We have just completed a rebrand of Umbro’s Teamwear offer aimed at the amateur football team market (Sunday leagues, pie eating pub teams, after work kick around etc). Umbro’s founding father (Harold Humphreys) believed that looking smart gives players a psychological advantage over their opponent and this insight is born out in these stylishly tailored football strips.

Our approach was to produce a game-changing piece of communication. Showing respect for the players who form Sunday league teams up and down the country by offering them product and communications that make them the hero.

47,000 of these large format brochures are now in circulation and have already started to cause a bit of a stir.

Thanks go to Steve Rhodes and the Umbro team, Tom Van Schelven, Tommy Cockram, Paula, Dani, Vicky, Harmsworth Print, Mum, Dad, Fabio, and Rooney.

Massive congratulations to one of our clients Umbro who won Sports Brand of the Year at the Sports Industry Awards last night. All the good and the great of the British and International sporting industry were there including Fabio Capello, Sir Alex Ferguson, Will Greenwood and Alastair Campbell (who apparently plays tiddlywinks).

Well done Umbo folks, take the next two days off on us.

Please don’t leave a caption on here. This isn’t our caption competition. Leave your wise-guy comment on their blog.

I’ll say it again, don’t leave your caption here. If you want to comment, perhaps you could just suggest other wise guys from history.

Thank you.

But things are now starting to change, and this finally went up on Friday:

The piece adheres to the fourth rule of design: Small things look really good when they are made really big.

We’ll run you through rules one to three at a later date.

(That’s MD Chris and Finance Director Paul behind the glass – two men who would be very useful in an emergency. Unless it was an emergency involving dinosaurs or rabid dogs with lasers.)

This morning was more a case of The-Not-So-Fresh-Awards.

See what I’ve done there? Marvellous, isn’t it? Took me under a minute to come up with that.

THAT’S RIGHT, UNDER A MINUTE.

To be honest with you (as Phil says between ten and fifteen times a day – he is a very honest person) it was always going to be a tough night for us. Last year we picked up 14 awards including five golds, so beating that haul was always looking a bit optimistic. Especially as we’d only been nominated for six categories.

Still, at the end of the night we went home with two Golds in the Best Poster and Best use of Illustration in Design categories for Umbro:

and a Silver in the Best Low Budget category for the Big Chip Awards promotional film:

Of course, there was a chance that we could trump last year by picking up the Big F Award, but, rather irritatingly, it went to The Chase for the second year in a row. When I say ‘irritatingly’ I really mean ‘Congratulations to all involved for a great bit of work. We are not bitter at all and salute your efforts but if you do it again next year we might start to get a tad pissed off, ok?’

If anyone from The Chase is reading this, I’d love a copy if there’s a spare one going – please drop me an email on s (dot) griffin (at) our web address. Other winners of note from the night were BJL for Eurocamp:

Chris Miller’s self-promotional wine-bottle with Like a River:

A sweet identity from Mark Studio:

And some nicely written posters from True North:

(All these images have been ripped off the Fresh Awards site, so you’re probably better off looking at them all there.)

So well done everyone. Next stop Nottingham (?) on 23rd for The Roses.

Sadly we haven’t got any images of the black one, as they just changed the inks at press. But if you close your eyes you won’t be able to read this, so keep them open and just imagine that the red bits are black, and the needle is blue and the ball and thread is white. Got it? If we get five minutes we’ll mac up the other version for you USING THE POWERS OF PHOTOSHOP. Or we could just take a photo of it.

Nice work from Mr Chris Gray and illustration from TOY.

You can read more about Umbro’s Speciali boot and Stephen’s incredible ability to do keep ups on concrete on the Umbro blog. Camera work was by Ste’s mate Ben, who can be found here.

The big question is: Will JT be there?

The second biggest question is: who won the Umbro competition?

Well we won’t keep you in suspense any longer.

The judges picked three winners.

In no particular order:

Ben Prescott

Richard Connolly:

and Rob Scott:

Congratulations to those three, and commiserations to the others who entered. On the plus side, it seemed that most of the people who entered were City fans, so they’ve got no real reason for being upset at the moment. Also, Richard, if you’re reading this, please check your email. There’s a good fella.

Manchester is famous for its football.

Manchester is also famous for its music.

This isn’t something that has gone unnoticed by the good people at Umbro, so in celebration of Manchester’s great cultural heritage, they are promoting Manchester City’s new kit using record sleeve visuals across the internet and across town. You’ve got the chance to design some of these sleeves. Here are a few examples of what we’re talking about…

The competition is open for anyone to enter and whilst there are no runner-up prizes, there will up to 10 winners who will have their artwork reproduced onto sleeves, posters and flyers.

They will also receive tickets to ‘Live For City’ at the City of Manchester Stadium on the 17th of July. If you’re sat there in your shiny red shirt thinking “That sounds rubbish”, you’d be wrong as it’s actually an exclusive gig with sets from the Doves, DJ Mike Pickering, The Twisted Wheel, Kid British and The Answering Machine. And you don’t even have to like City to appreciate that kind of line up. More details here and here.

Artwork should be “square” (according to one helpful designer here) and sent to hello@lovecreative.com before midnight on Sunday 12th July. A panel from Umbro, Anomaly and LOVE will be judging the designs, and winners will be announced on Monday 13th July. Sorry for the lack of time. Any questions, feel free to ask.

It’s music.

It’s football.

It’s a competition.

What’s not to like?

Congratulations to Sarah Murray, our Head of New Business, who married Umbro’s Stephen Corlett on Saturday. (Client Services are taken very seriously here at LOVE.)

We look forward to welcoming Mr and Mrs Corlett back into the office when they return from the South of France in a week or two.