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Football jerseys and how design trends have changed them
- 13/08/2017
- Written by Ronwyn Hughes

It’s that time of the year! The season has just started. New football jerseys have been launched, there’s a distinct smell of freshly cut grass in the air and, of course, mega player transfers! Many casual observers don’t understand the fuss, but for us real football fans this is a momentous occasion every year.
A jersey isn’t just a jersey.
It’s an armour. It’s a badge of honour. It’s a sense of belonging.
A feeling of pride.
Of representing something much bigger and with a deeper history than we have ourselves.
It’s tribal. Depending on what your team does while wearing that jersey, it has the potential to become iconic, or not. With time, it becomes like a photo, a song or a movie that brings back a flood of memories and immediately transports you back to that specific time in your life.
So, when our club or country’s kit is launched, it’s a big thing. Everybody’s ranking them and analysing which is the best. Hot or Not? Scores out of 10. One comparison that often comes up is with previous kits and how the design of the new jerseys stands up to its predecessors.
At the end of this season is the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which will be held in Russia. Let’s look at international jerseys from three different world cups over a period of 40 years and do a comparison. Let’s see how the designs have evolved…or not. Sounds good? Read on.
As a Graphic Designer, I’m always interested to see whether the team’s designers have improved the badge, developed new patterns or created interesting fonts. Designers often draw on current trends for inspiration, whether it be from other graphic design, product design, movies, music, fashion etc. As such, I looked at jerseys from certain World Cups and explored the context in which these jerseys were launched.
Let’s start in West Germany at the 1974 FIFA World Cup.
By the time Germany’s Gerd Müller scored the winning goal against Johan Cryff’s Dutch team at the end of the first half in in July 1974, Richard Nixon had jumped before he was pushed in the infamous Watergate Scandal. Charles de Gaulle Airport had opened that April as a global recession was deepening. That year, Lamborghini launched the iconic Countach LP400 with its scissor doors and Muhammad Ali knocked George Foreman out in the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’. Bell bottoms were in. For better or worse, so were prints on men’s’ casual shirts. The World Cup’s official logo was simply a one-colour job using the inverse to communicate the picture of a football with the stripes behind it to give it movement and dynamism. This logo reflects the style being created at the time such as the upgraded IBM logo launched that year. The official poster design is also sparse, drawing attention to the painted player in the centre. The football jerseys at the time were very clean and modest with minimum detail or fuss. The jerseys tended to feature just the badge on the front and the designated squad number on the back with crew neck or V-neck designs for collars. Font usage was bold, angular and generally chunky with some featuring the classic 3-D effect. Ultimately, as charming as these jerseys look through the lens of nostalgia, I feel they could have done a lot more to reflect the rich period of design they were created in, particularly when one considers that the technology was there to add patterns and detail. They just seem to have copied one another but changed the badge, typeface and colour.

Let’s move on 20 years later to the United States for the World Cup of 1994.
By the time Italy’s Roberto Baggio had sent his penalty to the top tiers of the Rose Bowl in Pasadena against Dunga’s Brazilian team, Nelson Mandela had become the first black head of state in South Africa’s first fully representative election. The Channel Tunnel had been opened between England and France that May. That June, O.J. Simpson would flee the police in his white Bronco. Bugatti had launched the Veyron. Grunge music was popular with bands like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden leading the way. Graphic design was layered and deconstructed. Fortunately, this time, the design aesthetics of the period made it onto the football jerseys, using some subtle background patterns for layering and some really nice details on the shoulders, sleeves and collars. Logo design had been refined during the intervening years and fonts had also come a long way. Granted, they were not as edgy as some of the fonts that were available in 1994, but they did do a better job of reflecting the trends in typography.

Moving on another 20 years to Brazil and the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
By the time German’s Mario Gotze had scored the winning goal against Lionel Messi’s Argentina in the final, US President Barack Obama had visited Malaysia, becoming the first US leader to do so since 1966. Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 had gone missing and Phillip Seymour Hoffman had died. That June Iggy Azalea was top of the Billboard charts with ‘Fancy’. Jaguar had launched the Jaguar F-Type Project 7. The design style had evolved to being slick, with more negative space being used in layouts and emphasis being placed on elements that were present. Less was used to communicate a lot more. Logos were more organic and complex but still clearly communicated. Gone was the layering of 20 years previously. Now the jerseys had patterns weaved into the fabric with subtle design details on the sleeves, shoulders and collars. The less-is-more approach was used to good effect. Fonts had come a long way and typography on the jerseys reflected the trends in type usage, resulting in plenty of amazing fonts being showcased at the tournament.

With the 2018 FIFA World Cup only months away, I will again be looking at the context in which the jerseys are created. In the fashion industry Gucci’s Alessandro Michele is using amazing textiles and patterns. Graphic design seems to be finally moving on from the very slick and clean ‘Apple aesthetic’ to something more expressive, but modern. It’s the age of self-expression and of being true to who you are. Of individuality and standing out. Of being truly unique and different. I’m hoping that this will translate onto the jerseys and that the countries will be brave, ensuring that their unique spirit is communicated on the armour that their team takes into battle. Or they can just do another retro-styled kit. Hmmm. Only time will tell!
References:
· For a run down on the events of those specific years: http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/
· For graphic design trends during the 70s and 90s: https://inspiredology.com/graphic-design-through-the-decades-series-the-70s/
· For graphic design trends during 2014:http://www.fromupnorth.com/best-graphic-design-of-2014/
· For logo development and trends during 2014: https://www.logolounge.com/articles/2014-logo-trends
Ronwyn Hughes
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