Cap design notes

Working notes for translating the MKFC mark onto a royal blue cap (royal blue #013087, Pantone 286 C). Supplements the main Branding guide — refer there for the canonical palette, typography, and logo rules.

Colour roles on a royal blue cap

The cap supplies the royal blue background; the wordmark adds white and light blue on top. Three colours total — the right ceiling for clean embroidery.

Element	Colour
Cap body	Royal Blue #013087 (Pantone 286 C)
MOORABBIN (top line)	White, solid fill
KANGAS outline	White
KANGAS upper-half interior	Cap royal blue showing through (no thread)
KANGAS lower-half interior	Gradient: white at the split line → light blue #C8D6F0 at the baseline

True thread gradients aren’t universally supported. If the embroiderer can’t stitch a gradient, fall back to a two-step approximation: the top 60% of the filled region in white, the bottom 40% in light blue, single hard transition. Document which version was used so re-orders match.

Layout and proportions

• Cap front panel target is roughly 4.5″ × 2.25″ (60mm × 30mm) — about a 2:1 to 2.4:1 aspect ratio. Design the artwork to that horizontal ratio rather than the square brand mark.
• The brand guide minimum embroidery width is 60mm; do not go smaller.
• Canonical layout — split-script wordmark: small “MOORABBIN” above large “KANGAS” in bold condensed italic. White outline; upper half of letters is outline-only (cap colour shows through); lower half is filled with a vertical gradient from white at the split line to light blue #C8D6F0 at the baseline. No crest, no kangaroo silhouette. This is the locked direction — see the Logo redesign brief for the full spec.
• Legacy layout — crest left + two-line wordmark (mkfc-cap-logo.png): the kangaroo+shield on the left with “MOORABBIN KANGAROOS” on the right. Kept for reference only; the bevelled shield is being retired and should not be used on new cap orders.
• For very small placements (cap side, strap), use the MOORABBIN line alone — do not isolate the kangaroo silhouette from the legacy crest.

Supplying artwork to the embroiderer

• Always provide a vector file (SVG, AI, or EPS) where possible. Embroiderers digitise from vectors; raster (PNG/JPG) forces them to trace and introduces drift.
• If only raster is available, supply at 300 dpi or higher at the final stitched size.
• Specify thread colours by Pantone where the supplier supports it: royal blue = Pantone 286 C, light blue = closest match to #C8D6F0, white = pure #FFFFFF. Madeira / Robison-Anton equivalents are acceptable.
• Embroidery cannot reproduce gradients, drop shadows, or the silver shield bevel — flatten these out before sending.
• Letter strokes and outlines below ~1.2mm at final size will not stitch cleanly. Keep outlines bold.

Don’t

• Don’t keep the original blue-on-white colour scheme on a royal blue cap — the brand blue is too close to the cap colour and the mark disappears.
• Don’t add a coloured “patch” background behind the logo that breaks the cap colour. The cap is the background.
• Don’t introduce off-palette blues (navy, teal, sky) when matching threads; stick to the documented royal, mid, and light blues from the Branding guide.

Reference files

Generated cap-ready artwork (in /assets/merchandise/):

• mkfc-wordmark-kangas-italic.png / .jpg — canonical split-script wordmark, italic KANGAS with white→light-blue gradient lower half, on royal blue.
• mkfc-wordmark-kangas-italic-transparent.png — same wordmark on transparent background, for compositing.
• mkfc-wordmark-kangas.png / .jpg — upright variant (no italic shear). The italic version is the canonical direction.
• mkfc-cap-logo-split-italic.jpg / .png — superseded legacy reference; uses KANGAROOS and a solid white lower half (no gradient).
• mkfc-cap-logo.png / .jpg — legacy crest-left + two-line wordmark. Reference only; bevelled shield is retired.

Generator script: assets/merchandise/make_cap_logo_split.py produces the canonical wordmark files above. Edit the constants at the top (ROYAL, LIGHT_BLUE, font paths) and re-run with python3 make_cap_logo_split.py. Requires Pillow, numpy, and scipy.