UMBRO / MODERN ENGLAND
6 September 2010
Peter Saville speaks to Contagious about his positively subversive introduction of colour to the England football shirt
- Brand
- UMBRO
- Product Category
- Sportswear
- Country
- UK
- Source
- News
- Creative Team
- Peter Saville
- Tags
- Design
- sport
- football
- Sponsorship
Contagious / What was the brief from UMBRO?
PS / The England shirt isn't an unknown quantity, but the question was how do I create an icon of English culture without compromising on performance?
I began to think about the idea of a subliminal pattern on the body of the shirt as a medium for the colour to come through. We felt that ideas like piping and panelling were nice to do, but they weren't really radical in any way.
I thought about a range of colours, not just a white shirt with red on it. In my mind it was millions of colours from the beginning. I also began to think about the plethora of patterns that you see on Jermyn St in London. The interesting thing about men's clothing is that its cumulative effect is quite sober, but when you look into it it's really quite wild. Check suits are quite extreme, striped shirts, polka dot shirts and ties, even paisley is quite psychedelic....
All of those possibilities were in my mind and we began to look at different motifs. Initially I thought of a plus sign, which I thought was quite modern. Paul Barnes, who I was working with, then looked at an asymmetric cross - the cross of St. George.
This subliminal pattern that just put a little colour into a shirt suddenly became much bigger than that in meaning. It's a strange combination of being a very discreet element that carries with it a very big idea. Sport itself has been raising those issues of national identity and gender and race, but not necessarily in a kit.
It's completely logical to think of the symbol of England in different colours for different people. I think that the essential political opportunity that this gives is that rather than demanding that you conform, it offers you something that you can make your own.
It's diverse, multifaceted, and contains many colours, which cover moods, attitudes and ways of life, as much as it does race and gender. Colour becomes like a symbol of an opinion or an attitude and I like the idea of that escaping out into the public domain and people interpreting it themselves.
How do you feel about the success of your shirt being tied to the success of the football team?
As a designer, particularly a graphic designer, you're part of a communications relationship. If you're communicating on behalf of something, somebody, some organisation that you feel positive about and supportive of then the role is positive and supportive. It doesn't really matter if the role is massive or marginal because you feel ok about what you're doing.
I've, to a great extent, retired from the practise of professional graphic design and I'm not obliged or compromised into doing things. I'm not running a design agency any more so therefore I can do the things I like doing, like an England Football shirt. The team will do what they can do. They would not have been playing in South Africa if they were not good players, it just didn't work for them in the same way that it didn't work for quite a few other teams.
How do you feel about the sustainability of design - the fact that when you've produced a classic piece of design, albums will still be reissued with new covers and football shirts will change each season?
It's actually quite remarkable that considering the predominance of football in popular culture, that the shirt hasn't really being a medium for aesthetic awareness before.
There's a few firsts in someone such as myself doing a kit - there's an idea other than just a couple of stripes or dots. This particular idea obviously has enormous opportunity to evolve. As soon as we started doing it we thought this is almost endless - bigger, smaller, brighter, darker, joined up, with shadows - there's a big palette of possibilities just taking the modern England motif forward. This is the energy of renewal - aesthetics as part of our entertainment culture now and so we want things to change.
What we have with the Modern England pattern is the possibility that both England and Umbro have an evolving concept that can lead to some quite surprising and unexpected things.
UMBRO
PS / The England shirt isn't an unknown quantity, but the question was how do I create an icon of English culture without compromising on performance?
I began to think about the idea of a subliminal pattern on the body of the shirt as a medium for the colour to come through. We felt that ideas like piping and panelling were nice to do, but they weren't really radical in any way.
I thought about a range of colours, not just a white shirt with red on it. In my mind it was millions of colours from the beginning. I also began to think about the plethora of patterns that you see on Jermyn St in London. The interesting thing about men's clothing is that its cumulative effect is quite sober, but when you look into it it's really quite wild. Check suits are quite extreme, striped shirts, polka dot shirts and ties, even paisley is quite psychedelic....
All of those possibilities were in my mind and we began to look at different motifs. Initially I thought of a plus sign, which I thought was quite modern. Paul Barnes, who I was working with, then looked at an asymmetric cross - the cross of St. George.
This subliminal pattern that just put a little colour into a shirt suddenly became much bigger than that in meaning. It's a strange combination of being a very discreet element that carries with it a very big idea. Sport itself has been raising those issues of national identity and gender and race, but not necessarily in a kit.
It's completely logical to think of the symbol of England in different colours for different people. I think that the essential political opportunity that this gives is that rather than demanding that you conform, it offers you something that you can make your own.
It's diverse, multifaceted, and contains many colours, which cover moods, attitudes and ways of life, as much as it does race and gender. Colour becomes like a symbol of an opinion or an attitude and I like the idea of that escaping out into the public domain and people interpreting it themselves.
How do you feel about the success of your shirt being tied to the success of the football team?
As a designer, particularly a graphic designer, you're part of a communications relationship. If you're communicating on behalf of something, somebody, some organisation that you feel positive about and supportive of then the role is positive and supportive. It doesn't really matter if the role is massive or marginal because you feel ok about what you're doing.
I've, to a great extent, retired from the practise of professional graphic design and I'm not obliged or compromised into doing things. I'm not running a design agency any more so therefore I can do the things I like doing, like an England Football shirt. The team will do what they can do. They would not have been playing in South Africa if they were not good players, it just didn't work for them in the same way that it didn't work for quite a few other teams.
How do you feel about the sustainability of design - the fact that when you've produced a classic piece of design, albums will still be reissued with new covers and football shirts will change each season?
It's actually quite remarkable that considering the predominance of football in popular culture, that the shirt hasn't really being a medium for aesthetic awareness before.
There's a few firsts in someone such as myself doing a kit - there's an idea other than just a couple of stripes or dots. This particular idea obviously has enormous opportunity to evolve. As soon as we started doing it we thought this is almost endless - bigger, smaller, brighter, darker, joined up, with shadows - there's a big palette of possibilities just taking the modern England motif forward. This is the energy of renewal - aesthetics as part of our entertainment culture now and so we want things to change.
What we have with the Modern England pattern is the possibility that both England and Umbro have an evolving concept that can lead to some quite surprising and unexpected things.
UMBRO
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