[Small programming note before we begin: Phil will have a full review of the Rockies’ new City Connect unis Monday morning.]

Last week, Uni Watch reader and graphic designer Austin Chen of Equipt Studios reached out to me, sharing his new project: designing the kits for USL League Two side West Seattle Junction and their new sister club in the USLW, West Seattle Rhodies. This isn’t the first time Austin’s been featured on this site — in fact, Austin designed the Uni Watch soccer jerseys that were formerly available for purchase, and also wrote a post for the site.

We spoke for about 45 minutes over Zoom on Thursday evening. A full transcript of our conversation will be available later today. But now, let’s take a look at Austin’s kits.

West Seattle Rhodies

The Rhodies — short for Rhododendrons, which is Washington’s state flower — are an expansion team in USLW. Austin was initially brought in to design just their kits, but ended up designing Junction’s as well. Austin, who didn’t design the crest, did say he was “thrilled” when he saw it. “It’s a very strong logo, and I knew I’d be able to do something with that,” he told me. The rhododendron base of the crest has become the linchpin of his designs for the Rhodies.

The club’s home kit, dubbed the Moonflower Kit, is primarily white (but more on that in a moment) with pink accents. A light blue rhododendron motif serves as the jersey’s sublimated element. Austin said that his primary goal with the Moonflower Kit was “taking that [rhododendron] and kind of repeating it into a pattern and exploring it in different scales.” The Moonflower Kit has proven popular — it actually sold out before it was even officially announced. “They had an event for season ticket holders or sponsors, this kind of pre-season kickoff gala, and they had a few on display and they took preorders, and there were so many preorders that they actually sold through all of the fan allotment before they announced it on social media. So that’s pretty fun, I’m pretty proud of that,” Austin said.

As for the color scheme, I’ll defer to Austin: “The color scheme is really unique. Working with that badge, when you see it from afar, certainly when you see it on social media as an icon, it looks like white with pink details. That’s actually not white, it’s an off-white with a little bit of a blue tint. The kit looks kind-of off-white blue, that’s actually the same shade from that crest.”

The club’s away kit, named the Lady Luck Kit, is pink with a rhododendron motif tessellated on the sleeves, but vanishing as they reach the shoulders. Austin told me, “I knew I wanted to do something floral and what I ended up getting drawn to was their particular execution of the rhododendron is almost like a hexagon, and a hexagon lends itself really naturally to being tessellated.” He went on to say, “We use that pretty traditionally on the sleeves just to add a little bit of texture and to differentiate it from the plain torso.”

West Seattle Junction

Austin said that, upon getting the Junction job, he was “ecstatic” but that “I was also a little, I wouldn’t say there was trepidation, but I was conscious that they had a good, successful season in terms of establishing their brand identity. They had worked with Hummel and they had done a map kit. I’m sure you’re familiar, in the soccer space, just having a map of the hometown across the chest — it’s divisive. It’s obviously very popular with fans, but it’s getting to the point where so many teams are doing that. … So I knew with them doing a map kit in the first season, it was like ‘Man, that’s gonna be tough to follow up on,’ because how do you get more into the hearts of locals than literally putting where you live on your shirt?”

The Junction’s home kit, dubbed the Admiral Kit, is primarily white with navy elements, including a navy stripe around the hemline. A light grey X motif is sublimated beneath the other elements, evoking the Junction’s crest. The X radiates from the center of the jersey. “With Junction having such a unique logo I knew I wanted to honor that in some way. Because that’s their strength, that’s their point of differentiation,” he told me.

He went on: “Taking that concept and kind of expanding it, going ‘alright, let’s have it radiating from the center of the chest. Let’s have it fading out so it’s not too much, let’s make it tonal, let’s make it grey and white.'”

Austin also told me that he wanted to add navy accents to “as many places as possible” to (in his words) “not fall into the trap of a Tottenham, where it’s just a white jersey every year and that’s it.”

The Harbor Kit is probably my favorite of the bunch (I told Austin as much during our interview). Adopting a throwback, retro aesthetic, vertical royal blue and navy blue stripes are separated by narrow white ones. The shades of blue are the same as those featured in Junction’s crest.

“[The Junction’s] badge has two shades of blue, a navy blue and a slightly more royal blue. I found that royal blue wasn’t quite bright enough to be an accent color, but if you put those side-by-side, they were complementary, especially when you split them up with white,” Austin told me. “Without that white there, it kind of becomes muddy, because there’s not that much contrast, but that white helps to differentiate between the two. It became very evident that this would fit with the retro aesthetic.”

Austin said that he received feedback from the team, including players, who wanted something with “retro vibes.” Austin and the club originally planned to have sleeve stripes, evoking Kappa’s kits of the 1980s and ’90s, but he said “We did have to pare that back a bit, at the club’s request. They were worried it was too busy. Especially with the sponsors; this happens with Adidas sometimes, they have the full three stripes, but then they have to break it up so there’s a spot for patches, that’s the situation we found ourselves in. It was actually a pretty last-minute decision, they decided ‘let’s just do plain sleeves.'”

Finally, we have the City Light Kit, which is nearly identical for both clubs, but with differences reflecting the clubs’ “similar but separate” identities. Austin explains: “They are, I would say, brands that are cohesive, but they’ve been very smart about how they want to keep things similar but separate.”

The Rhodies’ City Light Kit features the sublimated rhododendron featured on their other kits, while Junction’s has the sublimated X from the Admiral Kit. Both clubs have greyscale club badges. The sleeve elements on both kits are Rhodies’ shade of pink. “They very firmly wanted the men’s team to support the women’s team. It wasn’t anything forced, it’s part of the club culture, the women’s team hasn’t even kicked off yet, but the men’s team have been…along with their decisions like ‘hey we want this to be throwback-y, hey we want this to be retro,’ they said ‘we also want to have something that honors Rhodies, honors our sisters.’” Said Austin.

“At one point there was a pink third kit in contention for Junction, and I think they decided it was a little bit too much, ” he continued. “‘We don’t want to be all-in on the pink, but we did want pink and magenta nods.’”

West Seattle Junction’s first match of the USL2 season will be on the road, against Tacoma Stars, on May 17th. The Rhodies will kick off their inaugural campaign at home against Salmon Bay FC on May 18th.

More pics of all of the Junction and Rhodies’ kits are below.