Celebrating the announcement of the Royal wedding in England this week, out Friday pun competition this week challenged you all to put a royal theme into footballer’s names. It wasn’t the easiest subject so thank you to everyone for your suggestions and congratulations to anyone that made it into the team above.
If you want to get involved in our Friday fun pun challenge, be sure to look out for our theme every Friday on Twitter and Facebook, and get your puns in – you could have the honor of appearing in our first team squad like the puns above!
The New Fabric of England is all about celebrating the finest that our country has to offer, and was also the thinking behind our new Facebook competition. We have partnered with the Guardian challenging photographers to send us a picture which answers the question: “what is beautiful about England today?”
We have had a staggering quality of entries which you can view over on our facebook page. The Guardian picture editor has chosen the winners which you can view below. Congratulations to Ben Larsen (picture above) who is the overall winner and will get a fantastic VIP package to the England vs. France game on November 17th with accommodation and transport, all food and drink, a brand new England home shirt to wear and £500 of digital camera equipment.
Runners up are Alan Hurndall, Stephen Jackson, Helen Rhodes, Diane Seddon and Simon Fogarty who all win an England Home Shirt.
All of the winning entries to our competition will also appear on the big screen at Wembley for all the fans to see and showcased in a special gallery on The Guardian Online.
As you probably know by now, we spend our Fridays at Umbro House trying to make puns out of footballer’s names. Topically, this week we went with #BonfireFootballers. Thanks you to everyone for your suggestions and congratulations to anyone that made it into the team.
If you want to get involved in our Friday fun pun challenge, be sure to look out for our theme every Friday on Twitter and Facebook, and get your puns in – you could have the honour of appearing in our first team squad like the puns above!
After a few weeks off on international duty, our Friday pun action returned today in spectacular fashion with Heavy Metal Footballers. Asking for your finest punning efforts on this loose theme, we were blown away with the rockin’ response to this weeks effort on Twitter and Facebook. Not just with players, but team names, referees, grounds – everything football related!
The squad above features some of the finest efforts suggested by our followers, so congratulations if you’ve made it, you can go away and enjoy your weekend. Just make sure you’re back next Friday for another fun pun theme….
We are having an exhibition at our Dale St studio, of our new Umbro Vs Collection. Featuring behind the scenes sketches from the artist Todd James (REAS) and a chance to see the product up close. The whole space has been built out to represent the Umbro VS campaign, with life size renditions of the characters. Have a look here at some pictures from the first day where Falcao was in attendance. The exhibition is open to the public from 11am – 4 pm Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th.
After four fantastic Umbro Industries events, where we’ve supplied the cash to get a load of ideas from around Manchester off the ground, we’re very excited to confirm that Umbro Industries is heading into another year of action.
The Autumn Umbro Industries will follow the same path of the ones before it, offering up to £10,000 to creative people from Greater Manchester to help their ideas become reality. So far we’re helped theatre shows, street art collectives, local record labels and reggae tea parties, and we’re looking forward to helping plenty more of you.
So, we’re looking for as many of you as possible to get your applications in for the latest round of Umbro Industries. Whether you’ve applied before or you’ve never heard of Umbro Industries, if you’ve got a great idea we’d love to hear from you. You can be any age and come from any background, as long as you live or work in Greater Manchester you can apply.
All you need to do is submit your idea to the Umbro Industries website, uploading any pictures or video to help your cause. Friends and supporters can vote for your idea, leaving messages of support that can give an idea of just how popular your idea is. Then, our group of esteemed panelists will consider all the applications, before inviting a select few to present their ideas at a special final day event. Those that impress the panel the most will then walk away with the cash, it’s as simple as that! Just get your idea submitted by deadline day: Friday, October 22nd.
The New Fabric Of England has been revealed – a fresh idea to push the England team forward as they look to qualify for the UEFA 2012 European Championships. The new England Home kit has been seen for the first time, with the team wearing the striking new design for their first qualifying match against Bulgaria on Friday, securing an impressive 4-0 victory in the process. But what about the person behind the New Fabric?
Iconic graphic designer Peter Saville is the man who has created the New Fabric design for us, a design that’s sure to spark plenty of debate amongst fans across England. To give you more of an idea of what the New Fabric Of England is all about, take a look at the video above in which Peter Saville explains the thinking behind his design.
We also had the opportunity to look further into the idea behind the New Fabric of England by speaking to Peter Saville, here’s what he had to say about his design and how he hopes fans will react to his idea:
How did the idea behind your design come about?
‘I was intrigued to see if there was a pattern of some sort that could be quite minimal, but be in a way a medium for colour. I initially had the idea to look at an equilateral cross, like a plus sign, and that quickly developed into the geometry of the cross of St. George. Once we arrived at that point, everything started to happen quite quickly, that cross motif was wonderful as a repeat pattern across the shirt.’
There’s also a cultural relevance to the design, can you explain a little more about that?
‘Very quickly, I realised that it would be interesting, exciting and quite provocative for it to be different colours, that was something much more representative of how we understand England today. The problem with that red cross of St. George is that it’s been marginalised and associated with a certain mindset that didn’t really appeal to me, but I loved the symbol. And the idea that the symbol would be different colours would be exciting and quite provocative.’
Do you think that a football shirt is the right place to have a debate?
‘A football shirt is quite an exciting place to have this debate, and the England national team shirt is symbolically as big as a flag, and is some ways we might see it as more active on behalf of people than a flag would be. So I think it’s kind of brilliant that it’s happened this time, and I can suddenly begin to see the football shirt as a medium for more creative and conceptual ideas. I can see the football shirt becoming the new record cover in some ways.’
How does it feel to be involved in a project as big as this?
‘It is without doubt the one big universal medium in this country, and it’s interesting to do something for England, as opposed to a club. If you do something for a club, it’s about them and their history. Whereas doing something for England, it’s about a society and the place you live, the community you live in, so it’s a much more abstract entity.
I’m quite thrilled to do something for the wider public. In the days that I did record covers, they went to a lot of people, and it’s quite invigorating, quite exciting to know that a lot of people will see it, and with this millions people will see it.
Earlier this year, one of my old record covers from 1983 was on a stamp! That was one of the most exciting things that had happened for years, knowing that it was circulating unwittingly around the country. Of course, this is about England, it’s not about me, but it’s quite nice to do something that goes out into the world like that.
I hope some people will like it, I hope people will like the idea it puts forward, I think some people won’t like it!
I think it’s an interesting issue at the moment though, Englishness and what it means, and how you find a way that can be interpreted by everybody. My reservation about the cross of St. George is that it seems quite particular to a historic understanding of England, and the England we live in today is not that same historic England. So this way of seeing the symbol I would like to think opens up it up to other people to be able to identify with it. Also, we’ve realised that it’s an idea which is expressible by others, so I’d quite like to see people taking the idea of that cross in a colour, and doing their own version of it. I’m looking forward to seeing orange ones and green ones and pink ones.’
Thanks to Peter for taking the time to answer our questions on the new England kit and his design – to take a closer look at the shirt, head over to the Umbro website. Tomorrow, we’ll have more from the acclaimed designer, looking at his time at Factory Records and his views on football.
So far, we’ve been exploring the actual style of football played in 5-a-side and futsal as part of our new Umbro Vs range, but today we’re looking at something a little different – how the players like to look good on and off the pitch. There’s a real difference of opinion on this – some players like to look at their best when they step onto the pitch, whereas others prefer to let their talent do the talking.
It’s this idea that’s inspired the latest Todd James cartoon clip we can reveal here today. Exploring how some of the players we interviewed in São Paulo are more concerned about their aftershave than the result of their match, it’s a great insight into the culture of futsal – enjoy!
A new season, new players in the squad, new hope for your team – and a new theme for our Friday football puns! To kick off this season, we gave you the challenge of Computer Footballers, and you certainly delivered. Here’s our pick of the best suggestions, but thanks to everyone who put a pun or two forward, there were plenty of excellent ones – and a fair few terrible ones as well! Keep an eye on our Twitter and Facebook pages every Friday for the latest theme if you want to get involved…
Reference to specific teams, players or organisations within this blog - or links from it to external team, Player, individual, media, community or organisational websites - does not constitute or imply endorsement or recommendation of umbro or the umbro brand. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of umbro.
