “While sports teams historically have unveiled uniforms with fashion shows and press conference, this method offers immediate distribution.”

Fans were equally as hyped, sharing the fun on twitter. Here are a few of the stand-out tweets from some of Sacramento’s proudest interacting with the app:

what-theyre-saying-kings-x-nike-uniforms

What They’re Saying: Kings x Nike Uniforms

Nikki Nicholson

Sacramento, Calif. — Today, the Sacramento Kings unveiled their new Nike uniforms with an augmented reality feature in their award-winning fan app, marking the launch of an eight-year global marketing and merchandise agreement between Nike and the National Basketball Association (NBA). 

Through the Kings + Golden 1 Center app, the team’s new Icon Edition uniform comes to life through an augmented reality platform built by industry leading developer Zappar. Fans will be able to interact with Kings veteran Garrett Temple, who wears the new uniforms for the first time and elaborates on the new features of the team’s on-court look. Fans can customize their own jersey, virtually ‘frame’ and ‘hang’ the new look on their wall and photograph themselves with Temple. Download the Kings + Golden 1 Center app to begin the augmented reality experience.

“Through technology, we’re able to put the latest in uniform design right in the hands of basketball fans around the world with an unprecedented amount of information and detail,” said Kings Chief Technology Officer Ryan Montoya. “The partnership between Nike and the NBA is rooted in creativity and transformative design and with our augmented reality experience, we’re building on that long-standing tradition.”

The new Nike purple Icon Edition and white Association Edition uniforms will be available for purchase this Fall, making the augmented reality experience the only way fan can experience the jersey until the beginning of the 2017-2018 season. Learn more about the uniforms at Kings.com/Nike.  

For over a decade, the Kings have been digital innovators bringing unique content and experiences to their fans. The organization’s legacy of embracing technology and creating immersive fan experiences has earned them numerous accolades including "The Most Innovative Company in Sports” by Fast Company. The Sacramento Kings were the first team to join Twitter, invest in a virtual reality company, host a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" with players, use Facebook Live to interview players, stream a game in virtual reality internationally, and host a startup competition.

In the last year alone, the organization has:

Download the Kings + Golden 1 Center app to begin the augmented reality experience at Kings.com/app.

Read more about the Sacramento Kings “Decade of Innovation” at Kings.com/Innovation.

sacramento-kings-use-augmented-reality-to-give-fans-first-look-at-new-uniforms-for-2017-2018

Sacramento Kings Use Augmented Reality to Give Fans First Look at New Uniforms for 2017-2018

Alex Kramers

A half dozen mannequins – draped in first- and second-round prototypes of adidas-manufactured uniforms – along with buckets of shredded paper and countless rolls of adhesive tape, flooded every corner of Kings Creative Director Ryan Brijs’ third-floor Sleep Train Arena office, transforming the executive workspace into a makeshift design and fashion studio.

With a team-wide push for innovation – on top of a looming, final deadline – Brijs and Kings VP of Brand Development Erica Rau shifted from tweaking pixilated patterns on computer screens to physically attaching and exhaustively reconfiguring printed paper strips on purple, black and white fabric.

“Initially, my office walls were covered with designs, but once we had some mannequins and prototypes, it really turned into this experiment lab where we mocked up patch-work on uniforms,” recalls Brijs with a chuckle. “I was printing out – the best that I could – stripes to go down the sides of the uniforms, so we were hanging up and taping paper to see what worked best and which color-ways we liked the most.”

A ferocious steam of ideas throughout the course of the entire two-and-a-half-year rebuilding initiative – as team personnel ranging from Kings President Chris Granger to Kings players shuttled in and out of the office and granted a first-hand perspective – culminated in the construction of a classic but strikingly revamped aesthetic.

“You can do a lot of things in the two-dimensional space, but when you see them in 3-D, there are a lot of aspects that don’t work,” says Rau. “We wanted to be true to our roots, but at the same time, our new era and our new mantra are all about modernizing and looking to be inventive wherever we can … We ultimately came to a place we all feel really excited about.”

Although Kings decision-makers, in continued collaboration with Hattiesburg, Miss.-based branding agency RARE Design, explored hundreds of elaborate designs – toying with pinstripes, colors outside of the primary palate and caricatures of royal sashes – rather than needlessly departing from the boundaries of identity, gravitated toward a motif that serves as a fine-tuned extension of its core parameters.

“We’re not doing our jobs unless we push the limits,” says Kings Chief Marketing Officer Ben Gumpert. “We wanted to make a bold and very fitting statement for who we are as a franchise, who we are as a city and who we are as a team, but we also wanted to make sure we were still true to ourselves. We didn’t want to be in a position where we pushed so far it almost left from that very important foundation and connection we have.”

For Founder and Principal of RARE Design Rodney Richardson, the uniform set’s distinctive visual elements bring an iconic ideology to the surface in a reimagined capacity, neatly balancing historic cues with contemporary style.

“Sometimes, teams want a complete departure from their past, but other teams have sometimes departed a little too much and want to go back,” says Richardson. “I think what the team realized throughout this project is that they wanted to reconnect this great heritage – to tie in heritage of the past couple of decades – and then (find) how it blends into the true comprehensive story of the Kings and how it projects forward.”

Inspired by design elements from as many as four retro uniforms – from the mid-1970s Kansas City era to stylistic, asymmetrical cuts prominent in the early 2000s – the new looks provide subtle yet intricate nods to the franchise’s longstanding legacy.

“We wanted to look through our jersey anthology, so to speak, and really understand … (if) there are elements that maybe existed before and resonate with who we are again,” says Gumpert. “If you look at our team history, there were pivotal times when we had double-striping down the side, so we brought forth that element with a modernized take.”

“Some of the striping in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s – right before the rebrand in ’94 – were some of the other eras we wanted to pull from and to take forward in our concept of the logo rebrand,” adds Brijs. “The late Kansas City years and the first uniform in 1985-86 had a similar striping.”

At the same time, the organization was careful to not directly replicate earlier-period looks or inadvertently shift backward in exploring an assortment of options.

“We tried ‘Sacramento’ across the chest – and we know fans are really passionate about our city – but with the new typeface, it just became so cramped and condensed,” he says. “It almost took us back to where we’d been before. We looked at ‘Sactown’ and ultimately went with the city’s acronym, ‘SAC.’”

“Vlade talked a lot about his love for the city, the fanbase and team pride,” says Gumpert. “He talked about walking out of the tunnel, how meaningful it is and how he remembers each and every game. Those three letters represent Sacramento, and he absolutely loves both how simple and bold it is.”

The depth of the organization’s commitment to The New Era of Proud extends from prominent emblems on the front of the uniforms to the concealed baby-blue inside collar and tucked-away lower hem tagline, which hide intricate identifiers on parts of the fabric that aren’t visible on the highest-definition TV broadcasts.

“Baby blue is such a special color for this team – it’s one of those heartbeat colors that every fan remembers,” says Richardson. “We looked at whether it should take a larger place throughout the entire identity, but (even though) it’s not a primary color moving forward, it’s one of those heart-and-soul pieces that’s part of the connection with core fans. So the details are things only people who are the closest to the franchise will connect with and know what it means.”

A more conspicuous but nonetheless deliberately-understated aspect of the global uniform is the introduction of the unique, interlocking ‘S’ pattern, which inadvertently came to symbolize a number of fundamental ideologies.

“We wanted something that encompassed Sacramento, so the ‘S’ comes from the Sacramento city flag, which is representative of the rivers,” says Brijs.
“When it started to look like a chain, which is a symbol of strength, we were digging it because, for us, it represents what our fans did, which is link and come together in a really strong way to fight for this team,” adds Rau.

The idea of the pattern being more than decorative, but profoundly metaphorical, once again resonated strongly with Sacramento’s VP of basketball operations and general manager.

“When you hear Vlade talk about togetherness and teamwork, you can see how the same interlocking elements are very much a part of it,” says Gumpert. “It’s the connection our team needs to have with the community and understanding we’re all in this together.

Incorporating a heralding lion in place of the center crown and an asymmetrical stripe on the left side, the look functions as a definitive extension of the team’s international focus.

“Having strength and being even more modern is adding a single stripe and pushing the limits,” says Gumpert. “We talk about growing the game of basketball and ensuring it’s the premier sport of the 21st century, so the black jersey – with the global crest at the center – certainly represents that mission.”

Prior to putting on each of the new uniforms to simulate dunks and jumpers as part of the team’s first photoshoot, Willie Cauley-Stein – an inquisitive second-year big man who has a passion for art and design – studied the overt embellishments and theorized which angles and aspects would be electrified by zoomed-in cameras.

“Right away, he was keying in on various elements, asking, ‘What’s that pattern about? That looks clean and that looks modern,’” recalls Gumpert. “If you look back to his first press conference, someone asked him, ‘What do you think about being in Sac?’ He said, ‘I know I look good in purple.’ We asked him about it, and he remembered exactly what he said. So when he put on the uniform, he was excited and joking about it.”

“He liked all of them, but I’m pretty sure his favorite was the global uniform,” recalls Brijs. “He thought it was really cool and clean, and he looked fantastic in it. He was stoked during the photography, and even more so as he got to try the different jerseys on and really understand he’s representing our city by wearing them.”

Much like the ongoing revitalization and transformation of Sacramento, the new uniforms introduce a strong foundation the organization plans to further enhance as it embraces the newly-launched era of Kings basketball in The River City.

“We’re going to continue to look at how to evolve the story,” says Gumpert. “We’re a community that continues to grow, that continues to show the world what Sacramento is about. We’ll continue to think about how we can best show who we are and what we represent – whether it’s in our uniforms or everything else we do.”

New Uniforms

What They’re Saying: Kings x Nike Uniforms

Sacramento Kings Use Augmented Reality to Give Fans First Look at New Uniforms for 2017-2018

Making Of: Kings New Uniforms

2016-17 Sacramento Kings Uniforms