In issue 197, ballesterer covers the story of the Viennese football club SK Rapid Wien, during its 1984/1985 season. Victories and defeats, celebrations and sorrow, miracles and scandals – it’s all there in these nine months. From September 1984 to May 1985, SK Rapid experienced a European Cup season like no other.

The display typeface chosen for this issue is VAG Rounded, paired with Archive by Colophon ​​​and A2 Grot10 by A2-TYPE.

A noi della partita non ce ne frega un cazzo (“We don’t give a damn about the game”) is a research-based editorial project developed as a final thesis for the Graphic Design course at IED Milan in 2021.

The book investigates the Italian Ultras movement from the 1960s to the 1980s, analyzing its origins, evolution, and visual language. It is divided into two sections.

The first part presents six key Ultras groups through historical accounts and visual analysis of their emblems, mottos, and iconography. Each chapter contextualizes these symbols within their local, cultural, and sometimes political environments, highlighting how they served as tools of identity and distinction both within and across stadiums.

The second section, titled Grammatica Ultras, explores the scenographic and performative practices of the movement, such as choreographed banners, smoke displays, and massive visual compositions that transformed stadiums into stages of collective expression. This part reveals how Ultras developed a unique aesthetic grammar that evolved alongside shifts in media, technology, and generational codes.

Through extensive archival references, interviews, and critical commentary, the book portrays the Ultras not merely as sports fans, but as a subcultural force with its own symbols, rituals, and resistance to commercialization and mainstream assimilation.

Book design and research by Giorgio Craparo, with editing by Mattia Salvia. The book was
printed by PressPoint, Milan, using CMYK plus white ink, on Fedrigoni Ispira Rosso Passione 290 g/m² and Artic Paper Munken Print White 90 g/m². The publication is in Italian, has 40 pages measuring 21×29.7 cm, and is perfect bound.

For the playoffs and Super Bowl season, KFC Mexico took the NFL experience to the next level. As part of the NFL’s Global Markets Program, an initiative to build fanbases outside the U.S., it opened several NFL-themed restaurants.

A key element in the ambiance was the neon graphic pieces, designed to immerse fans in a vibrant and energetic atmosphere.

One of the biggest challenges of the project was adapting the Burpee typeface for use in neon signage. This involved meticulous work on optimizing curves, adjusting intersections, and ensuring uniform stroke thickness to guarantee proper light distribution and impeccable readability.

The result: a striking graphic system that not only reinforced the visual identity of the campaign but also created an immersive environment where the excitement of the game could be felt in every detail.

The featured teams are the San Francisco 49ers, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Front cover, showing Modula Serif, Oakland 6 (now called Lo-Res 9 Wide Alternate), and Memphis.

MegaTech was a UK video game magazine dedicated to the Sega Mega Drive ("Sega Genesis" in North America), which was published from December 1991 to July 1995. The first issue was edited by Paul Glancey, with Jeff Zie as art editor. Glancey and Zie had previously produced The Complete Guide to Mega Drive.

The logo uses Modula Serif, which is also used elsewhere on the cover and for some of the interior text. (This logo was retained until issue 17, when a new logo was adopted.) Oakland and Oblong also form part of the magazine's identity. All three of these fonts were designed by Zuzana Licko.

Text fonts include Memphis, Helvetica, ITC Kabel, and Century Expanded. An unidentified Japanese font is used on the cover for the word メガテケ (Megateke).

For more information about MegaTech, see "The MegaTech story" at Forgotten Worlds.

Page 3, showing Modula Serif, Oakland 6, and Memphis.

Page 12, showing Modula Serif, Oblong (in the “Hyper Hyper” badge), Oakland 6, and Helvetica Bold.

Page 15, showing Modula Serif, Oakland 6, Oakland 10, Oblong and Memphis.

Page 17, showing Modula Serif and ITC Kabel.

Page 20, showing Modula Serif, Oakland 6, and Century Expanded.

In 2021 CRSL Carosello Lab was asked by Modena FC to work on a full rebranding with the goal of accompanying the Italian football club into a new era.

One of the main elements of the rebranding was the design of a bespoke typeface called Modena Sans, inspired by sport newspaper display fonts from the 1970s.

Since 2022 Modena Sans has been the most recognizable and strong brand assets of the team, being employed on printed matter, digital, social media, clothing, merch, etc.

On the website, it’s paired with DM Sans and Space Mono.

Sociologie des supporters de foot à Lens: Immersion chez les Atrébates (“Sociology of Football Fans in Lens: Immersion with the Atrébates”) is Adrien Dalle’s master thesis for his Science Politique Parcours study at the Université de Lille. The publication, measuring 165×230 mm, was designed by Edouard Vandycke. The text is set in Neue Haas Unica and headlines use Apple Garamond.

Henry Monse (from studio Karl Anders) created here a cool visual identity and art direction based on a pair of fonts – Vroum Gti (from lift-type) and Elastik (from Benoît Bodhuin) – for Verde e Bianco Pazzo, the biggest Werder Bremen fanclub in Hamburg. Both Vroum Gti’s upright and “Decalic” styles are used. The latter is an italic where every next segment of a character – bottom, middle and top part – is shifted a bit more to the right, creating a slanted effect.

Studio Size designed a visual identity, motion branding, audio branding, and digital assets for ProTennisFam—a patronage-oriented Web3 tennis community. The identity merges the two worlds of tennis and Web3 technology by conveying a sense of excitement and innovation while keeping a clean aesthetic.

The logo incorporates elements of the sport and is constructed to serve as a symbol for tennis enthusiasts. The primary color is commonly associated with tennis, but its shade gives the brand a tech-inspired look. Almarena is a modern, easy-to-read typeface perfect for the brand’s digital presence. It supports the brand’s progressive character and ensures the messaging is always clear and easy to understand while reflecting the forward-thinking nature of the Web3 community.

Tifo unfurled ahead of kick-off between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Portland Timbers on Saturday 30th March 2024

Bradley DJR in use for a tifo design unfurled by the Vancouver Southsiders at an MLS Cascadia derby game between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Portland Timbers.

The display pays homage to the Vancouver Whitecaps’ current status as reigning champions of the Cascadia Cup. This supporters-created trophy is contested annually between the Vancouver Whitecaps, Seattle Sounders, and Portland Timbers, with the trophy awarded to the club with the best record among the three rivals at the conclusion of an MLS season.

The tifo was traced, painted and assembled by members of the Vancouver Southsiders supporters group.

Tifo painting session involving members of the Vancouver Southsiders supports group.

Tifo from the stands

Tifo practice session at BC Place ahead of the game

Tifo practice session at BC Place ahead of the game

Tifo practice session at BC Place ahead of the game

Merchandise for the FLINTA* football team of the football club Roter Stern Leipzig, Germany.

The design of the lighter is playing with the slogan “Hottest Team in Town” by literally translating it with a burning font.

Burns in use for this book titled Wolle – Ein Fan zwischen Ost und West (“Wolle – A fan between East and West”) by Alex Raack, published by Tropen Verlag. The cover was designed by Nolan Paparelli while working at Herburg Weiland with an early version of Burns, featuring a custom LL ligature for the title.

Translated from Tropen Verlag:

The biography of an ardent football fan and enemy of the state – a very special German-German story

It is 1982, Wolfgang Großmann, known as Wolle, is sitting in a cell at the Stasi headquarters in Dresden. He is an enemy of the state because he is a fan of the wrong club – a fan of Borussia Mönchengladbach.

Wolle was born in Mönchengladbach shortly before the Berlin Wall was built, but just two years later his parents moved with him to Dresden. When the inner-German border is closed, all hopes of being able to travel to the FRG again are dashed. In Dresden, “Gladbach-Wolle” falls in love with Borussia from his native city – and rebels wherever he can. As a youth he became a hooligan, football became his outlet for anger at the GDR regime. Soon everyone in Mönchengladbach knew the crazy East German, who let himself be persecuted by the Stasi out of love for the club. When his application to leave the country is finally approved in 1985, he is naturally drawn to the place of his deepest longing .. …. Wolle’s biography is the story of an ardent football fan who never tires of fighting for his freedom. A dramatic story full of craziness that shows what love for football can do.

“Wolle, we'll never get out of here. From this shitty country.”

Sporting Lagos, also known as Sporting FC, is a professional football club based in Lagos, Nigeria.

Communities are built on relationships. Sporting Lagos draws inspiration from this relationship. The visualisation referencing communities is not centred on the static already existing relationships, but with one that is in constant motion, where people are meeting new people continuously. Where this continuous relationship happens is where the Sporting Lagos logo is crafted from.

The logo leverages an important existing element, being the centre of a budding community of sports enthusiasts. In the search for what truly represents communities we landed on a resolution that emphasises “All roads lead here”. The colour scheme for Sporting is predominantly yellow and blue. This yellow reflects the base colour of Lagos’s vibrancy paired with a deep blue that acts as an alternate for the expected black.

The jersey designs are inspired by patterns that both represent communities. The home jersey is inspired by roads – being the pathway for community building, and the away jersey, is inspired by flocks of birds, tightly knit into a intertwined pattern.

The entire Sporting identity is laced with the excitement of Lagos visually narrated with a combination of with repetitive patterns, Lagos-related typography and colour, and vibrant messaging.

With two million users, Kickbase is the biggest fantasy football manager in Germany. Kickbase realized that the world of football has changed over recent years and that the audience now enjoys talking about numbers and stats, expected goals and defensive coverage, as much as they love the experience of the game with all of its real emotions. Answering the needs of a new era of football fans Studio zur Strassen, together with designer Mark O’Neill, was presented with an opportunity to rethink how football should look and behave.

The new identity is built around distilling the essence of football and understanding what makes the game so captivating. Two essential layers in football combine like no other sport in the world. To win the game you need tactics, metrics, and the predictable. Conversely, you need the creativity, the raw emotion, the unpredictable.

The dotted grid underpins every part of the visual identity. It acts as a database of what happens on the pitch and shows the plays and the movements happening on the field. This layer is data-driven and analytical. Underlined by the constructed typeface KB Volksans from Radmir Volk. The rest of the identity is layered on top and is thereby heavily influenced by what happens on the pitch. Both the images and the variable typeface KB Pitch – designed with Nolan Paparelli – stand in contrast to the information-based layouts and represent the emotional, wild, and often chaotic side of football.

Yannick zur Strassen: Strategy, design & creative direction
Mark O’Neill: Design
Paris Seawell: Animation
James Richardson: Copywriting
Nolan Paparelli: Type design (KB Pitch)
Radmir Volk: Type design (KB Volksans)

Via Sportsfonts:

This is how I like to see our (free) Libero typeface! ❤️? #Petersen

Nils Petersen is not your average football player. Born in Wernigerode (type trivia: like Paul Renner, designer of Futura) in 1988, he started his professional career at Carl Zeiss Jena. For the past eight and a half years, though, Petersen played for SC Freiburg. There he attained a legendary status, not only because he eventually became the club’s all-time top scorer, but also for his loyalty: he stayed with the underdog from Germany’s far southwest after being relegated in 2015, despite other lucrative offers, and despite being considered for the national team at the time.

In his league debut for Freiburg, Petersen came on as a substitute for the second half, and scored a hat-trick, ultimately helping his team turning a 0–1 deficit into a 4–1 victory. This set the path for the future: with 34 goals as a substitute, he leads this particular statistic by a huge margin. The super-sub announced his retirement from professional football at the end of the 2022–23 Bundesliga season. After scoring his final home game on 19 May 2023 – coming on as a substitute, of course – fans and fellow team members bid him an emotional farewell. This included a giant flag featuring Petersen’s squad number in Libero. See it in motion in this video clip.

Christoph Koeberlin’s numerals-only font is an homage to classic squad numbers as seen on football jerseys from the 1980s and early 1990s. It’s available from Sportsfonts under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

PalmaSec Fútbol Sala is a women’s five-a-side football team from Barcelona. Since 2021 they've been using Pacaembu as their official typeface on everything from social media to the signs supporters use in their gymnasium. The club’s crest uses Neographik for the name PalmaSec Fútbol Sala.

Popolo Neroazzurro is an editorial photography book that chronicles the day of celebration outside the gates of San Siro for Inter’s 19th scudetto win in the 2020/2021 season.

We used Tusker Grotesk Semibold and Founders Grotesk. The book has 116 glossy coated pages and measures 210×250 mm, and comes with a milled paperback binding. It was printed in an edition of 25 copies.

A Torontonian project could hardly be any torontonier. First to mention here is the place it’s all about: Massey Hall. Founded 128 years ago as Massey Music Hall, the venue reflects on Canada’s industrial history, as it was initiated and largely financed by Hart Massey, heir to the famous farm equipment manufacturer. Built in an eclectic mix of Palladian façade (topped off by a nice Modern Style lettering) and Alhambra-inspired neo-moorish hall, the site quickly became a favorite meeting place for the citizens of Canada’s largest city with the events ranging from choir programs to political agitation in its early days. Later, up to 1982, Massey Hall served as the domicile of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (which did not exclude gigs by others).

From 2018 to 2020 the building underwent full-scale renovation works and amplification which fell in place well considering the restrictions for this kind of establishment during the Covid pandemic. The highly acclaimed works that led to a significant improvement of the acoustics and the restoration of architectonic detail true to the original were conducted by KPMB, an architect’s office located in – guess where? – Toronto.

Thirdly, and this is what this post is really about, a book was published in 2021, coinciding with the reopening of the hall: That Night at Massey Hall, initiated by David Binks. Binks assembled about 300 stories told by artists, staff on site, and audience members of shows held at Massey Hall, spanning almost 100 years in the history of music performance, the whole illustrated with lavish photographs. It is basically a book made by fans of the venue, for fans of the venue. It was published by A.B. Independent from, yes, Toronto.

The book was bound in Canada, printed in Canada and also designed in: Toronto, Canada. Responsible for the graphic design are Underline Studio who are, fourthly, just a 30 minutes bike ride away from Massey Hall. In their design they went much longer a path: either in two or three columns, the typography is set left-aligned which means a hell lot of work.

For the reading text, the website just as much as the book use Neue Montreal by Pangram Pangram, based in, gosh, Montréal, which hopefully will not spark civil war. The headlines reach even further, to mother Paris and Production Type’s Media Sans, designed by Jean-Baptiste Levée. Where messages ought to be loud, Media Sans is loud. Used as here, in a large variety of widths and in big to huge sizes, it’s the perfect pick to emulate billboards and venue lettering worthy of giants like Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash.

Sportsyear is a sports data company based in Sydney, Australia. Their knowledge and passion for sport allows them to maintain the world's leading global sports calendar, which they use to help those serious about sport plan it right. In 2018 they launched the Sportsyear Engine: a digital platform that helps venues get more out of their live sport offer.

Football scarves designed by studio Horah Inc. on the occasion of PSG’s match against RB Leipzig in the UEFA Champions League in October/November 2021.

The theme of ballesterer issue #171 is Feyenoord Rotterdam – this issue digs into the history of the club that played in the finals of the new Europa Conference League in Tirana just weeks ago.