Over the course of a year, countless hours have been spent developing these logos, and we are introducing them to you first as a series of new TeamLiquid merchandise. Shirts with individual logos are now available in the TeamLiquid store for $21.95, and a poster with all three logos is available for $12.95. These new logo versions are not replacing the original horse as the main logo of TeamLiquid – they are an extension of the TeamLiquid brand.

THE STORY BEHIND THE SHIRTS

The logos have gone through many stages to finally get to this point, and a lot of heart and soul has been put into these designs. It is one of the biggest projects we have ever worked on, and it's definitely some of the best work we will ever do. I'd like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone involved in this project. Lip the Pencilboy is the creator of these designs, and is arguably the most amazing artist I have ever worked with – which is saying a lot considering the impressive amount of talent on TeamLiquid. Disciple has also done a phenomenal job since he became our sales manager, not only staying on top of the countless logistical tasks involved in making these shirts available, but also playing a crucial part in the design process as well. Now, we can finally sit back and see the results of something we've worked so hard on for so long. We think that the end product is nothing short of amazing, and we hope that you will feel the same way.


The Spirit, Swarm, and Steel shirts all come with a predetermined color. We made deliberate color choices for each shirt, because we wanted each of the shirts to be instantly recognizable and symbolic in their own right. Our experience with the Liquid team shirts was that they gave the wearers a sense of identity, with the bright blue color directly representing support for the team. Just like the words TeamLiquid have become inseparable from that specific shade of blue, we want Spirit, Swarm, and Steel to become associated with their colors as well. This is not the precedent for all future shirts, and we will continue to allow color selection as we did for our ESPORTS shirts. But in this case, we feel that fixed colors are the right decision. The current designs are for our Winter Edition shirts, and we plan to release a summer edition with three new colors in 2012.


We paid a lot of attention to detail when making these, as we did not want them to be merely promotional shirts with cool artwork printed on them. For instance, the fabric is a carefully selected, soft and smooth preshrunk cotton that makes the shirts comfortable to wear. There is a small TL horse logo on the back of each shirt near the collar, and we've made sure that even the shirts' tags are distinctively TeamLiquid. These are just little touches, but we believe that such details add a lot of depth to these shirts. We want to make sure this attention to detail is standard in all of our future products, with our ultimate goal being that the TeamLiquid store gains a reputation for releasing products that go above and beyond what's just acceptable. We believe that TeamLiquid's users appreciate our focus on quality, and that we should try to live up to a high standard – whether it's our website, pro team, or store.






Alongside our shirts, we are also selling a poster that features Spirit, Swarm, and Steel together. The designs are slightly adjusted from the shirts so that they fit better as a trio. Additionally, in the process of improving our store, we internalized the printing and processing of posters. This allows us to offer better posters at a cheaper price. As a side effect, we have removed our old horse logo poster from the store, because we were not happy with its price compared to its quality. We will likely set up our own production process for the classic TeamLiquid horse poster and reintroduce it in the future at a lower price.

ELEVEN MONTHS IN THE MAKING

Eleven months ago we launched a t-shirt contest. We never announced a winner, but it was only because we wanted to keep our work under wraps until now.

On December 2nd sh0guni posted an idea that was the obvious winner in our minds. We informed sh0guni that he had won the contest shortly after. He has had to stay silent about it this whole time, and he is a hero for coming up with this idea. It was exactly the kind of inspiration that we were looking for, and we immediately started working on the idea to see if we could make it happen.

Though sh0guni's concept was great as it was, we saw there was potential for it to become something absolutely amazing. By the end of 2010, our staff had already started experimenting with the logos. Since then, they consistently tried to find the right style and art to make the concept work. Designers such as Silversky and Sekhmet kept things moving with fresh ideas throughout the process.





In February, Lip the Pencilboy became involved in the project. At the time, he was not a member of our staff and was working on Pony Tales together with disciple. When I first saw Lip's designs, my jaw hit the floor, and since then his work has only become better. Lip has become an amazing member of our staff since then, and while he has worked on many great projects, his biggest contribution so far is what you are looking at here.

In July, long time TeamLiquid staff member disciple was appointed as our sales manager, becoming responsible for every product that would be distributed through the TeamLiquid store. Since then, he and Lip have worked day and night on this project. They continued to refine and finalize the designs, tested shirt types, found the right manufacturers and planned every single detail of the shirt release.

Now it's November of 2011, on the eve of the MLG Finals, and we're finally ready to present these designs to you. Once again, we'd like to thank everyone involved for making this happen. We hope you like them!