Tim from Hat-trick design sent me some images of their recent Giants of Rugby project, which he must have had some sort of sixth sense about, because it was right up my street. In fact, it’s very similar to something I’ve done for another sport-related project, but I’m not allowed to show you yet. I loved it when I saw it recently at their Typographic Circle talk, but couldn’t find much evidence of it online.

Anyway, as it’s Hat-trick, it’s pretty self explanatory. The giants of Rugby, made from little Rugby shirt icons, and printed at massive scale at Twickenham Stadium.

Which reminds me, their identity for the stadium itself was lovely too…

Apparently, Rugby is like footyball, but you’re allowed to pick the ball up and hit people.

Funny how life works, after I posted Paul Rand’s business card I found this similarly minimal letterhead belonging to another genius.

Letterheady is a blog of old letterhead examples, so if you’ve ever wondered what Adolf Hitler’s letterhead looked like, wonder no more:

…let’s hope he was writing with good news. In the interests of fairness here’s Winston Churchill’s:

…and to complete the Paul Rand circle of logic, here’s an old IBM one:

…even if I do prefer Clive Sinclair’s:

An interesting site and the collection is growing. Remember, you spell stationery with an e when you mean envelopes.

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…

There’s a new Doctor Who logo. Some people don’t like it. I do.

It’s a hell of a lot better than the awful eye of Sauron London taxi logo we’ve had since the show came back…

In fact it’s closest really to the very first logo, from the William Hartnell era, let’s hope the Radiophonic Workshop theme tune comes back too…

…and if it’s possible look past the Photoshop lens flare and the MASSIVE letter W, it has a quite old fashioned quirky silhouette. I’m not convinced by the need for a TARDIS symbol, but hey. It looks like there’ll be a whole new dark and vintage feel to the new show’s identity in 2010.

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.