Can an AI design the ultimate USMNT kit?
Back in May, the supposed kits for the US Men’s National Team for their upcoming World Cup run in Qatar were leaked, much to the broad dismay of the fan base.
The design for the World Cup jersey is always significant; the indelible memories each run brings are tied up in the jerseys, each one bringing back the moments of greatness or disappointment. In any poll about the best kit designs for the USMNT, the World Cup jerseys always reign supreme. The Waldos, the Rocket Pops, even the sashes retain an element of magic and stand out in any crowd.
For this reason, the underwhelming leaked jerseys from Nike caused disappointment. They were bland and clearly designed from a template, not capturing the distinctive spirit of the national team.
Every time a kit is released, there are multiple fan kits that are produced. They get a lot of traction online, and most fans seems to agree that they are an upgrade on the actual product. My question is, can a computer do it better?
Enter Dall-E
By now, everyone has seen the 9 picture grids created by Dall-E “Mini”, the clever AI that turns text into pictures of pretty much anything you can think of. Some of the prompts are humorous, or thought provoking, or just plain weird.
What piqued my interest was this twitter reply to Derek Guy pointing out how well Dall-E could ape certain fashion styles.
These are done with Dall E 2, and as such are far more advanced than what you’ll normally see floating around that is made by Dall E mini. It’s remarkable how well the AI captures the “soul” of both Gucci and McDonalds in a collaboration that seems like it could genuinely be a real thing.
While I may not be a fashion designer, I’m certainly able to use a program that copies them shamelessly. Using a variety of seeds, I’ve created “alternate universe” USMNT kits that are much different than what we’ve come to expect. The seeds included designers/brands such as but not limited to:
- Ralph Lauren
- Junya Watanabe
- Issa Mayake
- Supreme
- Bathing Ape
- and more
Using a combination of the Dall-E output and a custom kit creator I found online, I found the most interesting of all the outputs and created 12 custom kits from them. I may expand further — it’s certainly fascinating to see all the different ways the engine can churn out various striped elements. It’s also interesting to see how much the Japanese designer input produced jerseys that mostly resembled what the Japanese national team wears.
Without further ado, here are the 12:
They may not be perfect, and the AI can do some weird things at times, but there’s no denying they are interesting. The AI inherently breaks some rules, symmetry in particular, but follows some others. I did have to do some balancing, or fixing where things got really weird (the AI does not handle badges and crests well at all), but in the end as much as possible I left the “vision” intact.
I’m pretty happy with how it turned out — I think any one of these kits would be more distinctive and interesting than what we’ve seen from Nike so far. While it would be risky to create something like this, soccer itself is a game of risk and reward. Taking big chances is the only way to make fun things happen.
The Showdown:
If you’ve read this far, first and foremost thank you! Second, please go to my Twitter @thundering165 where I will be hosting multiple polls to determine the best options of the 12 kits. I’d like to see what design elements and approaches are the most popular among the real life fans of the USMNT.
