For decades, the crest has been the most sacred emblem for football clubs, a shorthand for heritage, tradition and allegiance. As the guardian of a club\u2019s history, it has long carried the weight of identity on its shoulders.<\/p>\n
Now, a growing number of clubs are asking typography to share that emotional load.<\/p>\n
No longer treated as a supporting act, custom type is becoming an everyday badge of belonging, a visual language that fans read, wear and share.<\/p>\n
From Europe to the UK and the US, bespoke typefaces are being used to amplify heritage while keeping pace with how clubs communicate today.<\/p>\n
They help identities work harder across an expanding range of touchpoints, from scarves to stadium screens, and help teams speak locally and globally at once \u2013 familiar to a neighbourhood, legible across a broadcast feed.<\/p>\n
That dual power \u2013 functional and cultural \u2013 is what\u2019s making custom type one of football\u2019s most valuable new assets.<\/p>\n
Gretel\u2019s identity and custom typeface for New York City FC<\/p>\n
When Gretel<\/a> began reimagining New York City FC\u2019s identity, the team started to think of type as a part of a larger system that could hold memory, place, and pride.<\/p>\n \u201cTypography carries a club\u2019s voice and narrative across every touchpoint. It creates hierarchy, establishes rhythm, and allows you to speak loudly or quietly, depending on what the moment requires,\u201d says Dylan Mulvaney, Gretel\u2019s head of design.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere the badge or the crest says, \u2018This is us,\u2019 type says, \u2018This is how we sound.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In collaboration with Frere-Jones Type<\/a>, Gretel set out to create a custom typeface that could \u201conly belong to this club, in this city,\u201d adds Mulvaney.<\/p>\n To do so, the team had to tap into a cultural touchstone that felt unmistakably New York. They found it in the iconic pre-modernist signage used across the Independent Subway System (IND), which has connected New York City\u2019s five boroughs since its construction in 1932.<\/p>\n Gretel\u2019s custom typeface for New York City FC<\/p>\n \u201cThe subway makes the five boroughs function as one city \u2013 connecting college students in Manhattan with grandparents in Queens, artists in Brooklyn with families in the Bronx. The club does similar work, creating bonds across all those differences,\u201d says Mulvaney.<\/p>\n The result is the typeface NYCFC<\/em>, available in two styles, Local and Express, that mirror two lettering approaches from the IND system and reflect the city\u2019s contrasting scale \u2013 Manhattan\u2019s towers against the lower buildings of the outer boroughs.<\/p>\n Local was designed by Nina St\u00f6ssinger, while Express was drawn by Tobias Frere-Jones, a decision that mirrored the way New York\u2019s subway lettering was originally made by different hands and helped retain a touch of dissonance and character between the two styles.<\/p>\n The lettering within the badge was also redrawn by St\u00f6ssinger, based on the voice and cut of NYCFC<\/em>, connecting the crest and the custom typeface.<\/p>\n New York City FC\u2019s updated badge with the redrawn letterforms<\/p>\n \u201cThe connection matters because it signals intentionality,\u201d says Mulvaney. \u201cIt tells supporters this isn\u2019t piecemeal evolution. Everything is in dialogue, reinforcing the same core idea about where this club comes from and what it stands for.\u201d<\/p>\n As Mulvaney points out, NYCFC<\/em> now gives the club ownership in a way retail fonts never could.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you give fans letterforms that genuinely reflect their city\u2019s visual DNA, rather than something licensed from a foundry that 20 other brands might use, it feels like their own,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n That emotional power was something ModestWorks<\/a> and Moniker<\/a> were thinking about when developing the identity for Dallas Trinity FC. Together, they built a brand world that established a dialogue between the club\u2019s crest and its pair of custom typefaces.<\/p>\n For a new club without deep-rooted iconography, this relationship allowed typography to share the brand\u2019s symbolic weight and keep the crest from working alone.<\/p>\n ModestWorks and Moniker\u2019s crest and custom typeface for Dallas Trinity FC<\/p>\n \u201cRelying only on the crest can create fatigue. We needed something else that could carry the brand\u2019s DNA without always leaning on the emblem or even the name of the club,\u201d says Robert Milam, founder of ModestWorks.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s where the custom typefaces come in. They create a larger system, giving us a distinctive voice that can flex across platforms.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Gretel, ModestWorks and Moniker turned to a local cultural reference to ground the work.<\/p>\n The two typefaces they designed \u2013 Trinity Sans<\/em> and Trinity Flare<\/em> \u2013 were based on the typographic forms etched in the monuments in Fair Park, a National Historic Landmark in Dallas and home to the Cotton Bowl stadium, where the team would play its inaugural season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe studied the geometry and rhythm of the carved letterforms across Fair Park \u2013 the tall verticals, flared serifs, and compressed horizontals. Trinity Flare<\/em> draws directly from those chiselled flares, giving the type an architectural presence,\u201d says Milam.<\/p>\n The teams took notes from the typographic forms found in Fair Park<\/p>\n \u201cTrinity Sans<\/em> distils the monumentality into a cleaner, modern structure, with strong verticals and horizontals that echo the inscriptions.\u201d<\/p>\n Together, the two typefaces carry a sense of gravitas and permanence \u2013 qualities that feel fitting for a young club that has launched with momentum.<\/p>\n For both teams, it was important to get the typefaces just right.<\/p>\n As the most constant part of the system that shows up in every single point of communication, type is ever visible. \u201cA crest appears in certain moments, but the type is everywhere, every day. That ubiquity makes it a direct bridge to the fan base,\u201d says Milam.<\/p>\n That constant presence gives it emotional power. Type becomes the connective tissue of a club; a tool that translates collective pride and belonging into visual form.<\/p>\n \u201cType is language \u2013 the words matter more than the letterforms themselves. But when those words connect to something meaningful in a club\u2019s culture \u2013 like \u2018You\u2019ll Never Walk Alone\u2019 for Liverpool, or \u2018Play Like a Champion Today\u2019 at Notre Dame \u2013 type becomes just as powerful as the crest in shaping identity.\u201d<\/p>\n ModestWorks and Moniker\u2019s custom typeface for Dallas Trinity FC<\/p>\n In a rapidly evolving world, where a club\u2019s identity has to perform across LED boards, TikToks, jerseys and apps, custom type has become the more agile player in the brand toolkit.<\/p>\n Unlike a crest \u2013 bound by history and emotion \u2013 typography can evolve more freely, carrying the flexibility modern clubs need.<\/p>\n FC Basel 1893\u2019s custom variable typeface, crafted by designer Sylvan Lanz<\/a>, was built with this sense of fluidity in mind. Each of its six styles, featuring circular edges and sharp angles, is designed to evolve with the club \u2013 a new cut introduced each season.<\/p>\n \u201cEach version becomes a visual artefact of a specific season \u2013 something that evokes memories and emotions for fans. For example, the \u2018Circular Squared\u2019 cut used in 2023\/24 is now tied to the season they almost got relegated, their worst in years,\u201d says Lanz.<\/p>\n 1893, a variable typeface designed for FC Basel 1893 by Sylvan Lanz<\/p>\n \u201cFriends joked that my typeface brought bad luck. The \u2018Angular Circular\u2019 version used the following season, 2024\/25, became associated with winning the double \u2013 league and cup \u2013 and the return of Xherdan Shaqiri.\u201d<\/p>\n When designing the typeface, titled 1893<\/em>, Lanz immersed himself in FC Basel\u2019s visual history and the city\u2019s own typographic legacy, studying historic back numbers, condensed letterforms from the Basel School of Design, and archival materials to create a system that bridges the club\u2019s past with its present.<\/p>\n There was also the pressure of winning over the club\u2019s devoted fans. It\u2019s a challenge Lanz met head-on \u2013 and one that paid off \u2013 with supporters quickly embracing the typeface as their own.<\/p>\n 1893, a variable typeface designed for FC Basel 1893 by Sylvan Lanz<\/p>\n \u201cI often see kids redrawing the letters for signs, and fans making flags or stickers. The fan block even used it in a stadium choreography \u2013 a coordinated visual display during a match \u2013 a huge honour, since they usually reject official club visuals besides the crest and colours,\u201d says Lanz.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are also fun moments \u2013 cheap counterfeits, amateur clubs using it without permission, or spotting it in design schools from other cities whose students probably support rival clubs.<\/p>\n \u201cI even received one hate message, to which I replied, \u2018Nobody is forcing you to buy the jersey.\u2019 He agreed and wished me a nice weekend.<\/p>\n That shows just how emotionally charged this context is.\u201d<\/p>\n 1893, a variable typeface designed for FC Basel 1893 by Sylvan Lanz<\/p>\n A club\u2019s typeface, then, isn\u2019t just functional. It gathers meaning over time, its emotional charge deepening with every season fans spend with it.<\/p>\n The emotional resonance of a legacy typeface is something Nomad<\/a> had to carefully consider when evolving Tottenham Hotspur\u2019s identity and remastering its custom typeface, which was first drawn nearly 20 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cThe typeface felt \u2018of a moment in time\u2019 but it was also instantly recognisable as being Tottenham Hotspur \u2013 something very few football clubs have within their design toolkit,\u201d says co-founder Terry Stephens.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the surface, we didn\u2019t want it to look different, but we all needed it to work much harder for them \u2013 both in the sheer volume of platforms and displays that a modern football brand shows up in, but also in terms of what role it could play within the identity system.\u201d<\/p>\n Nomad\u2019s remastered typeface for Tottenham Hotspur<\/p>\n To evolve the typeface, the team studied the club\u2019s fiery, high-intensity style of play. In response, they stretched and compressed the original typeface to mimic the way heat might warp its form.<\/p>\n \u201cSurprisingly, even when stretched by 300%, it still looked good. It accentuated the serifs and made it look more contemporary,\u201d says Stephens.<\/p>\n Once the concept was sealed, Nomad turned to F37 Foundry<\/a> to build on it and master a fully variable headline font and supporting text version.<\/p>\n The remastered typeface strengthens the system, giving the brand new range while supporting the refreshed cockerel icon and revived monogram, and reducing their overuse.<\/p>\n Nomad\u2019s remastered typeface for Tottenham Hotspur<\/p>\n \u201cOver the summer, Tottenham toured Asia on their pre-season tour, and the graphics created for that relied far less on the crest, but still felt authentically Spurs,\u201d says Stephens. \u201cThat\u2019s a win for the type, and a win for the brand.\u201d<\/p>\n As design tools continue to be democratised, custom type is set to play an even greater role in how clubs define themselves.<\/p>\n Crafting a typeface is now more accessible than ever, and its financial advantages over licensing off-the-shelf fonts are becoming increasingly clear, as is the growing recognition of type\u2019s power to shape identity.<\/p>\n \u201cClubs are starting to see the importance of being a brand, a word still seen as \u2018dirty\u2019 in the football world, and that a brand is more than a logo or a badge,\u201d says Stephens.<\/p>\n Nomad\u2019s remastered typeface for Tottenham Hotspur<\/p>\n While custom type has firmly found its place within football clubs from across the world, Lanz says there\u2019s still more to be done.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope more clubs recognise the value of working with creatives \u2013 not just on type but across their entire visual appearance.<\/p>\n \u201cPersonally, I\u2019d love to see leagues like the Premier League abandon the idea of one standardised typeface for all clubs. These generic back numbers erase a club\u2019s individuality and identity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cEach club should have the possibility to express its identity through typography \u2013 because in football, type isn\u2019t just type; it\u2019s charged with meaning, emotion, memory, and belonging.\u201d<\/p>\n