This blog has been a bit quiet recently for a number of reasons, but I really had to write about the fate of England’s World Cup bid a couple of weeks ago. I had great fun working on the bid, and was really hoping to become the first lethargic graphic designer to win the World Cup. Instead, I guess I made it to the finals and lost on penalties. My old PE teacher would never have predicted I would enjoy a brief career in international football.

The cover of the latest Private Eye caught my eye at the weekend. Take a good look at the banner above the rapidly balding head of Prince William on the left there. That’s possibly the last look we’ll get of my Supporter typeface at work, with the bid in tatters, the typeface is destined for retirement. It had a short but illustrious career, rubbing shoulders with royalty and being really very visible over the final few days.

The bid team did a fantastic job over the last two years, and on the day itself the English presentation was miles ahead of the others, but every expectant hope back home was about to be dashed. Still, at least they got a free T-shirt…

So alas, it was not to be, and whether the cause was bribery, politics, oligarchs or legacy, at least no-one is blaming the typography…?

Let’s cross our fingers for 2030.

I saw this picture in the paper at the weekend. It’s our new Prime Minister jogging at the G20 summit with the Spanish Prime Minister. Thing is, seeing as we are both rivals to host the 2018 World Cup, Mr Cameron has cheekily donned his England United, The World Invited T-shirt. The Spanish guy seems to be a bit annoyed. I was quite pleased.

Only just over two weeks left to make use of that slogan, as the decision will be announced on the 2nd December.

Fingers crossed…

Seeing as I posted last week about my work on the England 2018 World Cup bid, I thought I’d dig out this glimpse of the American bid identity, which has been designed by Pentagram in New York.

I really like it, and it’s strikingly similar to some of the identity work I did for the England bid which didn’t see the light of day (and which I’m not allowed to show you, sorry). As it stands, it still shares some common DNA, the custom typeface playing a central role in the identity, a campaign tagline about community based on a play of words. Even the two-tone colours are close to the England United colour palette which our host cities have been provided with.

There’s a similar tension between the bid logo and the campaign identity, although I think the balance between the two is better on the England offering so far. Interestingly, Pentagram are also designing all the bid materials themselves, whereas the England identity is being rolled out by various agencies across the country as and where needed, so is already unavoidably looking less coherent.

But hang on a minute, even I, as a football agnostic know that the USA hosted the World Cup in 1994, which is fairly recently. Surely England deserve it, having waited over 40 years…?

Check out the US bid website here…

…but obviously don’t vote for them.

Football’s never really been my thing, but I watched the England game this week with particular interest. Before the game, the Wembley crowd spelled out ‘England 2018′ in a typeface I designed. It’s called Supporter, and it was created especially for the FA’s World Cup bid.

It’s a monospaced display typeface, inspired by shirt lettering and scoreboard type. It’s carefully built to stack vertically and horizontally in a grid formation to create tight type lockups on banners and other promotional materials.

It was first used at the press launch along with the campaign slogan back in May…

Read the rest of this entry…

Yesterday was the launch of England’s bid to host the 2018 (or 2022) football World Cup. As we’ve been working on the project, we went along for the event which was very impressive, to see our work up close and rub shoulders with the stars at Wembley.

Snappy slogan eh? And a nice font too…

I even got to meet David Beckham who signed my invitation for me, nice chap…

It’s been all over the sports pages today, the campaign will be running from now until next December when the FIFA panel will decide who gets the cup. Head over to www.england2018bid.com to see how you can support the goal.