The encyclopedia of Football Crest

The most recognizable part of football, the essence itself of the affiliation to a team: the football crests are the things that made us fall in love with the beautiful game. It is not the first time that we speak of it, and it won't be the last, but this is a special occasion. We have in fact intercepted James Kirkup, founder of the project "The Football Index Crest", that through a Kickstarter campaign of unbelievable success has financed the realization of a small Bible of the football badges. The first volume will be focused on the Premier League, but the next four chapters are already scheduled devoted to the greatest European championships. To realize them James has put together a team of editor and exceptional designer.

I'd like to start asking you, how does this project was born?

Well, it actually all started years ago with a trip to the Nou Camp. Discovering the background behind Barcelona's crest made me realize the rich history behind clubs crests is so pivotal, so iconic and yet they're never massively celebrated. A few years on from that visit I'd got to a point of doing a fair bit of digital design work that I wanted to do something in print again. The thought of doing something with football was really exciting and the two thoughts came together to form "The Football Crest Index". Hopefully it achieves a good bit of celebration for every football fan at some point. 

What kind research lies behind a massive work like this?

We started back last summer really developing the idea, how many teams we could include, how many teams we should include. From there the research side was quite structured. Taking 10 teams a weekend we'd research each clubs history and dig out all the crests we can find, then from there create a database of all the crests to then be fact checked. Sounds like a military operation but it's actually fairly enjoyable.

What is so fascinating, in your idea, of football crest?

I think the most important thing is that this one graphic symbolizes your entire club. The fans, the team, the nature and the philosophy along with the history. This is the one thing that represents your club in every situation. That's a pretty important aspect to celebrate and that's what we're trying to do with this book.

How did the Kickstarter idea comes out? I read you already achieve the necessary amount for the project, are you happy?

So we knew we wouldn't be able to fund the project ourselves. We knew we wanted to reach a certain quality of print also which really we'd only be able to fund through a platform such as Kickstarter. We'd also watched, and funded several publication projects through Kickstarter so knew we could get quite possibly a good reaction from it. The fact we got funded in 3 days is just mind-blowing, the response has been... epic to say the least.

Recently we’re seeing a lot of change in the crest of different football league. As Juventus explained, the design-choice are always more orientated to the market. What’s your idea of this trend?

The Juventus re-design is really interesting. I think they've done a really good job at creating something new and refreshing but at the same time, I'm awaiting how it's executed across the most important elements. As it stand we've seen it come across as more of a lifestyle brand but seeing how that same crest will look tiny in the top left of you're TV screen, or across kits and merchandise will be the real test.