[Brandon Holley]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

My old team, 11, has a very recognizable presence at our events because of our competition uniforms. What we have done as a tradition is wear our yearly t-shirts, sweatshirts/hoodies on Thursday and sometimes Friday, and then wear our Pit Crew uniforms on Saturday. It allows us to have new and different t-shirts in each student's collection but then on Saturday we are all one big unit. The uniforms are purchased freshman year and last all 4 years (at 40 bucks a pop) and then t-shirts are cheap.

Some of the t-shirts are "I <3 Autonomous Mode", regular MORT t-shirts, and new for the year are shirts related to the team's pumpkin chunkin contests.

You can see all the different apparel in these pictures http://mort11.org/photos/2011mortrollout

We do something very similar on 125 (most likely because members of 125 that were on MORT in HS started the uniform tradition on 11). We find it works very well for us.


I'll point out a few examples I can think of where teams "mix it up" but stay within a certain zone. Right off the bat, TJ^2 and WildStang use tie-dye to great success. However, I've seen both teams mix up the tie-dye scheme slightly to give a different look, but still keep the "brand".

I've seen many teams utilize the same color scheme, but change the logo or slogan up on the uniform. I personally don't think theres any problem with this if you do it right. The first thing teams will identify you with is your team colors, so staying consistent is important. However, maybe one year you can invert your colors. Say you are usually black with bits of yellow, maybe you can be mostly yellow with bits of black, you get the idea.

I think you will find a good balance between "mixing it up" and "keeping the brand" if you are conscious of the choices you are making.

-Brando