Interview: FIFA Kit Creator Competition Admin DMFroomer Reveals Pathway from Fan Designer to Industry Impact

In an exclusive interview with Footy Headlines, Drake (DMFroomer), the Kit Creator Competition Admin, shares his journey from sketching UCLA football uniforms to overseeing a thriving global community of football kit designers. The innovative competition system not only showcases emerging talent but has evolved to offer tangible rewards, including professional collaborations with clubs like SD Huesca and UE Rubí.

Footy Headlines: Before we dive into the competitions, could you tell our readers a bit about yourself? How did you get involved with football kit design and eventually become a Kit Creator Competition Admin?

DMFroomer: I'd have to say my football kit design origin is a rather unorthodox one. I'm actually an American, and grew up an American football and basketball fan, prominently supporting my father's UCLA Bruins. My love for sports apparel design spawned from this passion.

I'm pretty sure I can pinpoint the days of my first sketches. They came after UCLA wore their first tradition-breaking uniform, an all-white getup, without their iconic UCLA shoulder stripe. We got pounded in it 50-0 by crosstown rival the USC Trojans. I remember thinking I can design a better all-white UCLA uniform than that. And I did... Well I think so, at least. So then I designed more UCLA uniform concepts. Then I designed more American football uniforms for other teams. It became my own personal form of creative expression. I even revisited these UCLA concepts over a decade later for a project that implemented them into the College Football Revamped mod, a mod of NCAA Football 14.

In the early 2010s, I had a budding interest in association football. I casually supported the German National Team for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups since my late mother was born and raised in Germany, in the small, beautiful town of Bernkastel-Kues. Thomas Müller, Miroslav Klose, and Philipp Lahm quickly became my favorite players, so I naturally became a Bayern fan around the end of the noughties.

My hometown of Portland also had our beloved Timbers and Thorns expand into the MLS and the NWSL respectively around this time, and through one of my father's business partnerships with one of their sponsors, we frequently got free tickets to their matches. Between 2013 and 2015, I watched my beloved Bayern, Germany, Timbers, and Thorns all win major titles, cementing my love for the game, instilling an addiction to the highs of footballing glory.

The more I learned about association football, the more I became passionate about football kit design, and learning more about it. It's an entirely different animal to that of American football uniform design. Some American football teams wear the same uniforms every year, with only minor annual tweaks, and usually sport graphics, stripes, and patterns over the shoulder and/or around the sleeve.

My first kit concept dates back to the spring of 2014, a concept kit for my local Timbers. I sketched out kits on paper until December 2017, when I discovered the original PES Master Kit Creator. It was an easier tool to use than Photoshop, so that's why I gravitated towards it. As years went by, the Creators morphed into what they are today, and became a legitimate tool for aspiring kit designers. I've designed about 1000 kits with them since 2017.

More than 700 designers entered the Mexico Kit Competition run earlier this month

In 2020, I reached out to the PES Master account about featuring my designs on their social media accounts, in order to show off the capabilities of the PES Kit Creator. The individual I was reaching out to would actually be the person known as Admin (Pat), an owner and administrator of the Kit Creators. At the beginning of our working partnership, I also beta-tested site features and provided feedback to Admin.

We worked together to convert the Creators from just a video game mod tool into a legitimate amateur football kit design tool. And then, we worked together to build a community. When the Unofficial FIFA Kit Creator released back in late 2020, we created a layout for the Showcase, a public gallery of kit designs users could share designs and feedback between each other. One of these new features became our kit design competitions, a core part of our community.

St. Patrick's Day Kit Design Competition

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Pat, the main Admin, ran a few of these competitions sporadically until late 2021, when the no longer had the time to run them alone. This was when they invited me to be an official member of the Kit Creator team as the Competition Administrator.

In the Puma Betis competition, designers were challenged to create a Puma Betis shirt following rumors of a possible brand switch

Thanks for sharing that really very extensive background. For those who might not be familiar, can you explain what Kit Creator competitions are and how they've evolved?

The Kit Creator competitions are kit design competitions that take place on the Unofficial FIFA/EAFC Kit Creator Showcase page. They last two weeks each, split between a week of submissions and a week of voting. New competitions take place every week, so there's always one competition in the submission phase, and one in the voting phase. Each competition requires designers to follow a specific theme and ruleset. These are typically inspired by current kit trends.

In the beginning, for each competition, Admin and I would hand pick a set of submitted designs for people to vote from as a whole. We didn't really like this method, as it didn't really allow our community to narrow the whole set down to the one they collectively liked best. We later adopted a cup-style voting format, which put voting solely into the hands of the community.

And now we even offer prizes for some of the competitions. For all our prize competitions, we provide the winner with a free year of our Plus Premium membership. These are our Randomizer, Wallpaper, Generations, and Super Competitions. Our Randomizer competitions focus on pairing random clubs and brands. We let the winner put a club of choice up for selection in a future Randomizer competition. For our Wallpaper competitions, our talented graphic design partner LFCDZN11 creates stunning renderings of the winning designs in action. Our Generations Competitions focus on themes inspired by football's rich kit history, and the winner recieves a £50 voucher to kit shop and our partner NI CLASICO. And for our Super Competitions, made possible by Footy Headlines and Kitbag, winners receive a free voucher to the latter for a football shirt of choice.

The first special classic competition run in partnership with the smaller independent store NI CLASICO was all about that classic lace collar

Anyone who wishes to participate in our competitions can do so on the unofficial FIFA/EAFC Showcase competition page. You just have to design a kit that follows the weekly ruleset, save it, and submit it on that week’s competition page. You can also join our public Discord server, and take part in our talented design community.

What goes into planning a successful kit design competition?

Well I think the success of each competition is defined by submission count, overall design quality, and minimization of errors on my behalf. I think to get the most success out of each competition, an interesting design theme needs to be picked. I’ve noticed the competitions with the most submissions are the ones that have a moderate amount of rules to follow, such as “only this brand/club is allowed” or “only these colors are allowed.” If I implement too many rules, it can intimidate designers and deter them from submitting. However, if I don’t implement enough of a ruleset, many designers may not submit due to not feeling challenged enough. It’s all about striking a balance. While no theme is perfect for every user, there are still ones that are better for our community as a whole. Sometimes that's a challenge. Some weeks I have very little idea what competition I want to run the next week, other times there's four or more at a time I want to run.

Football kit concepts created by Drake

I also have to make sure my work on the competitions is clear and accurate. I put out a new competition theme every week, and the prompts I write need to properly convey what designers should be submitting. Once those designs are all submitted, I need to manually sift through each submission. I approve the ones that follow the competition rules and disapprove the ones that don’t. If I make an error anywhere in the process, one or many of our designers will be negatively affected.

We've seen some amazing designs come through these competitions. What trends have you noticed in recent winning entries?

I honestly have to say there isn't much in common between all our winning entries. They all fluctuate stylistically from classic to modern, grungy to elegant, minimalist to maximalist. I think that’s great, no single design style is neglected or prioritized within our community. Anyone can implement their style into a competition-winning kit.

I notice the one thing in common with each of them is that every element of their designs appear deliberate and purposeful. I'm not often left wondering why the winning designs won, they're each well-crafted.

Do you see a relationship between these Creator designs and what manufacturers actually produce?

It really depends on the creator. A lot of creators use a realistic design style that reflects current kit design trends. However, other creators deviate with styles I don't think I'll ever see on a football pitch, but in a good way. It just shows how inventive our community can be. Hopefully kit manufacturers look to us some day for inspiration the way we look to them.

For aspiring designers wanting to enter these competitions, what advice would you give?

To any aspiring competitors, my advice would be to start competing as soon as possible, and don't get discouraged if your kits don't advance far in the voting, it happens to our best designers. Keep competing, hone your craft, and develop your own design style. Design every kit with full effort and deliberate attention to detail. Have a reason for each element that goes into your design, and constantly ask yourself, “Does what I'm about to do make sense for the design I'm trying to make.” For example, you probably shouldn't pair a grungy pattern with a classy polo collar. Also, familiarize yourself with every tool on the Kit Creator page. Play around with every tool at your disposal. This will make you a better designer and competitor.

What's next for Kit Creator competitions? Are there any exciting challenges on the horizon?

Well there are a lot of exciting challenges coming for our competition participants. We will continue to run our competitions on a weekly basis, with themes that constantly change and challenge our design community. Our partnership with Footy Headlines and Kitbag continues, so we're putting on six more Super Competitions this coming year, each with a free football shirt up for grabs. We are still partnered with NI CLASICO to put on two more Generations competitions. You can stay updated on all Kit Creator news on the Showcases, or on our Discord server.

There have been some irregular voting patterns recently that have been discovered and made public. Does it make you sad that someone tried to cheat and is it satisfying that they were caught?

Yes, there was one prominent creator in our community that comes to mind, I'm not going to state their name. They basically used multiple accounts to manipulate voting in order to unjustly win many of our competitions. It left me and a lot of our community feeling a sense of betrayal.

The Black Mexico Kit competition saw leyalmigthy earning the title

Admin and I couldn't just let it slide, we have a duty to our community to maintain the integrity of our competitions. That's why we acted quickly and rescinded all the titles they cheated in. We also recently implemented new programs, protocols, and procedures that will better prevent this kind of malevolence in the future.

If you could dream big, what would be your ultimate dream for a Kit Creator competition? Would teaming up with a professional club be the goal?

Teaming up with professional clubs remains a goal of ours, like when we partnered with SD Huesca and UE Rubí. But it's not the only goal, I would like to see us partner with other creators in the football content creator space, like when we partnered with Sparring DK.

I think the main goal is to keep the site growing. I hope we continue to grow our community, our competitions, and our resources for our designers. I hope we can do this for many more years.

Are there any features you currently would like to see in the competition format? Is there anything specific you would love to see implemented to improve the competitions?

I feel the competitions are fairly streamlined, at the moment. I think our competition format is currently stable, but may need to be modified if our submission tallies keep growing.

I’d also love to implement some form of competition league format, where competition results are tallied across a period of time, with the winner being crowned at the end of it. That, and a duel system where designers can challenge each other and put their kits up for a vote. Maybe even a W-L record could be recorded. These are just ideas at the moment, this isn't me confirming that these will be future features. But we may consider implementing them if we get enough positive feedback.

What's your personal favorite kit design of all time, and has that influenced how you evaluate competition entries?

Drake's favorite kit is Portland Timbers' 2013 home shirt, a design not liked by everyone

My favorite kit of all time is the Portland Timbers 2013 home kit. To me, it's a great representation of Oregon's identity, being a state built by the lumber industry. It has a real lumberjack vibe to it. And 2013 was the year I went to my first Timbers match, so there's some sentimental value to it too. I have a long-sleeved authentic version of it in my kit collection.

Liverpool Dazzle Ferry kit by Sithuralom

As for my favorite kit from the community, I'd say Sithuralom's Liverpool Dazzle Ferry kit. It’s an excellent display of color theory knowledge, and it's a design with clear inspiration from the club and community.

In my opinion, the best designs embody the identity of their club/country and community. My main goal when voting in competitions is to pick the kits that are designed with deliberate attention to detail, and their ability to associate with their team.

What's your favorite competition you conducted?

The winning designs of Drake's two favorite competitions - designed by CCDesigns™ (Cetlci) and Marciozhugo (Croatia)

I'd have to say I loved our Polish A T*rd competition, and World Cup Mania I: Modernize a Classic. I love referring to classic kits in my everyday kit design and asking “how can I liven this up, and show a modern audience what made this kit great in the first place, or why it had so much potential.” It's interesting to see how others reinterpret those kits, and the results did not disappoint.

What do you love most about the kit design community and your role in it?

I just love that our community exists in the first place, with thousands of people propping it up. Years ago, I never dreamed this could even exist. It's a testament to the passion and talent of our community. Some of the designs that I see come out of it are the best I've ever seen. Even some designs I don't like show off innovative ideas, so that pleases me as well. I'm happy I get to be an influential servant to this community and am excited to help it evolve further.

Where can people reach out to you?

I can be reached on the Kit Creator Showcase via messages at DMFroomer, and on Discord at username dmfroomer. You can ask me questions and suggest new competition themes and ideas.

Thanks to Footy Headlines for hosting me, and for their efforts in their partnership with the Kit Creators. And thanks to all our supporters. We wouldn't be where we are without you.

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Have you ever entered a FIFA Kit Creator competition? Should brands try to bring popular concept kits to life? Let us know in the comments below, and check out the FIFA Kit Creator Competition Page to create and submit your own kit design for one of the next competitions.