Q&A with the 2023 sacramento Homeless World Cup brand designer Christopher Payne
|The Homeless World Cup Sacramento logo was designed by football brand designer Christopher Payne.
This year the Homeless World Cup introduced an event specific brand for the first time. The first person to take on the task with the support of the Homeless World Cup’s design and graphic agency, Tangent, is football brand designer Christopher Payne. We spoke to him about what inspired the Homeless World Cup Sacramento design, his love of football and the growing list of teams he supports (whenever he works with a club, he always ends up backing the team and following their progress after!)
Where do you start when designing a logo for a football club or event?
There are many ways to start designing an identity for a football club or tournament branding. All designers will have different approaches, but for me, the first thing that I do is to fully understand the people and the place where the football club or tournament is based.
As a designer of football club badges there is a huge responsibility that comes with changing or evolving a football club's identity, or introducing a new one. The designs that you create will be around for many many years, and will carry a lot of hope and local pride with them, so have to be authentic, and have an obvious connection to the people and place the football club represents, but in addition to that, they must be unique and scalable, as well as adaptable to all modern and traditional media.
At the start of any design or branding process there are 100s if not 1000s of directions an identity could take, the identity could be obvious, or abstract? It could be inspired by symbols of the city or inspired by local architecture or nature. It’s about understanding your audience and knowing what they will resonate with.
I start by reviewing all of the possible directions and look for what is interesting, what is unique, what makes the people and place interesting, and what feeds into the narrative of the football club. This process of elimination will help you narrow in on a few possibilities and design directions.
I often try to focus on what is the deeper meaning? What is metaphoric about the chosen direction? Could the chosen option scale into language and messaging and work as a consistent and scalable identity.
It's not an easy task designing an identity for a football club or a football tournament, but I love it, and am inspired by the challenge.
What was the inspiration behind the Homeless World Cup logo for Sacramento 2023?
With Sacramento 2023, we had 100’s of options to consider. Sacramento is a lively place with great personality, architecture and recognised symbols. During the process we looked at including Tower Bridge as the focal point of the design, we also looked at having the California Bear as an option, however ultimately we settled on the ‘City of Trees’ nickname as the main theme for the identity.
Sacramento is known as the city of trees, it has more trees than any other city in the world (beside Paris). It is one of the many things that makes Sacramento so beautiful.
Besides the tree being a great representation of the place the tournament is being held (Sacramento) it is also a great representation of the people involved. A tree is a symbol of strength, growth, healing, connections and branching out. These are all attributes that the Homeless World Cup helps promote.
Once we decided that the tree would be a great symbol for the Homeless World Cup Sacramento 2023, it was all down to design execution. We spent hours and hours refining the design, tweaking the branches of the tree, so that each branch individually and collectively had even visual weight.
We looked at the footballer that can be seen in the centre of the tree and made sure that the footballer had a feeling of movement and control of the ball. There were many small tweaks and changes, but we created a design that is well balanced, visually interesting and deep in meaning.
Beyond the structure of the design it was also important that the identity would be adaptable to change colours and work within different colour spaces. This is a tournament in which many nations will compete, and we wanted to ensure that the design has a feel of ‘a carnival of colours’, so it could become red and white when representing England, but equally it could become ‘Blue and White’ when representing Argentina.
It was a long process but I am really proud of the final result, and can not wait to see it come to life at the tournament.
When did you first discover your love of football? And how did you get into design for football specifically?
Football has always been there for me. I'm from a big footballing family, so I can’t imagine life without football. It was always on the TV growing up, on the tips of everyone’s tongue in conversations. I would spend hours drawing kits, sketch players and badges.
In my childhood I used to think about football everyday, I was obsessed with it, and all I wanted to do was become a professional football player. I played day and night and reached a decent standard, but sadly not professional. When I realised that I wouldn't make it as a professional footballer, I focused on my other deep love - Design.
I love good design. I am obsessed with it. It excites me when I see design done exceptionally well. Before becoming a football brand designer, I designed for many industries and businesses big and small, however, I always had the dream of designing an identity for a professional football club. One day I decided that I would fuse my two passions football and design together, and actively write to football clubs to find out if they need help with their badge and brand.
The first club I worked with was a small team in England called Alfreton Town. I work with the club to create a striking identity, based around King Alfred the great. It was a design that was highly successful and brought lots of attention to the club and to my work.
Following the success of Alfreton Town FC’s new identity, more clubs started calling, asking if I could design their badges, clubs like Eastleigh FC, York City, Tonbridge Angels, Hitchin Town and many more. It’s a proud feeling to have played a small part in the club's history and design something that fans connect with and wear with pride.
I have designed many badges for teams in England, and in the USA. I feel so proud of each and every one of them, and love to see how these new identities for football clubs become a symbol of the city. I’m always super proud when I see fans wearing a logo that I have designed. I have also seen fans get tattoos of the badges I've designed on them, which is unbelievable.
I get excited each time a new project comes my way, and I hope to work with many more teams in the future and hopefully design identities for more major football tournaments.
Who do you support in the UK and do you have a favourite team in the US?
I am from Derby, in England. So naturally I support Derby County. I used to have a season ticket with them and go to all their games. It’s not easy being a Derby County fan (especially in recent years), however I cherish the little wins, and the little signs of progress.
In the US, I follow all the teams of which I have designed identities for. I always want them to do well both on and off the pitch. I designed Monterey Bay FC’s identity and have since seen them thrive with their brand, and play great football on the pitch. They have managed to create a nice atmosphere and a great following in Monterey, it always fills my heart with joy when you see fans and players kiss the badge.
I also follow Lexington Sporting Club. I designed their badge last year, and spent a lot of time in Lexington and with the people of Lexington, and they are excelling with their brand and it has become a great symbol for the community.
This is the first time the Homeless World Cup has designed a tournament/city/country specific logo and brand for the event in its 20-year-history, how proud does that make you being the first designer to take this on?
I am incredibly proud! It is such an important tournament for all involved. It really does change lives and have a positive impact on good people. The tournament will get bigger and bigger each year it is played and more lives will be impacted. Which is great.
I am excited to see the logo be worn by all the players and stand for something bigger than football: growth, optimism, branding out and now opportunities.
I hope the new design can leave a legacy and be an inspiration for designers of the future who will also have the honour of working on future homeless World Cup identities.
See more football club identities that Christopher Payne has designed here: https://www.footballbranddesigner.com/