Charles Apple

OK, so how many of you knew the World Cup begins Friday in South Africa? Raise your hands, please.

Sound of crickets chirping…

Yes, well. I admit, I probably wouldn’t have known it either, had I not spent the better part of three months last year in South Africa.

But the world’s biggest sporting event — yes, my fellow Americans, this is much bigger than the Super Bowl, the Olympics and the season finale of American Idol — does indeed kick off this weekend. And while many of us here in the U.S. might not care much for soccer, a significant number of our readers do — especially immigrants, folks who travel a lot and kids who were raised playing soccer, as opposed to baseball or football.

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A NICE WORLD CUP GRAPHIC BY THE ST. PETE TIMES

The first really nice World Cup piece I’ve seen so far — from a U.S. paper — arrived in my e-mail this weekend. This doubletruck inserted in today’s St. Petersburg Times and was designed by Andrew Braford.

Click for a larger view:

Andrew’s piece is packed with all sorts of interesting touches. Like this one in the upper left that explains vuvuzelas, the loud horn-things that South Africans love to blow during matches (click for a readable version):

This bit, in the upper right, explains the World Cup mascot who enjoys dying his hair green and, evidently, grabbing his own crotch:

A bit in the lower right shows a few of the stadiums where major events are to be played:

I had the pleasure of viewing Green Point stadium (above left) and the Soccer City stadium (below right) close up last year. I think fans will be delighted with them.

Andrew also delves into a few nuts-and-bolts of soccer, for the benefit of those of us who don’t know squat about the game:

Nicely done.

That painterly touch Andrew used in the tactical diagrams carries through to the nice map at the lower right of the page. Isn’t this gorgeous?

Andrew also avoids the old cliché of flags or flag logos by using that same loose style as national icons. This is my favorite part of the whole piece:

Download a PDF of Andrew’s page here.

Like I said, this ran today in the St. Pete Times. The Times promoted to the doubletruck from a story on today’s front page:

Times staffer Michael Kruse. writes:

Soccer critics in this country say the sport hasn’t really worked here because American audiences won’t watch what isn’t an American game. But the message within ESPN’s commitment is this:

American audiences?

American game?

That doesn’t matter as much anymore. It’s no longer just a question of whether you want soccer. Soccer wants you. Taste-making now is a two-way street.

Find that story here.

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OTHER WORLD CUP FRONT PAGES TODAY

Other Florida papers put the Cup out on A1 today. The Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale focused on the U.S. team — projected to do quite well but not win the title — led by a local player:

Find the story here by staffer Dave Hyde. The Sun Sentinel also posted a nice readers’ guide to the Cup — find that here – and is promising more material later this week.

Just down the street, the Miami Herald put the spotlight today on the hosts, South Africa itself:

Needless to say, perhaps, this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to that developing nation. Find the lead story here by Herald staffer Michelle Kauffman. Find the Herald’s elaborate World Cup home page here.

And the New York Daily News put the Cup on A1 today — squeezing it between the world’s largest coupon blurb and a cheezy Obama headline — to promote a 48-page World Cup preview inside today’s paper:

I don’t know how much of that section is posted online, but the Daily News has posted a vast amount of World Cup material on its web site. Find all that here.

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ABOUT THAT UGLY-ASS FIFA LOGO

I’ve been granted a preview of a few things my friends at South African papers have planned over the next few weeks. I’m hoping I can get them to send me cool graphics, pages and front pages over the month-long event. None of the papers I worked with post their pages at the Newseum, unfortunately.

I’m not seeing many folks use the official FIFA World Cup logo, and perhaps for good reason. It’s not exactly the most attractive logo I’ve ever seen. Six months ago, the Sake24 business tab insert of Rapport, the Afrikaans-language Sunday national paper, examined the logo and explained the various parts of it:

My friend Elsolet Joubert sent me the graphic and explained what the copy blocks said. Not a precise translation, but good enough for most of us:

1. African continent: They used the African continent as the background and stage of the World Cup.

2. Bushmen-drawing: They asked: “Who is the actor on this African stage?” They used a soccer player, doing a bicycle kick in the form of a Bushmen-drawing for that specific African flair.

5. Wording: Font developed to match the San/Bushmen sketch and also to look as though it was carved out of stone.

3. Flag: They used all the colours represented in African flags and designed it in a dynamic curve to bring the design alive and which represents celebration.

4. Fifa-logo: This is the first logo for which the new Fifa-World Cup design was used. It will be part of all the future World-Cup logos.

I kind of like the colored background and the figure. I could do without the blue frame, the circle in the upper right — which looks like a second soccer ball — and the duplicate text. But at least this isn’t as bad as the logo for the London Olympics!

Across the bottom of the page, Elsolet played a number of logos for previous World Cup events:

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OTHER WORLD CUP GRAPHICS WE’VE SPOTTED

I’ve found a few more World Cup pieces floating around the internet. For example, Estefan Cuanalo of Récord — a Mexican sports newspaper  — has posted a few intensive stadium graphics at NewsPageDesigner. Click for a slightly larger view:

Talk about elaborate World Cup web sites, Récord seems to have a wonderful one. If you are interested in the Cup and can read Spanish, you might want to bookmark this one. Find more of Estefan’s work here.

Here’s another that’s in the opening slideshow rotation at NPD — a look at participating teams and opening round games:

Each of the teams, evidently, are shown proportionally to their chances of advancing to the later rounds. The round bit in the center is a bracket.

This piece is by Fernanda Giulietti, Renata Steffen and Simon Ducroquet of Folho of Sao Paulo, Brazil. This graphic must have run last fall when the pairings were first announced — it won an Award of Excellence in this year’s SND competition.

This morning, however, my attention was directed to this incredible collection of World Cup graphics posted by Oscar Corvera of la Prensa Grafica of San Salvador. Click this one for a larger view:

This giant piece consists of 12 separate full-page graphics — one ran per week for 12 Sundays — which can then be taped together into one poster-like whole. Topics covered by the individual pieces appear to be tactics, the history of World Cup mascots and trophies, the venues, how footwear is made, the history of South Africa and the construction of the ball itself.

Oscar writes:

The work was done by the graphics team of La Prensa Gráfica: Oscar, Jorge, Rene and Douglas.

This is an astounding amount of work. Many thanks to my friend Iam Sajeevkumar T.K. for pointing it out to me.

In order to help me keep up with the Cup this month, I bought a nice guide to the World Cup published by ESPN, which will be broadcasting the games. In addition, the last two issues of Sports Illustrated have included nice Cup articles, including this very snarky — but fun — piece in the most recent edition to help you pick a team to follow, depending on your personal preferences and quirks. Click for a larger view:

That graphic is attributed to Dwayne Bernard.

UPDATE: 7:15 P.M. -

The amazing Konstantinos Antonopoulos passes along a link to more great examples, most of them interactive. Find them here.

He also says his own World Cup graphics will be published later this week. He’ll post them into his Facebook gallery.

I’m so glad Konstantinos wrote. I pretty much consider him the king of soccer graphics: He’s a “news producer” — basically, the presentation chief for the print and online versions — of Exedra, a sports newspaper in Athens, Greece. His infographics galleries — all ten of them — are nothing short of amazing. I’ll see if I can post a selection of his soccer work this week.

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WHY I’M INTERESTED IN THE WORLD CUP

During my time in Johannesburg, I did indeed get to see the gorgeously renovated Soccer City stadium on the southwest side of town near Soweto:

While in Cape Town, I wondered if they’d get done in time with the renovations to the Green Point stadium:

I guess they did, thanks to the green traffic light robot.

And I saw the excitement in the faces of the other hotel guests whenever the South African national team — Bafana Bafana, which means “the boys, the boys” in the Nguni language — pulled up in their team bus:

So I’m eager to learn a little more about soccer and to see the beautiful country of South Africa on display.

And make no mistake, South Africa is an incredibly gorgeous place. It is filled with incredible natural wonders and is home of some of the most gracious, friendly people you’ll ever meet. Yet, it is a place plagued with incredible poverty and sadness — much of it brought on by 46 years of very bad choices by its government.

The country has worked hard to make things right since the end of Apartheid. The Cup is their chance to show the world how far they’ve come and how hard they’re willing to work to go the rest of the way to rebuild their country, their economy and their reputation.

Even if you don’t care about soccer as a sport, you just have to root for a country like South Africa.

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SEND ME YOUR PAGES

In the meantime, is your paper planning to do anything cool for the Cup?

The event begins this Friday, June 11 and the  final will be played on July 10. Over this next month, I’ll be looking to post cool front pages, graphic treatments and sports fronts. I’m also hoping we’ll see interesting things posted over at the SportsDesigner blog.

I’m especially looking for pages from countries that celebrate big wins — or mourn losses — by their teams in South Africa this month. And by South African papers as the Cup unfolds.

You know where to send your stuff, as always:

chuckapple [at] cox.net

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UPDATE - 12:28 p.m.

Didn’t notice until just now, but the New York Times today ran a nice travel piece on South Africa, covering the major Cup venue cities, including Johannesburg and Cape Town. Check it out here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 6th, 2010 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Graphics, Sports design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.