Bloomsday
Merch 2023
The Story
The Lilac Bloomsday 12k Race in Spokane Washington, at the time of writing this, is one of the top 75 largest running events in the world (at its peak I believe it was top 10 in the world and top 2 in the USA)! Drawing in tens of thousands of participants every year, this iconic race brings in runners from all over the globe to pound pavement through downtown Spokane, roughly following the Spokane River north, crossing paths with Centennial Trail, and then back around again to finish on the iconic Monroe Street Bridge.
For many years now Bloomsday has held a competition in which anyone can submit designs for the ever-popular Bloomsday Finisher Shirt. A shirt that is unimaginably iconic every year to local participants and beyond. The first few days after Bloomsday you can hardly look out your front window without seeing a gaggle of runners wearing their cotton trophies with pride. As they should! As a multi-time Bloomsday participant myself, I cherish my Bloomsday shirts above just about any other shirt I have, including the one I received from my first full marathon. There is just something special about Bloomsday and their shirts!
For many years now Bloomsday has held a competition in which anyone can submit designs for the ever-popular Bloomsday Finisher Shirt. A shirt that is unimaginably iconic every year to local participants and beyond. The first few days after Bloomsday you can hardly look out your front window without seeing a gaggle of runners wearing their cotton trophies with pride. As they should! As a multi-time Bloomsday participant myself, I cherish my Bloomsday shirts above just about any other shirt I have, including the one I received from my first full marathon. There is just something special about Bloomsday and their shirts!
In the summer of 2022, I submitted multiple designs in hopes that my work would grace the torsos of thousands around the world. Per the Bloomsday website, they inform the winner of the contest in November, and I was very excited to receive that call.
It never came.
To be honest I was not overly surprised, I have faith in my work, and I enjoy what I do. I was however pretty positive that I was also going up against the best of the best in the Spokane area, and there we likely more designs submitted than I could even imagine. I told myself I would just keep on trying and ultimately moved on into December with my dignity intact!
Okay, that last part might not be true, instead, I used the (lack of) news to channel my creativity into a series of race-themed designs from some of my favorite races from the past year. I may have also shamelessly tagged all of the races in my posts of these designs...but more on that later.
Although the call never came in November I did receive an Instagram DM in December informing me that one of my shirt submissions had been chosen to be used for the official 2023 Bloomsday Finisher Medal. This medal is something participants have the opportunity to purchase as an add-on when signing up for the race, or while supplies last in their online shop. To say I was excited would be an understatement. That's not all though! Since I shamelessly tagged Bloomsday in any design I made remotely related to their race, the design I had made in December and posted to my profile was to be used as a sticker design they would sell on their site and at the expo before the race (told you we would come back to that).
Not one, but two of my designs would be forever linked to one of the largest and most iconic events my city has to offer, and I couldn't have been, and still to this day can be, any happier.
It never came.
To be honest I was not overly surprised, I have faith in my work, and I enjoy what I do. I was however pretty positive that I was also going up against the best of the best in the Spokane area, and there we likely more designs submitted than I could even imagine. I told myself I would just keep on trying and ultimately moved on into December with my dignity intact!
Okay, that last part might not be true, instead, I used the (lack of) news to channel my creativity into a series of race-themed designs from some of my favorite races from the past year. I may have also shamelessly tagged all of the races in my posts of these designs...but more on that later.
Although the call never came in November I did receive an Instagram DM in December informing me that one of my shirt submissions had been chosen to be used for the official 2023 Bloomsday Finisher Medal. This medal is something participants have the opportunity to purchase as an add-on when signing up for the race, or while supplies last in their online shop. To say I was excited would be an understatement. That's not all though! Since I shamelessly tagged Bloomsday in any design I made remotely related to their race, the design I had made in December and posted to my profile was to be used as a sticker design they would sell on their site and at the expo before the race (told you we would come back to that).
Not one, but two of my designs would be forever linked to one of the largest and most iconic events my city has to offer, and I couldn't have been, and still to this day can be, any happier.
The Medal
The medal design, which started as a shirt design, is one of my all-time favorite designs I have done regardless of its use. Believe it or not, I came up with this design around 2020, two years before its use, I just never found the right use for it.
The design itself is a simplistic geometric representation of two of Spokane's most iconic landmarks. The Great Northern Clocktower, and the Spokane Pavilion. It is meant to look almost like a stained glass design boiled down to extremely simple shapes.
The colors of the design have been many, but for the final use, I decided on two shades of lilac to represent Spokane's official flower, as well as the full name of the Lilac Bloomsday Run. The blue of the sky and the green of the grass are colors inspired by Spokane's official flag which was updated and adopted in 2021, designed by another local designer, Derek Landers.
The outside ring of the design is decorated with multiple flowers, simplistic renditions of lilac pedals themselves, and then of course the details of the race in the same shades of lilac used in the main design.
The design itself is a simplistic geometric representation of two of Spokane's most iconic landmarks. The Great Northern Clocktower, and the Spokane Pavilion. It is meant to look almost like a stained glass design boiled down to extremely simple shapes.
The colors of the design have been many, but for the final use, I decided on two shades of lilac to represent Spokane's official flower, as well as the full name of the Lilac Bloomsday Run. The blue of the sky and the green of the grass are colors inspired by Spokane's official flag which was updated and adopted in 2021, designed by another local designer, Derek Landers.
The outside ring of the design is decorated with multiple flowers, simplistic renditions of lilac pedals themselves, and then of course the details of the race in the same shades of lilac used in the main design.
Pavilion and Clocktower
Image by Mac Mintaka from Pixabay
Spokane City Flag
The Sticker
The sticker was, as I stated previously, from a series of race-themed designs I did. Very simple designs in which I broke down the course of the races into a much simpler form shown as a white outline and laid it over some sort of icon or design that I had made. For the Bloomsday design the icon resting behind the course outline is that of the Doomsday Hill Vulture. If you are not familiar with the Bloomsday Vulture it is a bit hard to hammer home the idea. Ultimately though it is a man in a giant vulture suit at the top of the biggest climb in the race, a 0.72-mile stretch of hill that rises an average of 6.5% for a total elevation climb of around 140 feet. The vulture stands near the top of the hill to...encourage...scare...humor...(maybe all of the above) runners as they enter the last 2 miles of the race. The colors for the sticker were of course purple to represent the lilacs of Spokane and Bloomsday.
