GBH helps PUMA's 2012 football campaign to stick

As part of our latest high profile project with PUMA football, GBH have created the typeface used on PUMA's newly launched football kits as well its through the line, national and international advertising campaigns.

The typeface takes its inspiration from the campaign concept ‘Make Football Anywhere’, which sees impromptu goal posts being hastily made from materials to hand, including tape. GBH were clear from the start that the spirit of raw, passionate enthusiasm expressed in the campaign needed to be communicated through the typeface. The result: we set about designing a font made up entirely from gaffer tape!

Simply entitled 'Gaffer', the start point was to order 150 rolls of tape and begin experimenting with folding, ripping and sticking it into shapes, to form a full Roman alphabet and the all-important kit numerals. Once we were satisfied with the look and proportion of each character, type impresarios Dalton Maag were brought in to help develop the full Roman character set, and under the art direction of GBH, add all European accents before building a fully working, digitised font.

The finished result is not only a unique typeface which stands out from the competition, but a typeface which clearly stands out on the pitch for its legibility and brevity. The font allows the campaign creative to cross the white line onto the field of play, effortlessly uniting PUMA's 2012 campaign push with the pro & amateur players via not only the kit design, but the vast collection of apparel & equipment currently rolling out.

Launched in November and already showcased at the 2012 African Cup of Nations, most notably in the final where the Ivory Coast were defeated on penalties in the final, the font is already proving hugely popular with the players and fans alike.

Look out for the font in all outdoor and print campaigns, events, PR, POS and online advertising, not to mention on the pitch at the 2012 European Championships.