Linsanity - Design Process - Imaginary Zebra™

From sleeping on his brother’s couch to Time Magazine cover, Jeremy Lin, or most of us known him as Linsanity, is what flooding people’s facebook dash page. He’s an underdog. And everyone loves an underdog story.

Not only is he swiping people off their feet with his selfless team-plays, swift passes, and nimble drives to the basket, he’s giving every asian kid (heck, every person) hopes that one day they could also challenge the status quo and be whatever they want to be (Not everyday you get to see an Asian NBA player that scores up to 38 points a game. )

What Jeremy’s done is phenomenal, and that’s made his name a motivational symbol. We support because we can relate. And we can relate because we all want to climb to the top. (Of course, his plays are pretty dam exciting, too, but you don’t see 600 different kinds of Steve Nash shirts.)

After throwing some ideas with a fellow colleague, we decided to express Linsanity with our own hands – beyond types and photographs of Lin himself, but a design that we can also relate.

This is a Zebra and Panda collabo.

Andy, the mind behind ASN (Always Staying Native) clothing:

“ASN is a clothing brand based on Asian Culture and Foreign Lifestyle. ASN stands for “Always Staying Native,”… meaning that people should be proud of who they are and where they came from. The goal of ASN is….” Get the whole picture of ASNclothing here.

We wanted to incorporate Lin’s character while maintaining both of our brand’s aesthetics. The first approach didn’t go too well:

Though, with the illustrative style, the details and shading on Lin’s face were making the overall look too complex. We wanted something simple.

Panda’s the ASN’s mascot. Most, if not all, of their collection have its star appearance. It’s no exception for this collab as well. So I intented to focus on the iconic Panda and our Zeeb character.