How a 12-person studio in Melbourne helped design the basketball jerseys for the Olympic Dream Team

“Take any opportunity presented to you,” says Melbournian Andy Sargent.

Sargent has taken a few opportunities in his career, one of which culminated in the most significant job for his design studio yet. Through a brand partnership with Nike, Sargent’s studio SouthSouthWest was tasked with designing part of the jerseys for the US, Spanish and Brazilian Olympic basketball teams.

The Fitzroy-based design studio created the typography for the jerseys, which will be worn at the Rio Olympic Games by the North American basketball ‘Dream Team’, including greats such as Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, reports Fairfax.

In creating the typography, Sargent told SmartCompany each design was made with the particular country in mind.

“For USA’s typeface, we took a lot of inspiration from the collegiate system, which likes a strong and bold typeface. There is definitely an element of confidence and domination in that one,” Sargent says.

“For the Spanish jerseys, we gave it a lot more flow, reminiscent of the Mediterranean.”

Sargent is one of the two founders of SouthSouthWest, which was established just over nine years ago. Together with co-founder, Jonathan Price, he employs 10 other people in the agency, which has annual revenue of $3 million.

The agency has a partnership with global sports brand Nike, which is the reason for the studio’s Olympic assignment.

“Compared to other projects we’ve done with Nike, this one is probably 10 percent of the scale. Though it’s lesser value, it’s a lot more significant,” Sargent says.

“With these large global brand platforms, you have to earn the trust to get projects like this.”

The project was initialised back in 2014, and took three months from start to finish. The designs then had to go through rigorous physical product testing, including various camera angles to ensure the readability of the typeface.

Photographer: Ben Clement

SouthSouthWest began working with Nike in 2010, and Sargent says the partnership has been “very rewarding”.

“Nike provides a lot of context and direction for its projects, they have exceptionally high standards but exceptionally high input,” Sargent says.

“This is somewhat unusual to see from clients, but it’s refreshing to work on new products where there’s been a huge amount of research done.”

Prior to the Olympic jersey project, Sargent’s agency has worked with Nike on its Nike Women Victory Tour, which inspired over 200,000 women to undertake half-marathons. SouthSouthWest designed every element of the tour, from t-shirts to jewellery designed for finishers.

SouthSouthWest set its sights internationally recently, and has been established in the US for the past five years. The company is looking to set up a permanent San Francisco office to continue dealing with its west coast clients, which Sargent says account for 50% of the agency’s business.

“From an Australian perspective, we find that our time zone relationship with the West Coast is very advantageous, it’s very useful for exporting skills and creativity,” Sargent says.

“Outside of Nike, the biggest brand we’ve worked with is Google, we really enjoy working with large innovative brands,” Sargent says.

“We’ve also done a lot of work with startups, both in Australia and the US.”

Sargent says the number one issue he sees with design for startups is weak designs in the company’s early stages.

“Too often a design gets developed for a company’s MVP [minimum viable product] that’s not quite as strong as it should be,” Sargent says.

Echoing his sentiments about opportunities, Sargent says businesses should treat any project “regardless of scale” as “super important” to the client.

“The key thing with any project is understanding the strategic intent behind it,” he says.