From crafting kits for football video games to landing on the social media feeds of the world's soccer legends, Turkish designer Kitmaker Baran has spent three years proving a philosophy: "Creativity thrives within constraints."

What lies beyond the jersey

In the single piece of fabric that players pull over their shoulders on the pitch, a club's history is stitched.

The width of the stripes, the placement of colours, the emblem etched on the chest.

These are not merely 'design' choices; they are an accumulation of memories that supporters have shared for decades.

So if you were to 'rethink that jersey from zero,' where would you even begin?

Kitmaker Baran, a kit designer based in Turkey, is someone who has placed exactly that question at the starting point of his own work.

It's said that it all began when he started making fictional jerseys for football games like PES and FIFA.

As he kept drawing kits with a reality so convincing they looked like something a real club might actually wear, that work eventually stepped outside the boundaries of the game itself.

Today he creates designs for actual clubs and content creators, and figures as prominent as Dries Mertens and Roberto Carlos have shared his work on social media.

'Making a beautiful jersey' alone wasn't enough

The core of what Baran describes in his creative process is not simply 'making a jersey that looks good.'

What he aims for, he says, is creating a moment where the person looking at the jersey can feel 'the atmosphere of that club.'

To achieve that, he arrived at an expressive method of draping his designs over the bodies of real players, letting them blend into the light of stadiums and cities.

The angle of light, the camera angle, the player's pose, the surrounding environment.

The sense that he treats all of these as 'part of the design' feels somewhat similar to how a player on the pitch thinks in terms of 'movement' and 'relationships.'

Cutting out only the moment a player receives the ball doesn't convey the meaning of the play.

Just as a single play is only complete when you include the context before and after, the positions of teammates, the balance of the opponent's body, for Baran a jersey is something to be designed together with 'the entire world in which it exists.'

A question that began on a game screen

The fact that he started from PES and FIFA may carry more depth than it first appears.

Making a jersey inside a football game is creation within complete freedom.

There's a space where you can design without worrying about contracts with clubs, sponsors' intentions, or the emotional backlash of supporters.

But even while spending a long time in that free space, Baran eventually moved toward the feeling that 'there are things you can only see within constraints.'

Take Galatasaray's jersey, for example, which he thinks about like this.

That club's identity is extremely strong; change it too much and you lose 'what makes Galatasaray Galatasaray,' but change it too little and you can't claim to have made anything new.

He says this exact tension is the hardest place to work in, and also the most rewarding.

This overlaps with the very structure of football itself.

How do you express yourself within tactical constraints?

How do you make judgments within the framework of a manager's instructions?

Finding the narrow path between 'doing exactly as told' and 'doing whatever you want.'

Baran takes on that difficulty every single time, in the form of design.

Listening to supporters' voices, but not obeying them

Baran says he references supporters' opinions when designing.

What they like, what dissatisfies them, what elements they feel nostalgic about.

He gathers that information to try to understand a club's identity.

But he states clearly that 'it doesn't mean making exactly what the supporters want.'

As a designer, he has his own perspective and judgment.

Sometimes he deliberately presents something supporters don't expect.

Because, in his view, 'good design is also about showing people something they didn't realise they wanted.'

Hearing this, some might picture the relationship between a coach and players.

Players voice things like 'I want to do this' or 'I don't like this' from within the game.

A coach listens to those voices, but ultimately makes the final decision based on their own judgment.

Baran describes taking on that responsibility as 'carrying the design on his own shoulders.'

What it means to render the France national team in adidas

One of Baran's occasional experiments, 'deliberately breaking an existing pairing,' is also fascinating.

For many football fans, the association of France's national team with Nike has become a given.

What happens when that 'given' is broken?

Baran tries to use that very surprise as the power of design.

When something familiar is shifted slightly, people finally 'see' it for the first time.

They realise that something that was always in view had, in fact, never truly been observed.

The moment France's jersey becomes adidas, we might finally start properly observing the France jersey for the first time.

Something similar happens in a football match.

An unusual position, a pass rarely attempted, an unfamiliar formation.

The surprise of 'why did they do that' sets the viewer's mind in motion.

What Baran does intentionally could be described as creating exactly that 'moment that sets the mind in motion.'

Starting from games, arriving at reality. But the destination is still further ahead

Baran currently holds a full-time job at Kappa Türkiye while continuing his activities as Kitmaker Baran.

Being involved in actual projects as part of a global sports brand is undoubtedly a major experience.

But he doesn't see it as the 'goal.'

He states plainly that 'Kappa Türkiye is just a stepping stone,' saying he has his sights set on even bigger brands and international stages.

This attitude structurally resembles the process of a young player aiming from a regional league to the J.League, and from the J.League toward Europe.

While doing his best where he is now, his gaze is fixed further ahead.

Rather than being satisfied with the present or rushing impatiently, he believes that accumulating experience here and now becomes the foundation for the next step.

It's said that it took three years for designs that began on a PES game screen to end up on the social media of legendary figures across world football.

Those three years probably weren't something he knew from the start would lead 'to this kind of place.'

While continuing to make kits for games, he gradually refined his style, tried, failed, tried again, and arrived where he is now.

What the jersey asks of us

When a concept kit imagining Real Madrid x Nike x Travis Scott gathered more than 810,000 likes, Baran says he felt that 'my design was no longer just mine.'

That was the moment his work opened up to the world, and at the same time, the moment expectations arose for 'what will he show us next.'

Continuing to meet those expectations is both pressure and fuel for creation.

Just as a player is asked season after season 'what will you show us this year,' Baran keeps placing himself in the position of asking each time, 'can I make something that surpasses what came before?'

A jersey remains even after the match is over.

Along with the memories of that season, the goals scored by the player wearing that jersey come to mind.

A jersey expresses a club's identity on a piece of fabric, but at the same time, it's also a place where the person looking at it overlays 'their own version of that club.'

What one sees in a single jersey differs entirely from person to person.

Baran is trying to render his own personal 'world' within that space.

What do you see within that jersey?

NEWDIH ／ Perspectives & Methods