"Font-asy Football" Mr Serif (September 06)

I’ve worked as a designer for more years than I care to think about – mostly for large, serious, corporate clients – and I’ve always been of the view that half a dozen classic typefaces will see you through. So when it comes to designing a t shirt, what changes?

If the truth be told – nothing really! I could have taken the same line with the shirts and done them all in one font and there’s a part of me that says that’s what I should have done. It’s the part of me that makes me keep my cd and vinyl collection in alphabetical order. And probably the only reason I didn’t do it was that it’s been done before.

So, where to go next? The designer’s idea of porn – the type books that we collect and read alone for moments of undiluted pleasure. For the uninitiated, the sheer size and number of these books is overwhelming. The nearest some people will come is the old Letraset catalogues which used to contain all the styles of rub-down lettering that were available to every student wanting to do a half decent presentation. At college we were all desperate to use the latest fonts in our design projects – and what a huge mistake that usually was. Then, as now, fashion has a habit of making us all look stupid rather sooner than we expect.

But this project seemed different. For once fonts seemed to be winking at me and saying “come on big boy, use me”. There are times when a particular typeface is just right. Try setting Italian or Portuguese in Helvetica – it’s ok, but there’s something about the letter combinations in these languages that tend to work better in less brutal, more forgiving, fonts. And if you’re going to say “Morally superior football” in Portuguese in green on a yellow shirt, then the font needs to look like it’s come from a rodeo poster, not an annual report for a bank.

Actually, it’s more straightforward than that. There are simply times when it’s good for the soul to use fonts with truly silly names – Kulukundis, Strayhorn, Sjablony and Poison Flowers are all lined up for use on future shirts. Perhaps there’s a use for Lovegrid, Dummy and Cool Wool but I haven’t found it yet.

There’s even a case for coming up with designs to fit the font name:
A Ronaldo shirt in set in Fat Face
A Portugal shirt set in Albatross
A Zidane shirt set in Smack
And whilst I cannot find a font called Diving Cheat there’s a t shirt waiting…

In the meantime I’ll keep going against all my natural tendencies and try to choose fonts for the hell of it – or worse, for fun…