For four years, designers Mark Liptrott of Concrete Studio and Nick Fraser brought together football and music by pairing iconic identities from both worlds. The idea was simple — combine football team badges with band logos. In their words, “bands as football teams and football teams as bands.”
“We now have over 400 badges, working with friends and guest designers, setting up an exhibition at the National Football Museum in Manchester, becoming the proud sponsors of Brinscall FC Juniors boys’ and girls’ teams and helping Frightened Rabbit to raise a lot of money for the charity they are setting up.”
In a conversation with Howler, Nick Fraser said on the team / band combination, “They go well together because they mix passions. We’ve spent time at the National Football Museum during our exhibition, and the kids are really into the football side of it while many of the parents have been to see the bands and have built memories around them. Putting them together makes something new but that has memories and emotions caught up in it. Like that mosquito in Jurassic Park that’s in the middle of the amber — our badges are like little time capsules of new versions of images that people have invested a lot of themselves in.”
I was unfamiliar with the Sampdoria crest, did a double-take. It features the profile of a sailor known by the old Genoese name of Baciccia (Giovanni Battista in Italian). Sampdoria’s based in the port city of Genoa, hence the sailor. The precise design came from a Disney-licensed and Panini-published comic, Topolino (via Wikipedia).
Late to the game here, because the Bands FC updates are coming to an end. But what a fun, worthy endeavour. People who bought from the shop helped to raise £60k for Tiny Changes, £50k for Sheffield Children’s, £25k for War Child, and more than £100k for other causes. Brilliant.