Nine months in the making, Tottenham Hotspur recently rolled out a new visual and verbal identity, designed by London’s Nomad.
We sat down with Nomad founder Terry Stephens and the club’s head of brand and creative, Kieran Murphy, to discuss the project and the process of working together.
Why did Spurs need a new identity, and why now?
Kieran Murphy (KM): In 2006, we stripped back our crest and went quite minimalistic.
We’re now seeing, nearly 20 years later, other clubs like Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United doing a similar thing.
So we thought now is the right time to challenge our brand again, to start thinking about how we’re perceived, and how we communicate, not just to fans, but to the world.
How has the way that clubs need to communicate changed?
Terry Stephens (TS): Years ago, football was a very simple game. It was predominantly just a men’s team, it was Saturday, it was 3pm. Social media didn’t exist – you had a programme that was printed on match day.
Clubs weren’t brands back then, because they didn’t need to be.
But now look at any top club, and the amount of content they’re creating on a daily basis, not only in the UK, but for different audiences in different parts of the world.
It puts a strain on a brand like never before, and I think Spurs were at the forefront of seeing that strain.
Everyone connected with the club is so proud of the crest, which works brilliantly. So this project was about how we surround that with elements that allow the club to thrive in all these different spaces.
KM: Football now is global. We’ve got 577 supporters’ clubs around the world.
And so when we communicate, we’re not just communicating to those 60,000 fans that come to the stadium week in, week out
We’re talking to the rest of the UK, the rest of the world. They’re all coming from different cultures, and they like Spurs because of different stories.
We need to communicate in completely different ways to different groups of fans, and to do that, we need a brand that’s going to be agile, dynamic, and bold.
TS: It places an emphasis on knowing who you are, and what you stand for. So although the story might change, or the content might change, there is a DNA that runs through everything that feels familiar.
Part of this project was helping to crystallise a philosophy that sits at the heart of the club.
What do you think made Nomad the right fit for this? Are you a Spurs fan Terry?
TS: No, but we did have a Spurs fan on the team. But I think we have the right creds for this kind of job – the work for the Premier League, and various other clubs, not only in football.
That combined with the entertainment side of things – working for Sky, Disney – I think that aligned quite well with where the club was heading.
You’ve only got to look at the work that Spurs has done over the last 10 years – the stadium, the NFL games, the concerts.
Football is at the heart of everything, but there are so many ways of feeding into that now. I think we were seen as the right partner, because we could bring that entertainment lens to it.
KM: We put them through a rigorous process to make sure they were the right fit. We talked to a number of agencies, as you can imagine, but when it came down to actually voting on it, it was a landslide for Nomad.
You spoke with 300 people as part of the process – was this through surveys or actual conversations?
KM: They were all proper conversations, from the chairman, through to the managers, the captains, ex-players, our fan advisory board, the longest-serving employees. They were a real eye-opener.
TS: I think the main thing was the alignment around the spirit of what Spurs stood for.
“To dare is to do” has been part of the club for a long time. But I think outside and in, there’s potentially a misunderstanding of what that means.
“Dare” is quite a difficult word to nail down – it can mean different things to different people.
It isn’t just a motto that’s about banging your chest and going out on the field and playing football. It’s got to work harder than that.
We had to unpack the spirit and the meaning, to make it accessible and actionable to everybody.
I think the other thing was the amount of people that wanted to be involved. We create brand strategy and identities for a lot of businesses, and the important thing is that people internally feel like they’ve got their fingerprints on it.
Is there one element of the new work you’re particularly proud of?
TS: Being able to bring the monogram back is a favourite of mine. I lived through the 1980s and 1990s, and that was quite an icon within the realm of football.
We’ve seen comments that kids used to draw it on their exercise books and one person had it on the border of their wallpaper in their bedroom.
It’s great to bring that back and tap into that nostalgia, but it’s done in a modern way that can start to attract new fans as well.
KM: For me it’s the work on the font, because it was really difficult to do, and to do well.
Our font was crafted nearly 20 years ago specifically for this club, and it’s served us brilliantly over that time. That font has an IP that’s really valuable to us.
We retained what made it so iconic in its own right, but then gave it a modern twist, making it sharper and edgier, more dynamic, bringing new ligatures and alternative characters. We’ve gone from something like 76 glyphs to 7,000.
There’s so much you can do with it now, and our internal designers are so excited to use it.
TS: Very few clubs have typography as a major part of their identity. So the fact that we’ve already got 18 years of heritage in that font, it would be madness to lose it.
We brought in Face 37 to make it more ready for today and tomorrow.
For example in the stadium, the LED ribbons that run around the edges put masses of pressure on something as trivial as type. The old condensed typeface just wasn’t legible, it didn’t work.
So that was part of our thinking – can we make it super variable, really wide, so 350 or 400% width, back down to like 80%.
Were there any disagreements along the way?
KM: If there were no disagreements, no clashes of opinions, then we’re not doing our jobs properly.
To get to the place where we’ve ended up, we had to push boundaries and we had to push people’s comfort zones. And that’s individuals, as well as groups of people, within the business. Without doing that, you don’t see change.
So yes, there were times where we’ve had to really convince people in the business. We’ve had to convince Nomad, and vice versa. But that’s a good working environment.
TS: That relationship is everything. Having that trust to say, “I feel really strongly about this, I think we should fight for it.” Or to listen to that the other way, from Kieran and his team.
It doesn’t always happen like that. Ultimately, clients are the clients. They’re the ones paying for it, so if they decide something, it usually goes ahead. But I think all the way along, we felt supported in having a voice.
What does it feel like when you’re about to send something like this out into the world?
TS: It’s scary. It always is. You’re putting yourself out there, you’re putting the club out there. And unfortunately in the world that we live in, there are people that will always be critical of any kind of change.
I’ve been through this enough, but I’ve been trying to help the young designers that worked on it.
We want the work to cause a reaction. And we are buoyed by the reaction of people that can understand the journey the club’s on, and how this is another important part of that jigsaw puzzle.
It wouldn’t surprise me if we start to see what Spurs have done rippling out, and other clubs doing the same.
KM: We did an internal launch first and that was brilliantly received by everyone. I think that gives you a sense of confidence.
But obviously before you publish something of this magnitude – that affects millions of people across the globe, and everyone is going to have an opinion – there is some part of you thinking, ok, this is a big deal.
But this is just the beginning. The exciting part for us is we can do with it – in campaigns, communications, retail – over the next 10 and 15 years.
TS: The pressure on the Spurs team is immense, because they’re the custodians of this thing that’s like a religion to people.
So there is fear, but it’s a good fear. You have to take it seriously, and you have to protect what people have loved in the past.