It was 2 a.m. Swedish time and 20-year-old artist Mio was awake and anxious. The entire day was incredibly tense and stressful, even as her friend attempted to distract her with silly Buzzfeed quizzes.
The reason why she was so anxious? Her design for the Vancouver Canucks’ warm-up jerseys for their Pride Night was about to be announced to the public.
“What if people don’t get the story?” Mio remembers thinking. “What if people don’t get the details? What if they think it’s too dark or it’s too cheesy or not good enough?”
She needn’t have worried. Her design — an explosion of colour within the Canucks orca logo — was an immediate hit and quickly created a buzz online. People connected with it in a big way.
Mio stayed awake all night reading and responding to tweets and comments online.
“It would have been some kind of power move to just sleep through it,” she says with a laugh. “But I wanted to see people’s reactions, I wanted to be able to talk about it. I had three hours of sleep and then I had to travel the next day.
“A lot of the reception was mindblowing. I spent my entire day looking through Twitter and talking to people and when I got home I fell asleep instantly.”
Her logo is about to make its debut on Friday night ahead of the Canucks’ game against the Washington Capitals. Puck drop will be around 4 a.m. Swedish time but Mio is intent on staying up to see the game.
After all, it’s not every day you get to design an NHL jersey.
“Designing a jersey has always been one of those bucket list or dream projects,” says Mio. “Even though I've had a few weeks to get adjusted to it, it still doesn't feel real. Especially when it's released, it's like, 'Oh wait, people are seeing this, it's an actual thing.’ It’s really surreal.”
Mio has done design work for other professional hockey teams, including a Pride t-shirt for the Dallas Stars, social media illustrations for the Carolina Hurricanes, and t-shirt designs for the Buffalo Beauts and Minnesota Whitecaps of the PHF. To get the job with the Canucks, she answered an open call on social media.
The Canucks were looking for a queer artist or graphic designer to work with them on their Pride Night jersey. It was right in Mio’s wheelhouse.
“I'm obsessed with doing jersey concepts,” she says. “I have at least 70 or 80 of them lying around. But this was the first actual, real jersey I did.”
Mio was given the option of using either the orca logo or the stick-in-rink logo and gravitated to the orca immediately. She saw an opportunity to not just design a logo but to tell a story, as she immediately connected with the metaphor of the orca breaking through the ice.
“A lot of Pride jerseys are just the rainbow slapped on a logo. Which shows something, but it doesn't show everything,” says Mio. “It was really about, what do I want to see as a queer person?”
Mio’s style as an artist played an important role. She sees herself as a storyteller and embraces magical themes and urban fantasy. Her love of hockey and storytelling came together because she sees a clear connection between the two.
“Hockey can be myth,” she says. “There are a lot of legends and lore and symbols that can be brought through a kind of surreal dimension for a creative person.”
That led to this mythic journey through the orca logo that simultaneously creates the rainbow colours of the Pride flag. Mio wanted to incorporate the nature that surrounds and permeates Vancouver into the design and that naturally led to moving from the deep dark purple of the depths of the ocean, through the green of the trees, to the orange and red of the sun in the sky.
“It's one story but also a lot of smaller stories,” says Mio. “Being queer is about being alive and the stories we tell, and that felt very fitting.”
One of the most powerful images in the logo is found in the ocean, where two orcas circle each other, representing the duality of the challenges queer people face. Those struggles can define someone as a person and help them find community but they can also threaten to drown you.
“The circling orcas, which also became the shoulder patch, really became the focus of everything going forward,” says Mio. “These creatures living in the water are finding community in each other and support each other and use that to feel safe.”
Mio grew up around a lake, so water holds a lot of meaning for her.
“When I was a kid, water was about freedom and being able to have fun, that idyllic summer. But the ocean itself is scary and deep — it kills people, the danger of drowning,” she said. “That was really when I thought, ‘Okay, I can work with this, this feels right.’”
From the depths of the ocean comes the orca breaking through the ice into the open air and sky. There are clear metaphors of embracing who you are as a person and the journey of “coming out.”
“One of my favorite parts is the ice,” said Mio. “I like that they allowed me to share my struggles. I like that they allowed me to literally put people frozen in ice in the design.”
“It's not just easy, it is hard, and being able to have that be part of the story of the jersey I feel is very powerful,” she added. “A lot of times, teams just want to show the positivity…but it's actually about struggle, it's about the journey and being able to express that I think is very important.”
Mio said she was lucky to find a queer community within hockey fandom that allowed her to flourish as a fan but she’s also seen the darker elements of hockey and the NHL where homophobia can still be found, particularly as her work has placed her more in the mainstream.
“Even if people aren't homophobic, you can see how the environment is very entrenched in those ideas,” she said. “You see those things around you all the time and it does become a lot. I’m happy to have those spaces that I feel comfortable in but the surrounding sport does often feel very homophobic.”
Mio is also excited for a future where she can work in hockey beyond designing one-offs for Pride Nights.
“Most of my work has been doing queer things, which I love and I love representing the community,” said Mio, “but also, when do I break out of that? When am I not just a queer illustrator that likes hockey? When am I Mio, the illustrator who does cool things with hockey?
“There’s so much I want to do as an artist. And I’m slowly getting there.”
Mio’s allegiance lies with the Philadelphia Flyers, who she sees as similar in ways to the Canucks, suggesting both are “tragic,” though she added that the Canucks are heading in the right direction. And even before designing the Pride Night jersey, Mio was cheering for the Canucks this season.
“I did a random generator before the season of which team I need to root for that will win the 2022 Stanley Cup and I got the Canucks,” she says with a laugh. “So, Canucks for the 2022 Stanley Cup Final!”
