The Football Record Situation

This project started as an end-of-season surprise from my son and his co-captain to their football teammates.

The idea was to make something that felt like a proper footy record — the kind of thing you flick through before a game — except this one was built entirely around their team, their season and the little moments that made it theirs.

It started as a gift. Then it became a publication. These things happen.

The record became a way to pull together player profiles, coach details, photos, team memories, jokes, fun pages and little season moments into one finished piece. A harmless little data-gathering exercise. For design purposes, obviously.

I wanted the record to feel familiar and nostalgic, but still personal to the team.

The design drew from classic footy records and game-day programs — bold headings, strong page structure, editorial layouts and that slightly official feeling that makes a junior sport moment feel bigger than it technically is.

It needed to feel polished without becoming too serious. Fun without becoming messy. Sentimental without turning into a scrapbook situation.

The challenge was making all the moving parts feel connected. Player profiles, coach profiles, photos, questions, answers, memories and team moments all needed their own space, without the whole thing looking like a folder of random pages had made a run for it.

The final piece became part magazine, part season recap, part team time capsule.

It captured the players, coaches, friendships, jokes, photos and tiny bits of chaos that somehow become the things everyone remembers most.

It was more than a thank-you gift or a quick season summary. It became a proper little record of a team at a particular moment in time.

Which sounds dramatic, but also accurate. Annoyingly, both can be true.

This kind of project works well when a team has a season worth remembering and a standard thank-you card is clearly not going to survive the brief.