Thursday, January 5, 2012

Fonts on shirts!

In life, it is always amazing to me to see that, wherever you look, there are people who have spent far more time than you might expect thinking about a problem that you hadn't even thought existed.

Such as, for example, this fascinating essay on font design for professional soccer jerseys: Fixing Major League Soccer’s Font Problem

Major League Soccer’s uniform font persists, blocking the orderly progression of good design.

North American leagues largely allow teams leeway in customizing the look of their numbers and letters; that’s how you get Red Sox “3”s, Laker “3”s old Blue Jay “3”s and Steeler “3”s. Thousands of colleges and minor league teams have unique takes too. On the world stage, soccer is far from uniform, and international competitions showcase a range of interesting font design. Conversely, the English Premier League has been perfecting the font lockup for at least 15 years.

Gotta love that double entendre on "uniform font" :)

I actually own one shirt (a bit of swag from my day job) with my name on the back shoulders; tonight I must remember to go have a look at the font...

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